RECEIVER REPLACED AS HOVIS OWNER MOVES ON IRISH PRIDE - The owner of Britain's Hovis looks to be in the driving seat at Irish Pride after buying the company's debt and replacing receivers who were appointed only last week, the Irish Independent has learned.
The move will prompt speculation that Britain's third biggest bread producer is poised to snap up Irish Pride, potentially saving up to 340 jobs here. However, sources insisted last night that a full and open auction process is still underway, with a number of initial bids for Irish Pride submitted and that no deal to buy the business has been agreed. Kieran Wallace of KPMG has now been appointed as receiver by California-based private equity firm Gores Group, after the US investor bought loans secured on the Irish Pride business from original lender Close Brothers in recent days. Mr Wallace replaces receivers Declan Taite and Pearse Farrell of Duff & Phelps who were appointed by original lender Close Brothers only last week. Duff & Phelps placed advertisements seeking bids for the business in weekend newspapers. Those bids were due in on June 15 and are now being handled by KPMG, it is understood. The receivership raised fears for 340 jobs, mainly in Mayo and Wexford, but staff have been told the business will trade as normal while efforts are made to sell it as a going concern.
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O'BRIEN SELLING GULFSTREAM JET FOR €60M - He's used it to fly to different parts of the world in the past two years but Irish businessman Denis O'Brien has now decided to sell his state-of-the-art Gulfstream jet for a cool $67.95 million (€59.74 million). O'GaraJets in Atlanta is selling the Gulfstream G650 S/N 6032, which carries a small Irish tricolour on its tail fin. A short video promoting the benefits of the jet is running on You Tube. Mr O'Brien acquired the aircraft as new in 2013 and, according to the O'GaraJets website, the plane has flown 1,734 hours in the intervening period, making 558 landings. It comes with an "extended" Gulfstream warranty, writes the Irish Times. Mr O'Brien is a renowned globetrotter, regularly visiting the Caribbean and the Pacific islands, where his mobile phone company Digicel has extensive operations. He is also a regular traveller to the the US, and Asia, where he sought a mobile phone licence in Myanmar. In addition, Mr O'Brien is an annual visitor to Davos, where the world's top business, political and academic leaders meet to discuss events of the day, and he has travelled around Europe supporting the Irish soccer team and to watch rugby. The Gulfstream jet can accommodate three crew and 15 passengers and sleeps up to six people "comfortably", according to the video. The aircraft has a range of 7,000 nautical miles and a maximum cruise speed of 516 knots. It costs $5443 an hour to fly.
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MALAYSIA POACHES RYANAIR'S PETER BELLEW - Malaysia Airlines has poached Peter Bellew of Ryanair to serve as its chief operations officer. The appointment of the Ryanair director of flight operations extends a remarkable rate for personnel with connections to Ireland securing top aviation jobs around the world, says the Irish Examiner. Mr Bellew will be second in command at Malaysia under the new chief executive, Christoph Mueller, who left as boss of Aer Lingus earlier this year to help turn around the troubled Asian carrier. The Government has given its backing to the takeover of Aer Lingus by IAG Group, owner of the British Airways, Iberia, and Veuling carriers, led by Dubliner Willie Walsh, who himself led Aer Lingus more than 10 years ago. Mr Bellew, 50, starts at his new job in September. A native of Bettystown, Co Meath, he currently lives with his family outside Killarney. He will be in charge of all operations at Malaysia, including engineering, flight operations, and ground operations, as well as having responsibility for the pilots and in-flight crew across a fleet of 140 planes. He was a senior director helping to manage Kerry Airport in the 1990s.
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MIDDLE EAST DAIRY DEMAND RIDES ON OIL - Rasmus Malmbak Kjeldsen may be an executive at a leading European dairy company, but he also keeps an eye on the oil price. The Dubai-based head of Middle East and Africa at Arla, the company behind Lurpak, says dairy demand in the region has been strongly influenced by the crude price, which has boosted broad economic activity. With its fast growing population and rising incomes, countries in the Middle East and north Africa have experienced rapid expansion of their dairy markets, says the Financial Times. “Many of these countries are oil producing, over the past four to five years we have seen very strong growth” he says. The region’s importance has increased for large dairy exporters, with the international market hit by reduced imports from China, while facing high inventories, and dairy prices at the lowest since 2009, While world trade of dairy products has doubled in the past decade, Middle Eastern imports have trebled, and that for the five countries in the Maghreb area have rise 3.5 times, according to data from the International Trade Centre in Switzerland. Although the growth has not been as spectacular as China, where imports have jumped 14 times in the same period, they have become important markets for leading exporters including New Zealand, Europe and Argentina
