Seen&Heard: Web Summit founder said to have sought free transport for event

Web summit

Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave asked the Government

for free public transport for attendees at the conference, according to the Sunday Business Post.

The businessman had a series of contacts with the Government prior to the decision to move to Lisbon, during which he also sought a traffic plan that would see part of Dublin shut down for the duration of the event.

The Government told him it could not accede to his requests nor to his request that it in turn intervene on his behalf with Dublin City Council and a number of State agencies.

Soros divests

Billionaire investor George Soros has reduced his exposure to the Irish commercial property market just as experts warn about a severe shortage of office space in Dublin, the

Sunday Independent

reports.

The Hungarian-born businessman, considered one of the world’s shrewdest investors, sold off more than five million shares in Irish property investor Hibernia REIT on September 18th, recent filings show.

The sale reduced his stake to 7 per cent from 8 per cent and, based on the price at the time of his first investment at the company’s initial public offering, would have netted him a profit of approximately €1.5 million, the newspaper said.

Budget moves

The Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, is to improve access to reliefs on capital gains tax for entrepreneurs in the budget, according to the

Sunday Times

.

Currently, entrepreneurs can cut their CGT bill in half by rolling over their gains into a new business. However the relief can be claimed only after the sale of the second business.

Small Firms Association director general Patricia Callan has said the Minister had given a commitment to begin tackling the differential between Capital Gains Tax in the Republic and in the UK in the upcoming budget.

TSB review

Permanent TSB is to undertake a comprehensive review of its entire suite of mortgage products to investigate if the bank wrongly denied customers lower interest rates, according to the

Sunday Times

.

A senior bank executive will shortly be appointed to head the review and the bank will hire external advisers to assist.

O’Reilly job

Gavin O’Reilly, the former chief executive of Independent News & Media, has taken up a new position in Santa Monica as chief marketing officer with StarClub Inc, a social media broadcast network, according to a report in the

Sunday Business Post

.

Job losses

Digicel, the Denis O’Brien-owned telecoms group that is due to place shares on the New York Stock Exchange shortly, cut approximately 500 jobs this year, according to the

Sunday Business Post

.