Grant Thornton Ireland’s 45 equity partners are set to receive €6.5 million each under a cash-and-shares-based merger of its non-audit business with that of its US counterpart, the Sunday Times reported.
The report puts a €480 million value on the deal, of which 60 per cent will comprise cash payments to the Irish equity partners. Grant Thornton Ireland, which has a total of 2,800 employees, also has over 25 salaried partners who will receive nothing.
The two firms announced the merger on Thursday, following New York private equity firm New Mountain Capital’s purchase of a majority stake in Grant Thornton Advisors in the US.
Grant Thornton Ireland’s audit business, with about 1,000 staff, will continue as an independent partnership and operate under an alternative practice structure.
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The Irish firm, which generated about €300 million of revenues last year, is the fifth-largest part of the global Grant Thornton network. The US firm is the largest, with its latest reported annual fees amounting to $2.4 billion (€2.2 billion).
Aer Lingus to cut jobs amid Dublin passenger cap
Aer Lingus is to cut some jobs as it grapples with the challenges of the passenger cap at Dublin Airport and low profitability at the airline, the Sunday Independent reported.
The airline’s chief executive, Lynne Embleton, has told employees that the carrier will ground one A333 aircraft and scale back the use of its A320 planes – the most common aircraft in its fleet – by the equivalent of three aircraft, with further changes possible, the report said.
Still, it noted that the CEO said that there were no plans for a broad-based redundancy programme at the company, which is the least profitable among carriers in the International Airlines Group, which also owns British Airways, Spanish airlines Iberia, Vueling, and Level, as well as IAG Cargo.
Government’s second annual AIB share block sale on hold
The Sunday Times reported that the Government’s recent tradition of selling a 5 per cent block of shares in November is likely to be postponed until early next year, given uncertainty over the general election date.
The Government has also sold 5 per cent blocks of AIB stock in June for three straight years as part of three-pronged approach to lowering its stake in the bailed-out bank. It has also been drip-feeding stock on to the market at a rate of about 1 percentage point a month since early 2022, and participating in share buy-backs by the lender. This has seen its stake fall from 71 per cent to just under 21 per cent in less than three years.
The newspaper cited unnamed sources as saying there was no window for Minister for Finance Jack Chambers to make a call on a block placing after AIB issues a trading statement on November 4th, if an election is called later in the month or early December.
Pfizer winds down dozen Irish subsidiaries
US pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer, which employs 5,000 in Ireland, has wound down a dozen Irish units with close to €600 million of assets as part of a restructuring, the Business Post reported.
The report highlighted that the overhaul comes as US politicians have put Pfizer under intense scrutiny of its historic use of the so-called double Irish tax strategy to minimise its tax bill. A previous government closed this regime to new entrants in 2014. It was phased out for existing schemes by the end of 2020.
It noted that the US senate committee on finance wrote to Pfizer earlier this year asking for details of its overseas operations in order to establish if the company had used “profit shifting techniques to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes on US prescription drugs”. The letter highlighted reports that Pfizer benefited from tax incentives in the Republic and referenced the double Irish scheme.
Banks warn of ‘cashless creep’ among businesses
The Business Post also reported that the Irish Banking Culture Board (IBCB) has warned the Government of how companies are increasingly charging customers more for services if they want to pay in cash – a phenomenon known as “cashless creep”.
The board said in a submission on the National Payments Strategy that digital dependency created a risk that “elements of our society will only further struggle to connect with future product /payment enhancements”, according to the report.
Digital-only payment runs the risk of excluding certain cohorts, said the board, which was set up by the banking sector to restore trust in the wake of the tracker-mortgage scandal. AIB and Bank of Ireland have faced criticism themselves over how their moves to close branches over the past decade and turn some locations cashless have contributed to the problem.
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