Subscriber OnlyBusiness Today Newsletter

Receiver for Ronan portfolio, €150m for affordable housing and OpenAI row a familiar tech story

The best news, analysis and comment from The Irish Times business desk

What did you spend your bonus on? Photograph: iStock

Conn Ó Midheach's face
Conn Ó Midheach
Thu Nov 23 2023 - 06:37

Developer Johnny Ronan has consented to the appointment of a receiver to a portfolio of property assets that includes the historic Bewley’s Café in Dublin. Ronan Group Real Estate (RGRE) said on Wednesday it had invited Bank of Ireland and AIB to appoint a receiver to manage the refinancing of property assets owned by the company. Colin Gleeson has the details.

Irish business finance provider Financefair has established a €150 million fund for social and affordable housing projects with the aim of supplying working capital for the construction of up to 750 new homes across the State, writes Laura Slattery.

In the week since OpenAI supernova’d into a spectacular mess, many have said that OpenAI, the company that brought the world the AI chatbot ChatGPT, has a “governance problem”. But it doesn’t. It has the same old power, greed, and responsibility problem that plagues many companies in the technology sector, argues Karlin Lillington in her weekly column.

Healthcare spending forecasts need to be more realistic and developed earlier, the head of the Republic’s budgetary watchdog has told an Oireachtas committee. Budget overruns that have caused conflict in Cabinet are predictable, Michael McMahon, the acting chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and professor of macroeconomics at the University of Oxford, to the Budget Oversight Committee. But he said they could be prevented by using a more accurate way of assessing the money needed to maintain services at existing levels. Dominic Coyle reports

READ MORE

Staying with OpenAI, its convoluted corporate structure was designed to protect its board of directors from normal commercial pressures and ensure that the advanced artificial intelligence the company was building would always serve humanity. Instead, the unusual arrangement tipped off a crisis last weekend that threatens to tear apart the company at the forefront of the global race over generative AI. Richard Waters, George Hammond and Madhumita Murgia report.

Cantillon wonders if the property market is running that hot and also what did you spend your last bonus on (assuming that you got one)?

Content creation tool Persuva is the brainchild of Peter Horvath, whose experience as an account manager with TikTok and Meta identified a gap between what SMEs were spending on digital marketing and the payback in terms of sales, sign-ups, site traffic and brand awareness, writes Olive Keogh.

An Post chief executive David McRedmond is to receive a special recognition award at this year’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year (EOY) award ceremony this evening. Mr McRedmond has led An Post since 2016, overseeing a major transformation at the State-owned company from letters to ecommerce and parcels, and putting it on a profitable footing. Previously, he led Irish broadcaster TV3, and was a senior executive at telecoms group Eir and British books retailer Waterstones. He is also currently non-executive chairman of Eir and a non-executive director of Premier Lotteries Ireland.

The new Amazon Fire TV Stick looks remarkably similar to its predecessors, writes Ciara O’Brien in her review, all the good stuff is on the inside. That means a faster chip and upgraded wifi capabilities, along with a larger capacity than the standard Fire TV Stick 4K. Plus all the support that you get with standard 4K model: high-quality video, support for Dolby Vision and Atmos, and HDR10+.

BMW’s more recent investment in a new facility in South Africa, one that is going to make it easier – and potentially profitable – to un-make cars, reports Neil Briscoe. In the future, your old car might be worth more money when recycled than sold.

Stay up to date with all our business news: sign up to our Business Today daily email news digest. If you’d like to read more about the issues that affect your finances try signing up to On the Money, the weekly newsletter from our personal finance team, which will be issued every Friday to Irish Times subscribers.