IRISH CONTINENTAL Group boss Eamonn Rothwell is pulling out all the stops to get his proposed joint takeover of the ferry group safely docked.
Rothwell was spotted at Liverpool’s Champions League game against Real Madrid at Anfield on Tuesday evening, hosting a party of guests that included bankers from AIB and Bank of Ireland.
These are two of the banks that Rothwell and Philip Lynch’s Moonduster consortium are hoping will back their bid for ICG, which is due to be lodged with the company on March 18th.
Rothwell didn’t walk alone - Lynch took a break from Cheltenham to attend the (mis)match. We’re presuming they didn’t travel by ferry.
Topaz chairman Neil O’Leary won’t perform the last rites on so-called breakfast roll man just yet but he admits that the filling station operator is focusing less on builders in high viz jackets and more on ladies wanting a skinny latte.
“We are having to adapt our breakfast offering to the new world,” O’Leary told me when discussing the company’s 2008 results. He said Topaz’s in-store food offering would be tweaked to appeal more to females.
“The sale of breakfast rolls is down probably in line with the decline in the construction industry. I won’t say breakfast roll man is dead but he’s not as high viz as he was.”
Irish book retailer Hughes Hughes narrowed its losses last year at its UK business, which operates two shops at London City Airport.
Accumulated losses fell to £76,433 in the year to March 2nd, 2008 from £99,196 a year earlier. This was before HH opened at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Sales rose to £1.8 million from £1.4 million and the retailer recorded a profit of £22,763 for the period. It owed just more than £1 million to “fellow subsidiaries” last year.
