Could The Square Town Centre finally have found a buyer?

Just two months after entering receivership, The Square Town Centre shopping complex appears to be in the sights of Eagle Street Partners, the property asset manager, Joe Brennan reveals. The value of any deal is unclear but a previous negotiation with a different party was believed to have hovered around the €125 million mark. It has come a long way since its 2007 valuation of about €640 million.

Cavan-based ATA has been bought by US peer Harvey Performance Company for an undisclosed sum, Ciarán Hancock reports. The precision industrial tools maker deal will include investments from both its Irish management, led by chief executive Peter Cosgrove, and their Harvey counterparts. Equity funding has been provided by Berkshire Partners, the US private equity group that owns Harvey.

Aon Ireland has launched a new aviation division in Ireland, incorporating specialist advice on insurance and risk management within the Ireland-based sector. Its new team will be the company’s first in Ireland, reports Colin Gleeson, with the company aiming to significantly grow its presence in the sector over the coming years. Aviation leasing and finance is a major part of Ireland’s economy, worth about €4.3 billion annually.

The ongoing pilots’ dispute at Aer Lingus – worrying for those planning to go on foreign holidays this summer – appears to be making its final approach towards settlement. Good news for many thousands of passengers, of little consolation for those who should have been aboard the near 600 flights cancelled as a result of a work-to-rule. Barry O’Halloran brings what many will hope to be the last of the details on the fallout, with pilots due to vote on a Labour Court brokered deal later this month.

The Central Bank is to establish a unit overseeing the vetting of candidates for senior roles in the financial sector, reports Joe Brennan. The move comes after a report on the current use of enforcement staff in complex cases it found had led to some confusion the process was akin to a “quasi-enforcement investigation”. Now, Central Bank governor Gabriel Makhlouf has said a new unit that will combine fitness and probity activities currently dispersed across the bank.

Critical infrastructure – transport, water and energy among others – must be maintained in a functioning society, but who pays for them and how? The ESB largely funds itself, via customer charges, but who can forget the painful, aborted efforts to apply that model to water? In his column, John FitzGerald considers the various options and points out that the State has been underinvesting in water and sewage systems for some time. What does it all mean for future provision?

You wait and wait, and then two pieces of good news arrive from CIÉ at the same time. The company posted its first surplus in seven years while simultaneously, reports Peter Flanagan, the semistate transport provider ferried a record number of passengers. It is a positive development as Ireland attempts to cut its transport carbon emissions. Revenue increased to €1.7 billion from €1.5 billion, driven largely by an increase in public service obligation income.

Businessman Denis O’Brien has sought High Court orders requiring Meta to provide him with information about those behind allegedly “false and malicious” online ads containing his name and image. Mr O’Brien has told the court that fake adverts were being used in “a clear campaign to promote dubious financial schemes including cryptocurrency investments”.

Two years into his stint as chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), Frank O’Connor will be kept busy for the rest of the year. In an interview with Joe Brennan, he explains how, including plans to distribute an initial €10 billion across two new sovereign wealth funds – the Future Ireland Fund (FIF) and Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund (ICNF). The larger of the two, the FIF targeting healthcare and pension costs, is likely to grow to €100 billion in size by 2035, according to estimates.

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