A round-up of today's other stories in brief.

Bank of Ireland raise 500m after institutional investor approach

BANK OF Ireland has completed a fundraising of €500 million through a private placing after it received an approach from an institutional investor.

The bank raised the money, which has a maturity of four years, at a rate of 0.35 per cent above Euribor, the rate at which banks lend money to each another. The fundraising was completed on Thursday and comes at a time when funding costs remain high.

The three-month Euribor rate has been rising steadily since January 23rd as the markets have remained largely closed due to the ongoing financial volatility. The rate closed up slightly yesterday at 4.73 per cent, or 73 basis points above the ECB rate of 4 per cent. This compares with a rate of 4.26 per cent at the start of August just before the credit crunch.

Bank of Ireland has raised more than €4 billion in private placings since September 2007.

Davy banking analyst Emer Lang said: "With long-term debt markets effectively closed to most banks due to prohibitive pricing, Bank of Ireland's ability to tap this market is a very positive development."

An Post fails on delivery targets

AN POST failed to meet mail delivery standards set out by communications reglator, Comreg, last year.

The regulator said that 97 per cent of all mail in the Republic was delivered within three working days in 2007, "a performance which continues to fall short of the 99.5 per cent target set by Comreg".

The firm's next-day delivery service improved by 5 per cent to 77 per cent, Comreg said.

Commission member Alex Chisholm said the improvement was welcome, but said that more work needs to be done by An Post to bring next-day delivery rates up to the standard of best practice internationally.

An Post chief executive Donal Connell said quality improvement is the primary focus for 2008.

Aminex surges on reserves data

AMINEX, THE oil and gas explorer rose to a two-month high in London trading after saying the value of its US reserves was about two-thirds higher than previously thought.

Aminex climbed 1.25p, or 5.2 per cent, to 25.5p, the highest since mid-January. The US reserves were valued at $143 million as of December 31st, an increase of about 66 per cent on an earlier estimate, the Dublin-based company said yesterday.

Rising oil prices and successful drilling contributed to the revision, Aminex said. The explorer's full-year loss widened to $3.3 million from $2.9 million in 2006 on higher administrative expenses, it said in a separate statement. - (Bloomberg)