Davy highlights €70m profit in sales pitch to potential suitors

Davy, the beleaguered stockbroking and wealth management firm, has highlighted that it made a €70 million profit last year, in a sales pitch being circulated to potential suitors, according to the Business Post.

The paper reported that this would have delivered about €25 million of bonuses for management and staff, as the firm is known to pay out about 40 per cent of its profits in variable pay.

Davy was put on the block last month in the wake of a scandal relating to a 2014 bond deal, which resulted in a Central Bank fine in early March.

Landlords giving rents deals to hide declines

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The Business Post also reported that large residential landlords are offering prospective tenants rent deals that are below the monthly rates listed on official leases.

These deals are being used to mask a decline in rents and allow the landlords to record higher prices with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), setting a higher base when determining future increases in rent-pressure zones where annual rises are capped at 4 per cent, it said.

Flutter investors urged to vote against CEO pay hike

Shareholders in Flutter Entertainment have been urged to vote against a pay award for chief executive Peter Jackson at the company's annual general meeting this week, according to the Sunday Times.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), which advises major institutional shareholders on corporate governance matters, has said that it has concerns about Mr Jackson’s 17.5 per cent basic pay hike last year, to £900,000 (€1.03 million). When bonuses, pensions and incentives were included, he earned £7.5 million. Mr Jackson received a further 3 per cent pay increase this year.

ISS said it was concerned that Flutter, the owner of the Paddy Power brand, did not take a phased approach to the pay hike.

Citigroup sees strong Irish hub growth

Citigroup expects to see strong growth in its Irish operation, home to 2,500 staff, as more business transfers from London due to Brexit, according to the chief executive of its Citibank Europe unit, based in Dublin.

Speaking in an interview with the Sunday Independent, the unit's chief executive Cecilia Ronan said that the balance sheet of the unit has grown in four years from €20 billion to €70 billion (aided by the group folding a UK unit into the Irish entity in 2016) and that it will continue to grow by a further 20 per cent.

N26 aims to exploit Irish banking gap

The Sunday Independent also reports that German digital bank N26 is planning to take advantage of the exits of Ulster Bank and KBC Bank Ireland from the Republic by offering new credit, loan and overdraft products.

The online bank also hopes to be able to offer mortgages in the State in the coming years, according to its chief operating officer Adrienne Gormley. The six-year old bank has almost 200,000 customers in Ireland, focusing, to date, on its core banking and payments services.