Danone sells 38% Glenisk stake back to Cleary family

French food products giant Danone has sold its 38 per cent stake in Irish yoghurt maker Glenisk back to the Cleary family, according to the Sunday Times. The shares Danone had held in the company since 2006 were repurchased last June, it said.

Glenisk, which resumed production at its Offaly plant in February last year, four months after a devastating fire ravaged the facility, is now 100 per cent owned by the Cleary family: siblings Gerard, Mark, Vincent, Brian and Evelyn.

Glenisk told the newspaper that the partnership with Danone had been “a positive arrangement” and allowed it to invest in its factory in Killeigh, and in product innovation and branding.

Eir claims ComReg block on price cut puts €2bn fibre roll-out at risk

The Sunday Times also carries an interview with Eir chief executive Oliver Loomes, in which he claims that a decision by the communications watchdog to block the company from cutting its wholesale price charges puts its €2 billion high-speed fibre broadband roll-out plans at risk.

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ComReg has ruled that Eir’s 10 per cent planned wholesale charge reduction could be “loyalty inducing”, was anticompetitive and created “significant uncertainty” for alternative providers to invest in infrastructure due to concerns about their ability to attract customers on to their networks.

Loomes said that the ComReg restriction was preventing Eir from competing on a level playing field with Siro, a joint venture between ESB and Vodafone, and Virgin Media. He added that there is a real danger that Eir’s biggest shareholder, a company owned by French businessman Xavier Niel, might slow down fibre roll-out.

Almost 260 companies have more than €1m of Covid tax debt

The Sunday Independent reports that 259 businesses in the Republic have more than €1 million of Covid-era warehoused tax debt, with a further 393 owing between €500,000 and €1 million.

The figures were provided to the newspaper by the Revenue Commissioners, which has begun an outreach programme to a total of 6,100 companies that owe a combined €1.7 billion of taxes, as payments were put on hold during the pandemic.

Companies have until May 1st next year to pay off the warehoused taxes they owe or to agree a phased repayment deal with the State. The scheme allowed for the parking of debt at an interest rate of zero until the end of last year, or April 30th this year for those in an extended scheme.

An annual rate of 3 per cent is currently being charged on outstanding amounts, though this is well below the normal rate on overdue taxes of 8-10 per cent.

IDA facing ‘aggressive competition’ from EU rivals for FDI

The chief executive of IDA Ireland, Michael Lohan, said the Republic faces “aggressive” competition from some of the largest EU countries for foreign direct investment (FDI), the Sunday Independent also reports.

The comments came after the IDA said last week that it had won 139 investments in the first six months of the year, down 10 per cent on the corresponding period in 2022.

Mr Lohan said that Germany and France have become “very proactive and even aggressive in terms of attracting and wining FDI”, adding that this is the “new narrative”.

IFAC says Government spending plan echoes pre-crash era

The chief economist of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC), Eddie Casey, has said the Government’s spending plans for Budget 2024 triggers concerns “that we are going back to the kind of thinking we would have seen in the mid-2000s”, the Business Post reports.

He said that the pre-crash government spending habits are “not a scenario we want to repeat, where you have to pull back at some later stage because we pushed things too far”.

The Government last week outlined plans to increase spending in Budget 2024 by €5.2 billion, which amounts to a 6.1 per cent increase in core expenditure, compared with its target of no more than a 5 per cent increase.

Minister for Finance Michael McGrath has argued that exceeding 5 per cent “is warranted”, as it gives the Government “the ability to ensure that we provide an appropriate level of investment in public services and that we can protect people’s living standards” at a time of heightened inflation. He said that the additional money being spent is expected to add about 0.2 per cent to national inflation.