A round-up of today's other business news in brief
Anglo chief invited before Dáil committee
Anglo Irish Bank executive chairman Donal O’Connor is to be invited to appear before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service, following a request by Labour Party finance spokeswoman Joan Burton. She said the committee should “quickly” issue an invitation to Mr O’Connor to answer questions about the bank.
Mr O’Connor took over as chairman following the resignation of Seán FitzPatrick last December after it emerged that Mr FitzPatrick concealed multimillion-euro director’s loans from the bank over an eight-year period.
Boost for shares in McInerney
Shares in housebuilder McInerney Holdings climbed 11 per cent after the company said it had reached a revised loan agreement with its banks in the UK. This follows an adjustment on the company’s loans with its banks in Ireland last year.
The new loan agreement with the UK banks has a covenant structure based on cash collection rather than earnings and is “appropriate for current market conditions”, the company said in a statement. The stock rose 1 cent to 10 cent, valuing the firm at €20.2 million, down 43 per cent this year.
US budget deficit hits record level
The United States posted a record $764.5 billion budget deficit for the first five months of fiscal 2009.
In February, the US government posted a deficit of $192.78 billion versus a deficit of $175.56 billion in February of last year.
The ballooning deficit could hamper efforts to jump-start the deteriorating economy. – (Reuters)
UK introduces quantitative easing
The British government today officially launched quantitative easing – effectively printing money – to pull the economy out of recession, and bought £2 billion of government bonds.
The central bank’s initial offer to non-bank institutions such as pension funds earlier yesterday met with no takers but it was able to fulfil its buying quota of £2 billion from banks in a second “reverse auction”. – (Reuters)
