Ghettoisation of a Nation | David McWilliams

Last Friday’s 9.55am train from Limerick pulled out on time, hurtling towards the ‘Junction’. As we sped past the waterlogged land on a beautiful morning, commuters on the train were going about their business as normal, reading about the treacherous Thierry Henry in the paper and chatting to friends on the phone.

As we arrived at Limerick Junction – a bleak enough place which hasn’t changed an iota since the early 1980s – a talkative grandmother cornered me to discuss the ‘‘situation’’. I regretted having the last pint in Limerick’s wonderful White House the night before. It probably wasn’t absolutely necessary.

The Cork train arrived just in time and I settled in, gazing out the window and thinking about how normal the country seemed, even though we are nearly bankrupt. Is this how it will be? Will we meander on as if nothing is happening, until we wake up and realise that the credit taps have been turned off?

When you look for real signs of the massive fall in our income, when you look for signs of the €20 billion-odd budget deficit, it is easy to convince yourself that these things are remote. But as you travel through the countryside ,you slowly begin to see the trauma. Every town the train passes through has the same ‘ghost estates’ on the outskirts – desperate places that are worth nothing, or next to nothing. How will these mortgages ever be paid?

At Thurles, the guy opposite me got chatting about how he’d lost his job in April. He was a young accountant, and he was going to Dublin to do his fourth interview since then. He had expected to bounce back in May or maybe June, but having scoured the papers since then, he was beginning to sink. He’d expected dozens of interviews and was confident that, having finished the first year of training, he’d be fine. But six months on, nothing was emerging. He was 24.

We nattered away until Heuston Station and, as we came closer and closer to Dublin, more and more ghost estates appeared.

From Kildare to Dublin, all we saw were rows and rows of empty housing estates, which were beginning to suffer from what has been called the ‘broken windows theory’.

This is when a neighbourhood begins to falter. A window is broken here and there, and soon the place starts disintegrating. If the windows are not fixed straight away, it sends out a signal that it is fine to break windows. Then the rot sets in.

In time, rather than being ‘worth something’, the houses begin to cost the owners. But the owners might have lost their jobs, so they don’t have the cash to fix up the house and, in short order, the places become quasi-ghettos. This has happened in many parts of the US. It could well happen here.

The key to the ghettoisation of our ghost estates will be the rate of unemployment.

If unemployment continues its upward trend, these places will be abandoned – and might ultimately be pulled down in a crime prevention move in the years ahead. The one thing that will drive crime in the years ahead is youth unemployment (but more on that later).This all sounds radical now, but the lesson from this crisis is that what sounded radical last year is now mainstream, and what sounded mainstream last year just sounds silly.

If we look at the chart from the US, we can see a clear correlation between the rise in unemployment and the number of properties that are being foreclosed on.

While there are outliers like Florida, where foreclosures seem to be running way ahead of unemployment – probably due to defaults on the huge amount of holiday homes in the state – the trend is pretty much as you’d expect.

In Ireland, we will see a similar pattern emerging. I expect unemployment to rise significantly next year as the financial industry contracts. This will mean large layoffs in our banks and insurance companies.

As well as this, the public sector will contract after the budget cuts, and retail employment will fall away after Christmas under the twin pressures of higher taxes and charges, and the strong euro driving thousands over the border to shop.

If we look at our unemployment figures, we see a potentially explosive rise in youth unemployment, which has not been properly documented yet. According to the CSO’s quarterly national household survey,12.1 per cent of our 15to 19-yearolds were unemployed in July 2007.This has jumped to a terrifying 36.4 per cent. Think about it – more than a third of our youth who are not in education are unemployed.

In the next age group, the 20to 24year-olds, the figures are equally frightening. When this government came into power, 8 per cent of this group were unemployed. This figure stands at 23 per cent, or close to one in four, today. In the key 25-34 age group – the ‘Pope’s Children Generation’ -13.4 per cent are out of work now, as opposed to 4.7 per cent the month that this government won the election.

The three-fold rise in unemployment in the 25-34 age group is why defaults will increase dramatically. These are the first time buyers who were shamefully cajoled into getting on the property ladder. Now they can’t repay their loans. Many thousands will simply walk away from their houses, hand in the keys and turn their backs on yesterday’s false dream.

When these houses become vacant – with no one to rent them, because you need jobs to have a healthy rental market – these estates will become classic breeding grounds for marginalisation. Some of the 35 per cent of those between 15 and 19 who are idle won’t be long finding these estates to hang out in. This is the way it goes.

The gardaí will eventually stop patrolling the estates, and the places will fall apart. Again, we have the evidence from US cities which, in the 1970s and 1980s, were allowed to deteriorate. The people who live in these estates will try to maintain standards, but they will eventually flee in the face of constant crime.

Many of the young men like the guy I met on the train will just head off if they can’t find jobs, and try their luck in the likes of London, Sydney or Boston. We are just witnessing the tip of the iceberg now.

We are living in extraordinary times, and we need extraordinary policy changes. Thus far, we are just seeing incrementalism because we have been lulled into a false sense of security by the calm before the storm. However, to get out of this mess, we will need to entertain extraordinary remedies. Otherwise, a country with close to 30 per cent of its youth under the age of 25 on the dole could become very, very angry.

Source: David McWilliams Blog

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Bank policies leaving us deflated | David McWilliams

Is the world heading for deflation or inflation? If you talk to serious investors and long-term followers of economic trends, this is the big question. As in the boom – when the major conundrum was whether we could continue borrowing and spending – the experts are divided again.

The mainstream view appears to be that the world will suffer from some – or a lot of – inflation in the coming years. This thinking stems from the fact that all the money printed by the world’s central banks in the past 12 months will find its way into the real economy, and be shunted on from stocks to property to general prices and, then, towages.

This is one of the reasons that the price of gold – a traditional hedge against inflation – is skyrocketing. Another compelling reason to fear inflation is that the world, or at least some of the world, wants it. Many suspect that inflation will rise in the years ahead because only via inflation will the US be able to inflate away its enormous debts. Consequently, investors believe that the dollar will continue to fall against most major currencies.

The general consensus is that, while prices won’t rise now or next year because economies are too weak, as economies recover afterwards inflation will return. But the general consensus has been wrong before. In fact, the consensus has been wide of the mark about practically everything in the past five years. So what if it is wrong again?

What if, rather than entering a world where prices rise all the time, we are about to enter a period where prices and wages fall for a long, long time?

The historical portents are disturbing. The world has experienced long bouts of deflation in the past. From 1876 to 1900 was one such period, and the resulting agricultural unemployment in Ireland led to a huge upswing in emigration to the US in the final three decades of the 19th century. We had another long period from 1929 to 1939,when deflation was again the norm. Japan had a dreadful experience with deflation in the 1990s.Could this happen again?

A crucial determining factor in whether we will get global deflation or inflation in the years ahead will be the banks. (In Ireland, deflation is highly likely, as is the nationalisation of the banks, but more on that later.) If banks lend out all the money they are getting from the central banks there will be inflation, if they don’t there will be deflation. It is really that simple.

In monetary economics, there is a thing called the ‘multiplier’. This measures how many times a single euro lent out by the banks is lent and lent again. Think about the boom. If house prices went up, your net worth also went up – and this made you feel wealthy.

Therefore, you felt comfortable borrowing against this new wealth, and the bank, because it had the security of your house, which were rising in value, felt comfortable lending against it.

As long as prices were rising, you didn’t care about savings, so you spent and borrowed more and the bank lent more.

This is the multiplier effect, where one upward movement in prices and borrowing reinforces the logic of the boom and begets more upward movements in prices and borrowings and so on.

This created the bubble which has now well and truly burst, leading to the total destruction of the banks’ balance sheets.

Then the state has a choice: either it can let the banks go and create new ones, or it can save the banks and inject enough new cash to allow the banks to lend again.

But what if the banks have a different objective to the government? Yes, the banks want the cash, but not necessarily to lend out to you and me (who might not want to borrow anyway). If the banks stopped lending out cash and used the cheap central bank money they were getting to invest somewhere else, then we would have a major problem.

Let’s say that the banks use the money they are getting at 1 per cent from the European Central Bank (ECB) to buy government bonds which are yielding 5.7 per cent in Ireland and 3 per cent elsewhere, in order to rebuild their balance sheets and give the money back to shareholders. Now all the new money is stuck and doesn’t leave the banks, there is no multiplier and, what’s worse, if the people see just how much debt is costing them, they will stop borrowing and start saving.

Already, we can see that people’s attitude to debt has changed. All around the world, debt and credit (which had been expanding progressively since the 1980s) has become, not only unfashionable, but reprehensible. People want to pay off debts when they can and save more.

This causes prices to fall. And people – seeing prices falling – then expect this to continue. If you think you are going to get a bargain by postponing spending today and waiting for prices to fall even more tomorrow, deflation takes hold. This trend will be reinforced if the banks use the cheap cash they have been given to buy risk-free, high-yielding government bonds, since they will not put money into the economy.

Therefore, the very act of saving the bad banks fuels deflation and leads to less, not more, credit in the system. We get zombie banks presiding over zombie economies.

This is a possibility around the world and, as such, suggests that the recent stock market rally – one of the most dramatic in history – as well as the surge in the price of gold, could well reverse themselves. Such a reversal would usher in stage two of the crisis.

In Ireland, things are unfortunately more clear-cut. Such an outcome is almost guaranteed. The National Asset management Agency (Nama) will not lead to any resumption of credit because the banks are traumatised and have better things to be doing with the ECB’s largesse than lending it out to a country where prices fell 6 per cent year-on-year in October; and the market expects Nama Mark Two.

Remember Nama covers €77 billion of a total Irish bank lending book of €400 billion. Already the valuations for Nama are coming in much lower than the government’s estimates (surprise, surprise).When bad debts and defaults spread to the rest of the crocked €400 billion loan book, the banks will be submerged – and will have to be taken into public ownership because no private investor will give them a cent. They will become zombie banks owned by a zombie government.

The only way we can get credit flowing again is through a new bank or a system of new banks in Ireland. With this now ruled out, because our government refuses to admit what a Leaving Cert economics student can see, the spectre of deflation stalks the land.

Source: David McWilliams Website

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Nanotech is a €30-billion opportunity for Irish economy | Silicon Republic

Date Published 12/11/2009

Nanotechnology, the science of ultra micro electronics and pharmaceuticals, has the potential to be a major engine of growth in the Irish economy and exports could be doubled from €15 billion today to €30 billion by 2015, Tanaiste Mary Coughlan TD said today.


Launching Nanoweek, which will run from 30 November to 4 December, the Tanaiste said Ireland has more than 500 companies, both multinational and indigenous, employing about 130,000 people in the ICT, medical devices and biopharmaceutical sectors.

These companies utilise nanotechnology for continued product innovation and competitiveness. Of €150 billion in goods and services exported by Ireland in 2008, it is estimated 10pc were enabled by nanoscience and related nanotechnologies.

Focus may mean growth

By focusing on the area of nanotechnology there is the potential to grow this figure to 20pc by 2015. “Nanotechnology is contributing to product innovation in virtually every field of manufactured goods, enabling nearly $250 billion in products in 2008, on track to exceed $3 trillion in 2015,” said Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, executive director of CRANN, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded Centre for Science and Engineering Technology.

The area of nanoscience has grown consistently in Ireland over the past number of years and the country has developed a global reputation for leadership in nanoscience, with its researchers ranked sixth globally for the quality of their research output.

There is a potential to make nanoscience a key pillar of the Smart Economy strategy, using it as a magnet both to attract FDI as well as supporting indigenous companies who are developing IP in the area for global export.

“Nanoscience has the ability to be a significant contributor to Ireland’s efforts to return to global competitiveness in industries such as ICT, biomedical and pharmaceutical,” said Jim O’Hara, general manager of Intel Ireland.

“There is an opportunity for us to underpin our work in these areas internationally by nurturing and exploiting our expertise in nanoscience. The future of many of our largest industries depends on innovations and developments in the area of nanotechnology. Ireland has the opportunity now, by investing wisely in these areas, to dramatically increase the economic impact of nanoscience.

“There are a number of Intel researchers in residence at CRANN and at the Tyndall National Institute. The reason we are doing this is because the products Intel Ireland will manufacture in 10 years' time will be based on fundamental research carried out today.

“Intel is only one company of many engaged in this kind of work and Ireland must build on its leadership in nanoscience if it is going to continue to attract, retain and grow these kinds of industries in Ireland.”

About Nanoweek

Nanoweek will include a range of events to highlight how critical nanoscience is and will be for the future success of the Irish economy.

Nanoweek is an initiative of The Nanoscience Network, which combines two major consortiums: INSPIRE, funded by the HEA, is comprised of internationally leading researchers across 10 third-level institutions and co-ordinated by CRANN (TCD).

The recently announced Competence Centre for Applied Nanotechnology (CCAN), funded by Enterprise Ireland and the Industrial Development Agency, includes both leading multi-national companies such as Intel, Analog Devices and Seagate, and indigenous Irish companies such as Creganna, Aerogen, Audit Diagnostics and Proxybiomedical.

The CCAN, hosted by the Tyndall National Institute at UCC and CRANN, together with INSPIRE, represents an impressive nano-ecosystem for Ireland.

Off to schools

In addition, a schools programme will take place with members of the Nanoscience Network visiting schools in Cork, Limerick, Dublin and Galway to introduce secondary-school students to nanotechnology.

“Ireland is well on track to establish itself as a global centre of excellence for nano research and to take a significant slice of that global business,” explained O’Brien.

“To achieve this, we must continue to invest in research so that we can further develop valuable synergies between universities and industry to ensure that we commercialise the ground-breaking research being undertaken at the moment.

“There are already many great examples of partnerships between academia and multinational and indigenous companies to create viable commercial enterprises in nanotechnology. The challenge is to ensure that we maintain the momentum already created through Government and industry funding so that we establish and cement our reputation as a global player in this vital area,” O’Brien said.


By John Kennedy, Silicon Republic Website


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Worst-case scenario looms | David McWilliams

Which one of the two big banks will be nationalised first? This sounds fanciful, but events in the last few days suggest that the perception of the Irish banks has changed profoundly – for the worse – and nationalisation is on the cards. This means we now face the possibility that we will have the guarantee, Nama and the nationalisation of one of the big two banks all at once.

In a sense, to use EU parlance, we will have a triple-lock tying the Irish people to the Irish banks for years to come. We run the risk that Ireland will come to be regarded – for future students of finance and economics – as a text-book case of how not to do things in a crisis. I hope this does not turn out to be the case, but the recent signs from our close neighbours and the reaction of the markets are not good.

The dramatic change in outlook for the banks has been triggered by the EU. The European Commission is rightly worried about the abuse of its competition rules, which occurred last year when governments around Europe injected money into banks. For the single market to work properly, the EU has to make sure that national banks don’t get an unfair advantage over foreign banks. If national banks were favoured by national governments, this would be an unfair advantage over foreign competitors and would constitute an abuse of the single market.

This means that, if Bank of Ireland (BoI) and AIB are getting Irish government money to stay afloat, while the likes of, let’s say, Rabobank (to take just an example),which trades in Ireland, is not getting Irish government help, then EU competition laws rightly suggest that this is an abuse of the level playing field of competition.

Until recently, the EU was prepared to take a softly, softly approach because of the depth of the financial crisis, but all that has changed. Since April, bank shares across Europe have rallied and the EU has now decided that it is time for the banks to pay back the money they owe to their governments. So far, national governments have been reluctant to force their banks to act, so the EU has decided to do the governments’ job for them.

In short, the EU doesn’t trust the banks to act, nor does it trust the national governments to force them. If the EU loses this battle, it loses Europe’s internal market, which it has been creating since 1992.The stakes are huge.

Neelie Kroes, the EU’s competition commissioner, moved first against the Dutch bank ING. The Commission has instructed ING to sell assets to get the cash to pay back the government. The EU instructed ING to break itself up, separate the bank from the life assurance subsidiary that it owned, sell the life assurance part and give the cash back.

This move caused bank shares around Europe to fall, as the implication is that the banks will no longer get subsidies. This means that we can’t stay in the ‘half-way house’ of part private/part public banks that emerged in the crisis. The Commission has decreed that either the banks are private companies, in which case they have to pay the money back, or they are fully nationalised. The ramifications of this move – which was always going to come – are enormous.

Last week, the EU focused on the British banks, with Kroes turning on the wounded giant RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland).The British government, realising that RBS would not be able to raise new capital on the market, increased its stake in RBS from 70 per cent to 84 per cent. When a government owns 84 per cent of a bank, it might as well own the lot. No one in the private sector is prepared to invest in RBS, so that the government has become ‘‘the owner of last resort’’ in forced nationalisation.

What will happen when Kroes turns her attention to Ireland? She will look at Nama as a huge state aid – which it is. She will look at the government’s minority stakes in the banks as state aids -which they are – and she will ask, what are we going to do next? How are our banks going to pay back the money so that Ireland does not abuse the EU’s free and fair competition laws?

During the summer, and even up to mid October, there was a chance that the banks, protected by Nama, could have gone out to the markets and raised equity.

But now that window seems to be shut. The markets are closed.

It didn’t help that management of the banks suggested that Nama was a bad deal for them, because by doing this, they looked out of touch. Even though the dogs in the street realise that Nama will overpay for assets, the banks suggested that the property assets on their balance sheets were worth more than the government was prepared to pay. This reaction signalled to the markets that bank managements – more or less the same guys who got the banks into the mess – have not woken up to the severity of the slump. Obviously, their shares fell dramatically as a result.

As the equity of the banks diminishes, the big question is: where will the Irish banks get money to ensure that their crucial capital adequacy ratios do not get breached again?With loans-to-deposit ratios still over 150 per cent,with the economy stalling and precious few new loans made, the banks can’t generate any profits. If you doubt this, just look at Bank of Ireland’s reported loss of nearly €1 billion this week.

So where will the money come from? The EU will now instruct AIB to sell its non-core assets, such as the banks in Poland and the US. Likewise Bank of Ireland, in order to pay back the government. But the banks will need more cash and, if they can’t raise it on the markets, the government will have to inject money into them. Unlike last year, the EU will not be keen to allow the states to inject capital without full nationalisation because this is simply trying to pull the wool over the Commissioner’s eyes. So where does that leave us?

It leaves us facing the nationalisation of one or both of the big banks. The government is set against this, but the iron laws of the market dictate that, when the banks need new money and no one else is prepared to give it, the government takes up the slack.

If I were a betting man, I’d say one of the big banks will be fully nationalised early next year. This would mean that, rather than the guarantee – which, on its own, was intended to be used to deal with the creditors in an orderly fashion and sell one of the big banks for a song to an international bank – we will get the triple lock. The triple lock is the guarantee, Nama and nationalisation. This is probably the worse combination of all.

But that’s what you get for dithering for over a year while the rest of the world gets on with sorting out their mess.

Source: David McWilliams Blog

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Rich get richer as rest of us pay for their mistakes | David McWilliams

McDonald’s pulled out of Iceland yesterday. This is an enormous moment because it is the first time the McDonald’s machine has admitted defeat in a modern, sophisticated country. A few years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

In the 1990s, when globalisation was in its pomp, a popular expression — coined by Tom Friedman, the ‘New York Times’ columnist — stated that “no two countries with McDonald’s have ever gone to war with each other”. The expression was supposed to mean that globalisation was good for all of us because it civilised us and, what better expression of globalisation than McDonald’s?

Once a McDonald’s opened up in a country, the assumption was that lots of other modern things were going on, such as tolerance and greater interaction with the rest of the world.

It is more than ironic, therefore, that the first country that McDonald’s should pull out of is a country with no army. Iceland contracted out its defence to the US in 1951. The Icelanders concluded that they had no enemies; no one really had any urge to invade them, so why have an army?

McDonald’s announced that it couldn’t make any money because, since the devaluation of the Kroner, the Icelanders have turned back to their local fish and local meats.

McDonald’s, which imports most of its ingredients for its Big Macs, couldn’t survive. It would have to put the price of the Big Mac up too much and the locals weren’t prepared to buy at that price, particularly when local food was much cheaper.

Last March, a restaurateur in Reykjavik predicted to me that this would happen. She ran a fast food fish restaurant down on the docks where huge trawlers came in with their catches. Her restaurant was cheap, her fish was fresh, just out of the freezing North Atlantic and her trade — all locals — was brisk. She said that the Icelanders would abandon the expensive imported food that had become commonplace in the boom, along with the swanky restaurants.

With the currency devalued, it would make no sense to pay through the nose for imported food when the local farming and fishing sectors were offering good food for half nothing. She said that the first industries to boom after the fall in the currency were local agriculture and tourism and as they recovered so, too, would the rest of the country.

This is what is happening and, as she succinctly put it to me, Iceland would, in the future, have “more fishermen and less bankers” and they’d start again. She also made the point that with the worldwide demand for food rising exponentially, fishermen would be better paid than bankers in the years ahead. It was an interesting point.

Five months ago, I visited Iceland to see for myself what was happening. I wanted to see what it felt like to live in a “basket case” economy. Part of the documentary ‘Addicted to Money’ was made in Iceland and I spent a week there chatting to all sorts of people. Back then, it was clear that a new Iceland was emerging where the people — both politicians and bankers — who had mortgaged the country had been kicked out. There was no rescue scheme like NAMA. The Icelanders took their medicine straight away and allowed their currency to fall dramatically. This has been evidently painful for many but as a local policeman suggested to me, “So what if we have fewer Range Rovers and less camembert?”

The economy is now recovering quickly, much more quickly than Ireland. And the devalued currency has a lot to do with that because with a devalued currency local industries can export much more easily and large foreign outfits like McDonald’s are sent packing. In a short period Iceland’s huge trade deficit disappeared. Contrast this with what is happening here.

Back home, last Thursday morning I made a speech in the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin. In the room next to me, at precisely the same time, Brian Lenihan was addressing the private clients of Goodbody Stockbrokers. By all accounts he spoke well and reassured the private clients that there would be no new taxes — and for that they were clearly grateful. The minister is a good public speaker and I am not surprised that the clients of the stockbroker were happy that they wouldn’t be asked to share too much of the pain.

In the foyer I bumped into a man who imports cars. I asked how his business was doing and he said it was tough but the rising euro was working wonders, because with sterling so cheap he could get great bargains in England and offer luxury BMWs at a much reduced price to those people who still had cash.

This sums up our dilemma. Our currency is wildly overvalued, so some can still spend frivolously on BMWs and think they are getting good value, yet we can’t kick-start our local industries because they can’t compete with our biggest neighbour. So, the car importer stays in business but the small exporter goes out of business.

What type of future is envisaged by the people who make our economic policy and hold the reins of power? Is it one where we become a client state of the ECB, with our grubby hands out for a dig out from Europe via silly class rescue schemes like NAMA? Is it a future where the “protection of the euro” — as the minister constantly refers to it — leaves us enfeebled, with the economic marrow of the country hollowed out by a currency that has risen by 53pc against sterling and a similar amount against the dollar in 10 years?

But as I left the Four Seasons, it struck me. As always in Ireland, economic policy is framed by people who have a stake in society — the insiders. In contrast, the outsiders — people whose toehold in the country is fragile — are sacrificed. The euro protects those who already have wealth by securing their wealth in a hard currency that the economy can’t afford; it is just another mechanism to protect the insiders at the expense of the outsiders.

If you look at what our country does in the face of a crisis, whether it was the 1950s economic crisis or the 1980s emigration fiasco, the pattern is always the same. Instead of paying for the mess they have made, the insiders emerge from the crisis stronger and with a tighter grip on power. The outsiders always suffer. So while in the rest of the world, in countries like Iceland, a crisis causes dramatic change and the insiders pay for their mistakes, here in Ireland the crisis only strengthens the status quo — a status quo, which created the problem in the first place.

Will we ever learn?

Source: David McWilliams Website Blog 

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SAP deepens its commitment to Ireland | Jobs Investment

SAP enters into further 10 year lease at Citywest in Dublin and makes €3 million investment in refitting. SAP also expects approximate €1 billion spend in Ireland over 10 years

Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan TD, today Thursday October 29th, welcomed the announcement by SAP AG that it has entered into a further 10 year lease of its Citywest Business Park premises in Dublin, which it is anticipated will result in an approximate €1 billion overall spend in Ireland over the next 10 years by the company and a €3 million investment for a refitting out of the facility. SAP has been supported by the Government through IDA Ireland since its establishment in Dublin in 1997. “This decision by SAP is a substantial deepening of its commitment to Ireland for the next 10 years and will further embed its existing operations in Dublin and Galway and consolidate the 900 plus jobs involved,” said the Minister.

Minister Lenihan was speaking at a meeting with Mr. Werner Brandt, Member of the Executive Board of SAP AG, and Global Chief Financial Officer, who is visiting Ireland for meetings with the Irish Government, customers of SAP and employees from SAP’s Dublin and Galway offices. Mr. Brandt, speaking in Dublin, said “the expected €1 billion overall spend in Ireland over the next 10 years clearly demonstrates SAP’s view that Ireland is very well positioned to deliver on SAP’s purpose and ambition.” Mr. Brandt was outlining the depth of SAP’s ongoing commitment to Ireland and the importance Ireland plays in SAP’s location strategy. Approval by the Board of SAP AG of the €3 million investment for the refitting of the facility will enable the final phase of integrating of the Business Objects employees into SAP, following SAP’s acquisition of the company in 2008.

SAP Business Objects’ 900 employees in Dublin and Galway have a broad range of skills including technical support, research and development, technical writing, telesales, customer interaction and partner management. The employees come from 35 different countries and speak 27 languages. Since its establishment in Ireland 1997, SAP Business Objects, with the assistance of IDA Ireland, has continuously added lines of business spanning technological, business sector and regional areas of responsibility. This has enabled employees to further their careers to areas including research and development and systems architecture, as well as sales and consulting. SAP in Ireland also supports and engages with more than 300 customers whose businesses are run on SAP solutions.

Barry O’ Leary, CEO of IDA Ireland, welcoming SAP’s decision, said “The decision to renew its lease for 10 years is a testament to the confidence SAP has in its Irish employees and their knowledge, technical expertise, multi-lingual abilities, flexible ‘can do’ attitude and efficiency. It is also an excellent further endorsement of Ireland’s proven ability to satisfy the complex needs of highly inventive, technologically advanced global companies and the multi-lingual customer support activities they require. IDA has a long and good relationship with SAP and I wish the Irish management and workforce the very best in the further development of its Irish operations.”Mr. Brandt said “SAP believes that in the market conditions that Ireland faces currently, it is essential for businesses and institutions to perform at a significantly higher level of efficiency and effectiveness. This will allow our customers to trade agilely through the current conditions and more importantly, to lead their businesses through competitive advantage into the upturn.”

Regarding SAP’s strategy Mr. Brandt continued “We called on businesses worldwide to see clearly, think clearly and act clearly in order to thrive in the current global economic crisis. I see executives focusing on making their organizations more efficient, flexible and transparent. What we are seeing is a growing and lasting need for clarity and insight. Doing business within global networks has brought greater complexity and risk into the game. Executives must have visibility into every aspect of their business and network to act effectively and decisively. Almost all employees in Ireland have direct Customer contact. Through their knowledge and communications skills they constantly provide solutions, clarity and understanding to our Customer base."

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 86,000 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." For more information, visit

Source: IDA Ireland

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Facebook opens new EMEA Headquarters in Dublin | Jobs Announcement

Press Release: 27/10/09

Dublin, Ireland: Facebook and Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Trade & Employment, Mary Coughlan TD today announced that the company plans to more than double the size of its operation at the official opening of Facebook’s new EMEA headquarters in Dublin.

Facebook’s European operations have been headquartered in Dublin since October 2008 and the office has grown to more than 70 employees.  Facebook is increasing its investment in order to scale its operations across the EMEA region and support its users and advertisers as the company grows.  The company expects to double the size of its operations within the next year and is hiring across several functions including user operations, online operations, advertising sales, advertising campaign delivery, finance and engineering.  Job applications can be accessed at www.facebook.com/jobs

The Tanáiste, who officially opened Facebook’s new EMEA headquarters on Hanover Quay said, “I am delighted to announce Facebook will grow its international operations, increasing its commitment to Ireland. This is an exciting investment for our country, hosting the leader in social networking. Facebook has fast become a worldwide name, and it is a fabulous endorsement that Ireland can satisfy the needs of such highly innovative and technologically advanced companies as they make critical investments. With our highly skilled workforce, we look forward to continuing to provide the talent and resources to help Facebook grow as a global leader.”

Speaking at the announcement, Colm Long, Director, Online Operations, Facebook said:  “With over 300 million users worldwide, we are making further investments in our EMEA headquarters in Dublin to provide our users and advertisers with the very best support and experience possible.  The skilled talent pool available to us in Ireland has helped us match the growing needs of our users and advertisers across the EMEA region”.

Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman added, “Today’s announcement builds on our experience in Ireland over the past year and the success of our EMEA business. Our new EMEA headquarters will enable us to better address the often complex advertising, cultural and lingual elements of our global business.”

Barry O’Leary, CEO IDA Ireland added, “Ireland has always been attractive to innovative global leaders and I’m delighted that a leading international brand name like Facebook has chosen to invest further. This is an endorsement of the advantages Ireland continues to offer to global multinational companies and highlights the skills and competencies of the Irish to deliver competitive advantages in creative ways.”

Millions of people around the world use Facebook everyday to communicate more easily and share information with friends, family and coworkers. Already in Ireland there are over 1 million users, and more than 300 million users around the world.

About Facebook
Founded in February 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Facebook is a privately-held company and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Source: IDA Ireland

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ENTREPRENEUR BUSINESS EVENT | Greenhouse Business Camp (Dublin)

The "Greenhouse Business Camp '09" is taking place in Dublin City (Ireland) on the 5th of December.

Location:


O'Reilly Building,
Trinity College Dublin Campus,
Dublin 1,
Ireland.

The Greengouse Business Camp is a FREE event for new and experienced entrepreneurs who wish to network and learn from other entrepreneurs experiences.

The event will offer an opportunity for people from all walks of (business) life to meet up and discuss the best ways of how to grow, market and sustain their businesses in todays tough economical climate.

On the day there will be talks and workshops from seasoned Entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalist's and Private Sector Development Bodies and much more!

For more information and to register your attendence, please visit the Greenhouse Business Camp '09 website for further details.

See you there!

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We are limbering up for a scrap with ourselves | David McWilliams

As the 10.50 train from Galway to Dublin pulls out of a rainy Tullamore, it is difficult not to conclude that the country is in a garrulous and angry mood. My neighbour — a middle-aged woman with grown-up children — has just got off but she was livid, venting spleen since we left the fields of Athenry.

Her predicament is not unfamiliar. Her children are in negative equity. She focused on a book I had published two years ago called ‘The Generation Game’ which foretold of a generation — the “Juggler Generation” — people in their 20s and 30s who would be the main victims of the coming housing bust, which had yet to materialise.

What I had failed to appreciate fully back then is just how impossible it is to separate the generations in Ireland. We are all in this together now. When one generation loses out, so too do all the members of their family, usually, beginning with the person who worries most about everything, the Mammy.

This was not the first such experience of people’s anger I have had in the past 48 hours. On Sunday night, I got the train to Cork and had a similar experience and on Monday, after working in Cork in the morning, I hopped on the City Link bus to Galway. There is no train from Cork to Galway — a point that the American opposite me on the Dublin-Galway train couldn’t get her head around.

But not to worry because the bus is a fine and cheap way to travel between Cork and Galway, equipped with WiFi and comfy seats and the most jovial driver I’ve had the pleasure of meeting for a while. The bus is full of pensioners, students and Poles. By the time the 2pm City Link to Galway was in Mallow, a few students had struck up a chat with me. We talked about all sorts, the world, Ireland, the economy and of course, what they were going to do when they left UCG.

They too were angry and like the mother on the train, they were angry in a misdirected way. They knew something was wrong and they feared for the future, but they didn’t quite know who was responsible. Who was to blame? Was it the banks, the politicians, the landlords, the builders, the public sector, the private sector, the immigrants?

On Monday night, the television similarly featured people who thought they had been had. In reality, at the root of a lot of this anger lies personal responsibility because no one forced anyone to do anything. But that said, I do share sympathy for people who got into the property market late, not least because the State did everything in its power, bar coercion, to push people onto the ladder. In this lamentable venture, our politicians were aiding their friends in the banks who we are now bailing out. The simple circularity of this argument is what pisses the average person off more than anything else.

The mother on the train asked me why, if there was a NAMA for the banks, couldn’t there be a NAMA for the people? Fair question and in financial terms there seems to be no reason to favour one sector over another. In fact, if you are going to borrow money to bail out rich bank creditors, why not bail out out struggling bank debtors?

This column argued last year that once you start deviating from the basic capitalist principle of risk and return by protecting bank creditors from the stupidity of their own decisions, via NAMA, then it is hard to know where to stop. If the bond investors who took a punt on AIB or BoI did so for precisely the same reasons as the first-time buyer, should they not be treated equally? Both the creditors and the first-time buyers assessed the information they had and made a financial decision which turned out to be catastrophic.

The professional bond investors believed the hype that the Irish banks could grow and grow based on a rocketing housing market and the first-time buyer believed the hype that the housing market would continue to grow and grow based on the rocketing banking sector. The creditors and the first-time buyers are different sides of the same coin. Yet the State has decided to bail out one side and in so doing, given the other side a legitimate cause for anger, which is festering contagiously.

The Government seems to think that if it shafts the bank creditors they won’t be around next time when the State comes looking for money. The State knows that the citizens have nowhere to go, so if they shaft us now, we’ll still be around next time. It is a simple, if devious calculation but in so doing, our Government has turned the iron rule of capitalism on its head and also undermined its own political legitimacy.

The idea that bond markets would close in the case of a deal with a bank’s creditors is a dreadful misunderstanding of the way the financial markets work. Financial markets are always forward looking which is why some of the investors buying Bank of Ireland stock today are the same people who lost their shirts on the same stock last year.

In contrast to the financial markets, which are forward looking, the electorate is backward looking. We have memories and while we can’t disappear like bond creditors, we can exercise a democratic mandate.

This is where this misdirected anger on the bus, on the train and in the bar is worrying. Because the Government, through farces like NAMA, is destroying the credibility of all party politics as we know it. It is destroying the centre.

With so many people, rightly or wrongly, feeling betrayed and hard done by, the chances of a lurch in politics cannot be ruled out. Thus far, we have been extremely tolerant, some might say even docile in the face of the unraveling of our economy. Will this last?

Who is to say a messianic leader will not emerge in the next year or so to harness all this anger?

At the moment the false dichotomy of “public versus private sector” is being exploited by all sides. But there are no distinct lines in Ireland. Most families are made up of gardai and nurses as well as small business people and employees of large private sector companies. It’s not as easy as one side against each other. That’s not how this country works. So, in truth, we are limbering up for a monumental scrap with ourselves.

As the anger mounts and the body politic atrophies, the only question, as Yeats posed 100 years ago, is whether the centre can hold?

Source: David McWilliams Blog

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JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS | Citrix Systems International, GMbH, Ireland, is Hiring

Citrix Systems Ireland, the headquarters of the Customer Technical Support for Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA), announced today that it is increasing its workforce by over 20 full time employees.

Over the last three years the company has grown steadily and is positioning itself to continue being best of breed in the Technical Support area by working closely with customers to add value and by employing the best talent available. In 2007 Citrix Customer Technical Support employed almost 70 people. Since then the total headcount figure has risen year on year with this next hiring round increasing the number to close to 120 in a variety of roles within the company.

John Kelly, Director of Technical Support, EMEA, said at the announcement today that, “because of the rate of adoption of Citrix’ products, including server and desktop virtualisation technologies, as well as Citrix’ rapid growth in the networking market, the services side of the business also continues to grow. To support the overall business we have to scale up our operation, not just in the traditional Technical Support areas, but significantly in engineering. In fact the Irish operation now has approval to expand its activities into software engineering areas such as code modification in support of delivering solutions to our customers. These activities require a higher level of technical skills and add increased value for our EMEA customers as it will enable us to solve any problems faster, as well as providing exciting career opportunities for our Technical Engineers.”

“We are therefore seeking the best technical talent we can find and we have a number of new key roles we need to fill immediately including Technical Support engineers, Escalation Engineers as well as Technical Relationship Managers to manage our technical relationships with our large Enterprise customers across EMEA. We are also keen to hear from engineers with software development skills and an interest in working with the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure,” Kelly added.

According to Kelly a key strategic success factor in growing the Citrix business in Ireland is the availability of talent with the required skills or with the appropriate education on which to build the required skills. The Dublin operation has forged links with some of the Universities and third level colleges and sees this as a vital component to continue Ireland’s growth as a knowledge based economy. Other success factors, particularly for Citrix’ EMEA Technical Support is Ireland’s inclusion as a proactive and participating member of the EU. As a team employing a diverse workforce, serving predominantly an EU customer base, this operation has a clear focus on Europe. “The continued investment that results in job creation is built on our close alignment and integral part of Citrix’ European business,” Kelly concluded.

Commenting on the announcement by Citrix, Barry O’Leary, CEO, IDA Ireland said, ‘I am delighted to welcome the expansion of Citrix’ EMEA operation in Ireland. Citrix has a strong presence here for the last ten years and the addition of a new business function demonstrates Ireland’s ability to compete for and win new, high value technology functions. We look forward to building on our already established relationship with Citrix as this new business mandate evolves and grows.’

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About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is a leading provider of virtualization, networking and cloud computing solutions for more than 230,000 organizations worldwide. Its Citrix Delivery Center™, Citrix Cloud Center™ (C3) and Citrix Online product families radically simplify computing for millions of users, delivering desktops and applications as an on-demand service to any user, in any location on any device. Citrix customers include the world’s largest Internet companies, 99 percent of Fortune Global 500 enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers worldwide. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies worldwide in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1989, annual revenue in 2008 was $1.6 billion.

Source: IDA Press Release

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In today's downturned economy where so many people are losing their jobs each week, competition for open vacancies is now higher than ever.

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IBM Expands Analytics and Risk Management Capability in Ireland

Ireland Collaboratory to include Business Risk Analysis Research

IDA Press Release
Date: 16/10/2009

Today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Ireland’s Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, TD, announced a new Risk Management Analytics research collaboration, joining IBM’s worldwide network of advanced analytic centres in the U.S., Germany and UK. This investment is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland.

As part of the initiative, IBM is utilising the vast expertise of its Research labs – harnessing next generation analytics and intelligent software – to develop enhanced methods and tools that will help companies in industries such as manufacturing, pharmaceutical, healthcare, and government to better manage risk.

Through its established collaboratory in Ireland, IBM will join together with the University College Cork, IRCSET, Science Foundation Ireland, and IBM Research scientists in Zurich, Switzerland and Yorktown Heights, NY, USA on the development of these advanced risk analytics technologies.

“This collaboration provides IBM the opportunity to explore exciting new areas of risk modelling and management, incorporating new techniques in information extraction, visualisation, and optimisation that will enable businesses to more effectively manage their operations in the face of uncertainty," said Brenda Dietrich Vice President of Business Analytics and Math Sciences at IBM Research and an IBM Research Fellow. "Ireland's track record, combined with its ongoing research and development approach to new business creation, makes it an ideal location for the Risk Management Analytics research."

The primary research will be in the areas of risk information extraction and quantification based on both structured and unstructured data as well as expert opinion, efficient risk-based optimisation techniques, and ways to communicate and interact with risk information. Such techniques can be used, for example, to assess and plan for potential supplier or labour disruptions, determine optimal policies for drug administration across patients, or make smarter investments in energy sources.

Commenting on the announcement, Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan TD said, ‘This further investment by IBM, one of Ireland’s largest employers, is sincerely welcomed following on from the establishment of the company’s Green Data Centre and Exascale projects. This announcement is particularly poignant given this is Maths Week Ireland which aims to raise awareness, appreciation and understanding of maths. The formation of this maths focused research team demonstrates at the highest level the importance of mathematics to the Irish economy and mirrors the Government’s focus on providing investors to Ireland with the highest-level mathematics graduates.’

‘Research and Development is vital to the growth of Ireland’s knowledge economy and this project in particular is vital to the strategic development of IBM on a global scale. Ireland has a long-standing and strong relationship with IBM and with the support of the Irish Government we look forward to building further on this into the future,’ the Minister concluded.

IBM collaboratory

An IBM collaboratory is a laboratory where IBM Researchers co-locate with a university, government, or commercial partner to share skills, assets, and resources to achieve a common research goal.

In November 2008 IBM established a Research collaboratory in Ireland, researchers are already at work with government and academic leaders to develop exascale systems that will help solve the complex business and scientific problems of the future.

Source: IDA Ireland

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JOB OPPORTUNITY | SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEERING TECHNICAL CONSULTANT | NEW YORK

IT Consultancy OR Banking Back Ground Required (Software Engineering Environment)

Based in New York City (Including regular travel to London and Cayman Islands)

Direct Source Network is working closely with a major Services Company within the Banking space that is looking to recruit a 'Senior Software Engineering Technical Consultant' for a 2-3 yr Expat Assignment.

The role will be based in New York City (Applicants MUST be willing to travel regularly between New York, London and the Cayman Islands for the duration of the contract - Up to 50% travel at times).

Technical Skillsets:

• Successful candidates will have strong programming and database skills, Oracle and PL/SQL preferred.

• Strong UNIX experience (SUN-Solaris, HP-UX, Windows XP).

• Ability to read and debug Java is required to look at internal code (Java Programming desirable). Previous experience with an enterprise Banking Application software company is desired. An ERP background is obviously a plus.

• Ability to work within and positively influence a multiple teams environment is a must have skill.

Primary Job Duties/Responsibilities:

• Consult with inhouse partners providing in-depth technical knowledge and guidance assisting them in designing, building and optimizing.

• In conjunction with colleagues and clients, ensure solution requirements are satisfied through successful implementation and execution of the solution plan. Support installing and setup of technical environment.

• While onsite, provide weekly status updates to the Solutions Project Manager and Services Management on project progress with escalation of application integration issues as appropriate.

• Liaison between Services and the Development team providing field feedback to the R&D team as required.

• Incorporate best practices into reusable deliverables to promote continuous improvements in client implementations.

• Perform weekly mandatory administrative duties on time, including Time & Expense, Status Reports and active participation within internal Team Meetings.

• Support development of pilot data models and responding to technical/architectural issues.

This is a Director level position, and the package will reflect the required skillset and job pressures (Salary in the region of $180k plus generous package).

For more information about this and other available Expat Jobs, please visit Direct Source Networks main Jobs Website

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Imagine unveils €100m investment in WiMAX Rollout | 200 Jobs Predicted for Ireland

Telecoms operator Imagine Communications is investing ¤100 million in the roll out of a next generation wireless broadband network.

Based on WiMax technology the service will launch commercially on October 27th and will be available to 250,000 homes in Dublin, Wexford, Sligo, Tralee and Athlone by mid-November. Imagine plans to provide coverage in an additional 15 towns and rural areas each month. The company said it will have coverage of 90 per cent of the country by 2012.

Imagine says it will create an additional 200 jobs as a result of launching the service.

Pricing details for the service were not provided at yesterday's launch in Dublin but Imagine's chief executive Sean Bolger said the broadband and telephone service would be 50 per cent cheaper than similar services from Eircom.

Mr Bolger said the initial ¤100 million consisted of a mixture of debt and equity with Motorola providing technical support. Intel, which has been championing WiMax globally, is also supporting the Irish launch.

"The proposition is very simple - we are providing a fourth generation network for Ireland delivering European broadband speeds at European prices," said Mr Bolger.

Highly critical of the current state of broadband quality, cost and availability Mr Bolger said there was significant pent up demand for the service which will initially be available at speeds of 7Mbits/sec.

"The state of the Irish infrastructure is such that there is a deficit in broadband," said Mr Bolger.

The quality of the access network is very bad so you are getting poor quality broadband and you are paying a very high price for it. Obviously the situation with Eircom where it has failed to invest in the infrastructure has left us where we are and the lack of effective regulation has prevented investment.

The service will be available in homes and businesses as a replacement for fixed line broadband services but also supports mobile access.

Imagine operates the Gaelic Telecom brand in association with the GAA. It has 17,000 business customers, 115,000 residential phone customers and 80,000 broadband customers.

In April 2008 Imagine acquired wireless broadband provider Irish Broadband from its major shareholders NTR and Kilsaran Concrete in a €47 million deal which largely consisted of Imagine taking on the loss making providers debt.

Irish Broadband's existing network of high sites and towers is being used as the base for the launch of the WiMax service.

Source: Irish Times Online

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NAMA is highway robbery | David McWilliams

Last Wednesday night at the Historical Society in Trinity College Dublin – the Hist, as it’s known – Professor Joe Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics and former chief economist of the World Bank, gave a stirring speech about the impact of globalisation on the poor.

Sitting in the debating room where Douglas Hyde, Oscar Wilde and many other brilliant Irish and international orators have held forth, I thought to myself that this setting was a far cry from the first time I met Stiglitz. Then he was a mere professor of economics and known only to the economics world for the elegance of his mathematical models.

Back in 1991, Stiglitz was invited by the Irish Economics Association to give a talk in Carrickmacross. His interest in Ireland was heightened by the fact that his daughter chose to go to Trinity. After the talk, Stiglitz, dressed in jeans and runners, said that he would like to visit the North.

So we drove to Crossmaglen, where the Columbia professor downed a few pints in a bar just off the main square, chatting away to the publican who would probably not have seen a more incongruous visitor in his bar since Robert Nairac walked through the door.

Stiglitz has come a long way since the smiling New Yorker raised his glass in Crossmaglen. The conversation was then drowned out by the constant clatter of Chinook helicopters hovering around the British Army base right above the metal IRA sculpture of the Republican phoenix on the main square.

Today Ireland has changed, though the professor hasn’t changed that much. He is still forthright but charming and, during an interview after the speech, he spoke to me at length about current Irish economic policy.

When asked whether he would implement a Nama-style bailout for the banks, he responded: ‘‘No, this is the kind of highway robbery which we see happening all over the world, with guns pointing at the heads of the political leaders and the bankers claiming the sky will fall down and the economy will be devastated unless they get this money.”

He went on to compare the employment of mass fear as the single justification for bank bailouts with the same weapon of mass fear that was deployed by President George W Bush after 9/11.

‘‘It was invoked to justify anything the president wanted to do, such as the Iraq invasion,” Stiglitz said. ‘‘Well, the bankers now use 15/9 [September 15, 2008 was the day Lehman Bros went bankrupt] as the new weapon of choice to force politicians into the huge bailouts, which will bring us enormous debts on our balance sheets with no real assets on the other side. But the bankers will be saved. When we gave them the money, the bankers said ‘don’t worry, you will get your money back’, but no one believes that now.”

When asked if letting the banks go would be the end of the world, which is the default position of Ireland’s current government and banking and economic establishment, Stiglitz laughed.

‘‘This is nonsense,” he said. ‘‘Countries which allow banks to go under by following the ordinary rules of capitalism have done fine. The US has let 100 banks go this year alone, as did Sweden and Norway in their crises. In the US, it’s just the big, politically-powerful banks that have not been allowed to go down, for political reasons.

‘‘The important thing to remember about financial markets is that they are forward-looking, but what they do remember is the size of your national debt.

If you spend money in bailing out banks without taking all the equity, you will end up having a huge national debt, a liability with no assets to show for it. Now that will scare off investors in the future.

“[In Ireland], this bank bailout is a simple transfer from taxpayers to bondholders, and it will saddle generations to come. The only thing that might give you solace is that, as chief economist of the World Bank, we see this type of thing happening in banana republics all over the world. Whenever a banking crisis happens, the financial sector uses the turmoil as a mechanism to transfer wealth from the general population to themselves. I’ve been very disappointed to see that it has happened, not only in banana republics, but in advanced industrialised countries.”

Digest these words and their implication for us. Here we have a Nobel prize winner for economics, a former chief economist of the World Bank, the head of former US president Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers who presided over the US’s sustainable boom of the 1990s – when it grew while, at the same time, paying off its debts.

He is comparing Nama and what is happening in Ireland – a country with which he is very familiar – to a smash and grab banana republic exercise.

The extent of this robbery can be seen if we look at the real cost of our bank bailout.

When you borrow for your house, the mortgage you pay off is much greater than the principal because you pay compound interest.

So for your house to be worth the investment after you pay everything off, it just doesn’t have to be worth what you paid for it in principal, but it has to be worth what you paid for it in its entirety, including interest. The cost to you of buying that house is also the ‘opportunity cost’ of what else you could have done with all the money.

With these basic economic principles in mind, let’s look at the likely cost of Nama and the opportunity cost of Nama, given what else we could do with the money we are about to borrow to buy land that nobody wants.

We need to get an idea of the likely costs over a ten-year cycle. At the moment, interest rates are historically low, but that will not always be the case. So let’s look at market interest rates and the current rate of inflation as real figures.

On Irish interest rates, the latest long term bond issue was a 15-year €7 billion bond. The press release last Tuesday, October 6, gives the yield at 5.472 per cent.

So, the €54 billion we are throwing into the banks, if invested at that rate would earn €38 billion over ten years. Therefore, not counting inflation, the opportunity cost of Nama is €38 billion. If we had loaned to our own government, we the people would get back €38 billion and gain a social dividend from the roads, schools and technology invested. Not with Nama.

But, of course, we don’t have €54 billion to invest; we have to borrow it all. In any calculation, we should also look at the rate of inflation, to try to get an idea of the ‘real’ cost. At the moment, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is falling and, without some inflation coming along soon, we will be in big trouble.

The current CPI, which was announced last Thursday, is minus 6.5 per cent. Prices and wages are falling, which drives up the cost of borrowing, because you have to take more of your income to pay off the debts. So the ‘real’ cost (the interest rate minus the rate of inflation) of a 5.472 per cent interest rate is actually a jaw dropping 11.972 per cent.

If the figures were to be repeated for the next 12 months, property would have to increase in value by nearly 12 per cent just to keep the real cost of Nama neutral. The idea of property prices rising while inflation is falling is something even Brian Lenihan, our Minister for Finance – who dismissed Professor Stiglitz during the week – would find hard to sell.

I don’t know about you, but I’m with Professor Stiglitz on this one.

Source: David McWilliams Blog












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Paypal to create 100 jobs in Dublin, Ireland

Global online payments company PayPal is to create 100 new jobs at its operation in Dublin.

The new posts will be in customer service and operations at its European Centre of Excellence, which is located in Blanchardstown.

The company already employs more than 950 people at the Dublin base, an increase from the 25 it employed when the operation centre opened in 2003. The Dublin centre manages customer contact for PayPal’s businesses across Europe.

Six months ago, PayPal announced an investment of €15 million to support the development of the Dublin offices into a European Centre of Excellence.

The news of the latest jobs boost was welcomed by Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who officially opened the European Centre of Excellence in March. At that event, he urged the company to seize market opportunities and widen its horizons.

“PayPal has done just that," he said. "This job announcement represents a major vote of confidence in Ireland as a location for investment."

Vice president of PayPal's European Operations Uwe Heddendorp said the firm was happy to expand its workforce in Ireland.

PayPal is predicting more than half of its growth over the next three years will come from outside the US. International business currently accounts for about 45 per cent of revenue, with the majority generated by the European market.

Source: Irish Times Online (Business)


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€4.6 million investment by Colgate-Palmolive in Dublin

IDA Press Release: 08/10/2009

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan TD today (Thursday 8th October 2009) congratulated Colgate-Palmolive Company on its 10 years of success in Ireland and announced that it is continuing its commitment to Ireland though a €4.6 million investment to its Support Services Organisation in Dublin. The investment, which is supported by the Government through IDA Ireland, will be used to develop Information Technology for the company’s global finance operations at its Citywest Business Campus. It is excellent news for the Dublin SSO as it will lead the way in centralising key business functions and drive higher value activities

Colgate’s Support Services Organisation (SSO) employs over 90 people in Dublin and is a key part of Colgate’s global IT strategy. The SSO in Dublin is responsible for IT services in Europe, Middle East and Africa. It was established 10 years ago to assist in the worldwide roll out and implementation of SAP across the business.

Making the announcement the Tánaiste said “This investment demonstrates the merits of Colgate’s decision to establish its SSO in Ireland 10 years ago. It chose Dublin because of the availability of highly skilled people, especially business analysts with IT/SAP skills, and the City’s proven ability to support such activities. The additional investment will involve complex technical, process design and engineering work, developing leading edge IT solutions, and will extend the mandate of the Dublin SSO into services innovation and leading edge technology.”

Ed Toben, Senior Vice President, Global Information Technology and Business Services, said “We are confident that our investment in Dublin will continue to support our business goals and that we will be able to meet the expectations for this global project.”

Source: IDA Website

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Equinoxe AIS chooses Sligo for expansion of its operations in Ireland

IDA Press Release: 05/09/2009

New hedge fund office expands company’s Irish operation

Our experience of the start-up and development of our Dublin office, and its success to-date, was a major influence on our decision to locate this further investment in Ireland.

Stephen Castree, Equinoxe Chief Executive Officer

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan TD today (5th October, 2009) announced that Equinoxe AIS, a provider of administration services to the hedge fund industry, is to expand its Irish operation with the establishment of a new asset servicing operation in Sligo, which will employ over 50 people over three years, with the potential for further growth as the operation develops. Supported by Government through IDA Ireland, it will initially locate at The Innovation Centre at the Institute of Technology Sligo (IT Sligo). Equinoxe’s existing Irish operation – Equinoxe AIS Ireland – located in Malahide, Co Dublin, is the company’s European Headquarters servicing the EMEA markets.

Equinoxe selected Sligo for the growth of its EMEA asset servicing business in order to continue to provide premium service to clients in their own time zone, leveraging the strong talent pool in the financial services sector in Ireland. The Sligo operation is being established as the primary back office servicing arm of Equinoxe EMEA covering all activities, offering growth in addition to Malahide which will be a full service office, but also focussing on the sales and marketing activities.

Welcoming the investment the Tánaiste said “This is excellent news for Sligo and is a major further endorsement of the North-West Region as a location for International Financial Services operations, which is already ‘home’ to a number of significant players in the IFS industry. Sligo was selected as it meets Equinoxe’s needs in terms of access to suitably qualified staff; easy access to the Dublin office, will allow the company to reduce its overall cost base, and has the academic institution, IT Sligo, which is working with Equinoxe to assist with its growth in the region.”

Equinoxe provides comprehensive services to the global hedge fund community, with its current business comprising of primarily hedge funds domiciled in Bermuda, Cayman Islands, BVI and Ireland. It offers fund structuring, set up, assistance in independent hedge fund creation, hedge fund administration, portfolio accounting and valuation, shareholder servicing, accounting, audit and tax services and directorial and secretarial services. Tailoring its solution to meet client needs, Equinoxe has grown quickly into a recognised and respected firm in its selected arena.

Stephen Castree, Chief Executive Officer, said “Our experience of the start-up and development of our Dublin office, and its success to-date, was a major influence on our decision to locate this further investment in Ireland. The country’s highly respected reputation and track-record of achievements in global financial services was a major consideration in 2007 when we first selected Ireland. These attributes have proven to be valuable in the development of our business and we are again confident that Ireland and in particular Sligo, will see this expansion successfully perform to our stringent targets and contribute significantly to the further growth of our global business.”

“The strong regulatory regime and the support that the Government continues to give the financial services community in Ireland provides an excellent base for us to grow our European business. We are also very excited about the opportunity of working with Institute of Technology Sligo, their current and future student body, and members of the academic staff as they continue to develop their focussed courses on Financial Services,” added Mr. Castree.

About Equinoxe AIS
Equinoxe AIS is headquartered in Bermuda and has $2.3 billion in assets under administration and 37 funds with 19 clients. The company’s principals are well experienced financial services professionals, having been involved in the creation of over 200 hedge funds, the servicing of over $20 billion in assets and the management of company growth from inception to more than 250 people.

Equinoxe’s Irish operation
Equinoxe’s existing Irish operation, located at Malahide, Co Dublin, is the company’s European Headquarters and was established in December 2007. It currently employs 10 people servicing the EMEA market and carries out a range of activities which include fund structuring and creation assistance; portfolio accounting and valuation; shareholder servicing; accounting/audit and US tax planning.

Source: IDA Ireland


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Citi’s new Global Research, Development, Innovation and Learning Centre in Dublin

IDA Press Release: 30/09/09

For the creation of next generation intelligent payment solutions
IDA Ireland, today (Wednesday 30th September 2009) welcomed the official opening by Citi, the leading global financial services company, of its new Global Research, Development, Innovation, and Learning (RDIL) Centre at its offices in Dublin. The US$24 million investment, supported by Government through IDA Ireland, will lead to the creation of the next wave of financial products and solutions for the financial services industry, specifically a next generation intelligent payments solution. This investment brings Citi's total investment in R&D in Ireland to US$100 million.

The RDIL Centre is Citi’s only dedicated R&D facility worldwide. As a result of this latest investment the number of employees involved in R&D will reach 100 by the end of 2010, comprising research specialists, analysts and technologists.

Barry O’Leary, CEO of IDA Ireland, congratulating the company, said “Citi will be celebrating its 45th year of investment in this country next year. Demonstrating its leadership in the financial services world Citi was the first global financial institution to establish an Operations Centre of significant scale in Ireland. It currently makes a major contribution to Ireland, employing around 2,000 people. With such a significant presence in Dublin’s IFSC, Citi is a flagship company for international financial services in Ireland and is an excellent reference for IDA Ireland in its international marketing.”

“The RDIL Centre will further contribute to Ireland's reputation as a leading European location for next generation research, development and innovation (RD&I). And innovation is what will make the difference to Ireland’s goal of becoming a knowledge driven and smart economy. Ireland, having a central position in Europe, has helped us attract high calibre investments from leading global companies in recent years. Approval for the Lisbon Treaty will further enhance Ireland’s position as a leading location in Europe for foreign direct investment from all industry and business sectors,” said Mr. O’Leary.

He continued “Innovation is the theme at the heart of IDA’s major new marketing campaign promoting Ireland as a destination for foreign direct investment and is designed to position Ireland as the pre-eminent location for companies who are seeking to invest in future innovation - this Citi RDIL Centre is an excellent example of what is being targeted. The campaign is built around Ireland’s talented workforce and the part it can play in making innovation happen. Its theme is Ireland's ability to supply the fresh thinking and creativity which innovation needs to flourish.”

Mr. O'Leary continued “In today's extremely competitive world, business people are agreed that innovation is the primary source of sustainable competitive advantage. Ireland's unique innovation ecosystem - founded on the creativity and skills of its workforce, a knowledge-based economy and pro-business government policy - has made Ireland a uniquely attractive environment in which to foster innovation.”

Ireland’s commitment to RD&I, particularly through the driving forces of the Government and IDA Ireland, has resulted in an international reputation as a highly successful European location for RD&I at the leading-edge of all industry and business sectors, including International Financial Services. This reputation has resulted in an increasing number of international companies locating significant and critical RD&I activities at their Irish operations in recent years.

About Citi
Citi has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 140 countries. Through its two operating units, Citicorp and Citi Holdings, Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, and wealth management. Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com or www.citi.com

Source: IDA Ireland

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Chicago's Olympic Bid Rejected

The Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympic Games was today rejected.

This must not only be a slap in the face for the Obama Administration, it is surely also a torpedo to Obama's presidential image and credability at home?

Someone somewhere must have had (inaccurate as it turns out) inside information leading the Chicago bid commity to believe it was ok to show the White House the green light and get a commitment for the President to travel to Copenhagen.

Dress it up what ever way you want, this was a much needed "good news" trip for Obama...

I find it incredible (even nuts) to think that the highest profile politician in the world would have boarded not only himself and his wife, but also high profile stars like Oprah Winfrey onto Air Force One unless they believed it was in the proverbial bag!

Not only was the Chicago bid rejected, it was rejected ahead of both the Japanese and Spanish bids and ultimately lost out to the Brazilian bid.

Already the result is being spun as racism on behalf of the IOC by some pro-Obama quarters.

Whatever way it's spun, it was sloppy management on behalf of the Chicago bid commity and the decision makers in the White House.

Read more at our Sportaholics Blog

Source: (Phil's Opinion)

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Easy-Forex was developed by a group of bankers and foreign exchange experts. Their goal was to establish a trading platform that will be easy to use by any end user. Easy-Forex assumes the position of a market maker, with its liquidity providers being UBS (in Switzerland) and The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

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Name: Easy-Forex

Established: 2001
Country: Global
Platform: Online

Website: Easy-Forex

The registration process is quick and simple and it is easy to make a deposit of funds. Deposits are accepted via the major credit cards as well as PayPal. Withdrawal process is as easy, however the first withdrawal requires speaking to the company over phone and presenting them with an ID and with legitimate bank account details, in means of protection from any money laundering attempts.

Executing deals in the Easy-Forex system requires only a few simple steps, however an understanding of the basic terminology of the FOREX market is necessary (which can be easily picked up).

The site offers a guided tutorial of dealing in the FOREX Market using Easy-Forex, and upon registration each user is contacted by an account manager who will walk them through the initial stages of dealing. This personal account manager is available during the local business hours, and the dealing room is open 24/7 for technical support.

In addition Easy-Forex offers its more prominent clients advanced training for using the system and trading in the market.

When first setting up an account with Easy-Forex you may define the type of account you wish to use according to the level of risk you are willing to take. You may open a mini-account with a margin of as little as $12.5. Additional account types are Gold, Platinum and a Tailor Made Import-Export account. The type of the account will also determine the spread offered to the client, ranging from 10 pips for a mini-account, 7 pips for gold accounts, 5 pips for platinum accounts and 3 pips for tailor made accounts.

The spreads are the source of earning for Easy-Forex and there are no other commissions for deals performed on their system, with one exception being a renewal fee for rolling over positions on Day Trading to the next day.

Every deal that is set using any of the products Easy-Forex offers, can easily be adjusted to the trends in the markets. These adjustments are possible under the “My Position” section where the trader can monitor and control each of his deals.

Every action is recorded in the system, as well as confirmed by an automatic email.

Additional activity logs can be found in the following sections:

“My Account” tracks your balance, showing all deposits, credit card charges and withdrawals; The “History” section shows the outcome of all closed deals.

In order for the trader to best carry out decisions Easy-Forex provides Reuter’s world news that may affect the FOREX market, a financial calendar and a set of charts and analytical tools that are quite easy to comprehend.

With a good understand of the FOREX market and guidance provided by Easy-Forex representatives it is actually easy to trade using this system. All the tools needed for executing deals, monitoring them and making the best decisions about them are highly accessible and user-friendly.

Source: Daily Forex Portal Online


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Why Economic Recovery can be bad for Business | David McWilliams

One thing the Lisbon debate has done is distract us from the juggernaut that is NAMA. In Laois today, speaking to a large group of retailers — who can sense the credit crunch in their bottom lines — the only topic was the banks, the bailout and what is going to be left after NAMA.

The feeling in the room was one of outrage, bordering on disgust, and a palpable sense of powerlessness.

One woman, a big retailer from a decent-sized town, told me that watching events unfold was like watching a drama from prison. Because the electoral cycle is five years long, she felt there was nothing she could do to register her dismay at NAMA. There was just no way of signalling her opposition. She told me she wanted to scream “not in my name” but had lost her voice.

As far as she and others were concerned, Lisbon can come and go, but NAMA is where the big mistake is likely to be made. The retailer said she knew the builders in the town that would be bailed out and the bankers who lent to them and were still taking home good salaries and playing golf in the local club as if nothing happened. All the while, she feared her business would really feel the pinch when interest rates turn. Whatever about having precious little credit now she feared that, once rates began to rise, the position of her and many on the main street like her would become impossible.

Others shared her concern. They were worried about their outstanding loans. Many of these are “interest only” affairs, taken out when times were good and provincial towns were booming. Many retailers expanded their shops dramatically not only to respond to demand and the insatiable appetite of my old friend Breakfast Roll man, but also to try and stave off competition from big multiples like Tesco. This expansion leaves them very exposed to interest-rate moves.

With that in mind, let us have a look at the interest-rate cycle in Europe because, Lisbon or no Lisbon, interest rates in Europe will rise progressively over the next year or two. And this could be enough to push many Irish businesses over the edge.

Before we look at the likely trajectory of rates, let us examine how interest rates work differently in different countries in Europe. In Ireland and in the UK, we finance more or less everything at variable and short-term rates. In Germany, they finance at fixed and long-term rates. This means changes in interest rates have much smaller impacts on consumer demand in Germany than they have in Ireland.

When rates are decreased, we party here and when rates rise fast we suffer dramatically. So, in the past year, as the ECB cut rates significantly, we have have been given a significant breather. Many highly indebted companies are just holding on at the moment because rates are so low.

When the rates turn, however, the precarious position of many of us and our companies will become apparent. And the financial markets will factor this in to their equations.

To understand what is likely to happen, take a look at the chart above. It shows the reaction of the US financial markets in the past 12 months to companies that had lots of debt.

Traditionally, these risky companies are asked to pay a premium to investors of about 2pc over US government bonds. This is to cover the investor for the risk that these companies will default. In other words, because they are more risky than government bonds, indebted companies pay more for their borrowings.

Now look what happened last year. When the liquidity crisis broke, companies dependent on short-term financing looked far weaker than they already were. The graph shows the difference between the interest rate on their borrowings and that paid by the US government. At the peak of the crisis, indebted businesses had to pay 5pc more in interest than was paid on government bonds.

We see a dramatically amplified effect on the interest rates weaker companies had to pay in the graph, which caused many of them to go to the wall. But it is the taking over of the banks rather than the trials of indebted businesses that will worry the markets the most.

Investors will be afraid that the capital position of our banks will be eroded, once more, by new bad debts as interest rates rise — but this time from companies and retailers rather than builders. Crucially, this debt will not be in NAMA. Share prices will fall as bad debts mount, and the State may be compelled to act again. In this scenario, it could nationalise the banks — by injecting more capital — or it could preside over zombie banks with neither confident management or shareholders.

This is the vista we face, Lisbon or no Lisbon, and that worry was written on the faces of the people I met yesterday — who sell us our milk and butter late at night, or are there when we’ve forgotten to make the children’s lunch.

Source: David McWilliams Blog

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Butterfield Fulcrum to create 40 new jobs in Dublin | Jobs News

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan TD today (Tuesday 29th September 2009) announced that Butterfield Fulcrum, a top five independent alternative fund administration company by assets under administration, is to create 40 new jobs over three years at its Dublin office on Lower Leeson Street. A number of key positions have already been recruited. The Government through IDA Ireland worked closely with the company to attract this investment to Ireland.

The Dublin office will provide administration services to collective investment schemes either domiciled in Ireland or Offshore, including valuation services, fund accounting services, transfer agency and share registry.

Making the announcement the Tánaiste said “These developments at Butterfield Fulcrum are continuing evidence that Ireland’s global reputation as a leading location worldwide for international financial services continues to attract high calibre companies who are developing their international business. Ireland's unique competitive advantages, which include a flexible and highly qualified workforce, a knowledge-based economy and pro-business government policy, maintain this country’s attractiveness for foreign direct investment from all sectors, including international financial services.”

“Ireland having a central position in Europe has helped us to attract such high calibre investments from leading global companies in recent years. Approval for the Lisbon Treaty will further enhance Ireland’s position as a leading location in Europe for foreign direct investment from all industry and business sectors,” added the Tánaiste.

Akshaya Bhargava, Butterfield Fulcrum's CEO, said “Approximately one third of all hedge funds globally are serviced in Ireland. The country’s strong regulatory environment has helped it become the domicile of choice for many new fund launches. This surging demand for administrative services is a perfect fit for our global operating model, which has been built to handle very high volumes efficiently with transparency and flexibility.”

The announcement follows the Dublin operation - Butterfield Fulcrum Group (Ireland) Limited – being licensed to provide Fund Administration services by the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority. It is now authorised to provide the new services under Section 10 of the Investment Intermediaries Act to Irish authorised funds both UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investments in Transferable Securities, within the meaning of the European Union Regulations) and Non-UCITS.

Ken McCarney, Head of the Dublin office, says “I am delighted that we have received our license and we now intend to grow the business significantly in Ireland. We believe that our operating model and industry leading technology will enable us to achieve that. Indeed we have already been approached by several entities asking us to provide administration services to Irish domiciled funds. As an indication of our plans for growth we have doubled our staff numbers this year and moved into larger offices at Lower Leeson Street. We are looking forward to being a leading player in the Irish funds industry.”

About Butterfield Fulcrum
Butterfield Fulcrum, a top five independent alternative fund administration company by assets under administration, has 20 years experience servicing the alternative investment industry. It provides administration, middle office and risk reporting services to hedge funds, fund of funds, managed accounts, private equity and real estate funds. The company has a unique Global Operations Model leveraging time zones and talent to deliver transparent and highly customized solutions in real time via BFonline, a client access Web portal. Headquartered in Bermuda, the company services more than 700 funds and has 11 offices in nine countries (Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, Cayman, Guernsey, India, Ireland, UK and the USA).



Source: IDA Ireland



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Say YES, then sort out our own mess | David McWilliams

Last weekend, Jim O’Hara, the no-nonsense boss of Intel in Ireland, suggested to me that one way to think about the Lisbon vote was through the prism of Monty Python’s brilliant “what have the Romans ever done for us?” sketch.

In The Life of Brian, the army council of the People’s Front of Judea are sitting in a dingy room planning to kidnap Pilate’s wife. John Cleese, the chief freedom fighter, asks rhetorically, in an effort to inspire his troops ahead of the future dastardly acts: “What have the Romans ever done for us?” Hilariously, the assembled would-be assassins reply: “‘Well . . . there’s the aqueduct, the sanitation, the roads, the public baths, education . . .” And so on, and so on.

When we think of the Lisbon Treaty, sometimes it serves to focus the mind if we pose the same question: “what have the Europeans ever done for us’’. This is particularly pertinent when we hear about the threat of a European army and the like.

Certain elements of the No campaign are trying to paint the EU as a threatening empire that is intent on taking away our freedom. Similarly, some on the Yes side are implying that the EU, and the EU alone, has been responsible for all our economic progress in the past 25 years.

Neither of these arguments is entirely accurate – there was a lot more going on economically than was the case in the EU.

All the poor EU countries did not grow at the rate we did because there are unique domestic factors, as well as other significant ones, at play.

The No side has put forward arguments which serve to paint the EU as some kind of ogre. We’ve seen images of the foetus and Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip, as well as fallacious arguments about the minimum wage in a political union whose DNA is ‘left of centre’ and where workers’ rights and union membership are a given.

So neither side is being accurate, but that’s the nature of referendums. Such is the opinion of the government that a prominent member of the Yes campaign told me that they were thinking of running a poster which simply stated: ‘Vote Yes now, get the government later’. What do you think of that one?

Let’s go back to the People’s Liberation Front of Judea and ask: what have the Europeans ever done for us?

Well, there’s the money, the roads, the schools, the labour legislation, the free trade area, the opportunities, the “gateway to Europe’’ argument which served us well when we were trying to host multinationals, the farm subsidies . . . and so on, and so on. It’s impossible to deny that the balance sheet has been stacked in our favour, and if the EU is now trying to tinker with its structure (which, after 40 years, has outgrown its usefulness),why shouldn’t it?

If we take the tinkering analogy a bit further, it strikes me that the EU is getting the builders in with the Lisbon Treaty. It is fixing the plumbing to make the house operate better. This is stressful. Surveys suggest that doing up the house is one of the most stressful things you can do. So the fear over the Lisbon Treaty is like the natural anxiety we have the night before the builders come to knock down the old bathroom and put in a new one. What will it look like? How much hassle will it be?

Will there be dust everywhere? These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves.

Does the house need new plumbing and, if it does, what will happen to the old way of doing things? I was just getting fond of the old immersion when we’ve decided to rip it out. Weren’t you?

If we can see beyond the pain of the builders, we should try to see what the house will look like. Sometimes, with renovations, the most lasting impressions are none at all. After a day or two, the place feels the same; once the smell of paint evaporates, it feels as if the extension or the new plumbing has always been there.

When we stand back, the impact of a Yes vote in Lisbon will be the same. We will continue. The slow progression of the EU- and Ireland’s membership of it – does appear to be in our best interests. It is now part of what we have become politically. It appears logical to continue down this road because, socially, the EU has been at the vanguard of moving legislation in a more open and tolerant direction in the past few decades.

Economically, it is a plus to be a member of a huge entity. (Although there are some serious reservations about being in a currency union when our main trading partners, Britain and the US, are not. If you doubt this, just ask yourself why are our shoppers voting with their feet in the North?) The issue of the currency is a separate one. You can still be a full member of the EU without adopting the euro – just like Denmark, Sweden, Britain, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the three Baltic republics.

Maybe the Yes campaign shouldn’t overplay it. For example, it is hard to buy the ‘heart of Europe’ description of a small island at the edge of the Atlantic. We are not geographically or politically at the heart of Europe and, financially, we are very much out on the limb of Europe. But we are part of the EU and that is, from a strategic point of view on how we position the country, the best option.

So, on balance, I believe that we should just get on with it. I wish the arguments were stronger, but they are not. If we vote Yes, we continue along the path we have been on for the last 40 years. But none of the problems go away. We still have to sort out the banks (this column favours letting them go bust and starting again), and get the economy moving by taking little positive steps, rather than waiting for the big bang that will save us.

More than any other time in recent history, we have to sort out our own mess.

The EU will neither accelerate nor decelerate this process. It is up to each one of us to do something positive. The Lisbon Treaty should be passed, even if only for the simple fact that it is now a distraction to the real business of getting people back to work. Let’s just vote Yes – and then go for it.

Source: David McWilliams Blog

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Time to wind down the banks | David McWilliams

Last Thursday, the share price of Bank of Ireland rose by 10 per cent following the announcement by the Green Party that it had secured amendments to the Nama bill, which might allow the party to support it.

The shares rose again by 9per cent last Friday. What other evidence do we need that this travesty will result in a direct transfer of wealth from the taxpayers of Ireland to the shareholders of the Bank of Ireland?

The financial markets are telling us exactly what is happening. The taxpayer will bail out the shareholders of our big banks who would have been wiped out if it weren’t for Nama. Why should a democratic government broker a deal which bails out stockholders and unsecured bond holders, both of whom have no right to be treated with such generosity?

Your guess is as good as mine. The markets realise that Nama is going to pay over the odds for the loans and then through a rather clumsy use of the ECB’s discount window, the banks get financed.

My fear is not what has already been said about the transfer of wealth from us to them, but the extent of it.

Now that the banks realise that they don’t have to worry about the bad loans they made in their relentless pursuit of profit, where will they stop? What is to stop them putting every bad loan into Nama?

In fact, how can we be sure that, in future, the banks will not use Nama as a large skip for their bad loans, from today’s developer loans to defaults on mortgages, car loans, credit cards and kitchen extension loans? Why wouldn’t they?

Every time they repackage and roll up their ‘‘across the board’’ defaults into one large digestible block, they will simply drop it into Nama and – guess what? – their share price will rise again. Because the new bank bosses, like the old bank bosses, will be paid bonuses related to the share price of their companies, they will have a personal and institutional incentive to continue hurling their rubbish into the skip.

So the banks have engineered yet another one-way bet. In the boom, there was the ‘‘property can only go up’’ bet. They borrowed all they could from other European banks, safe in the knowledge that they were becoming ‘‘too big to fail’’ but were assured that they would never be ‘‘too big to bail’’. The reason they were assured of this is that is how Ireland works.

We use our bond market not as an innovative way to finance development, but as a tip where we hide the mistakes of the present and lumber the next generation with the bill. This is what we are now doing and it is despicable.

And who will be the real beneficiaries of all this? Some Canadian bank or other foreign bank? Foreign banks will come in and buy our banking system when the Irish taxpayer has absorbed all of the mistakes of the past five years. They will get banks in a first world country at third world prices, with the added insurance that all the debts have been taken off their books by a pliant and shell-shocked population.

And do you know who will make sure this happens? The very investment banks which are advising the government now. The investment banks make their fees on arranging deals and they will lead the government up the Nama garden path with both eyes firmly on their exit strategy of a sale to some other investment bank.

Then what will happen is the old banks will charge way over the odds for banking in Ireland, so that they can pay the state back the levy the state imposes on them at the end. But who pays the banking levy?

We do – the poor bloody customers. So we will get taxed twice. We will get taxed on the proportion of the Nama rubbish which is tossed onto the national debt and we’ll be taxed again to pay for the levy. That’s if we get that far before a public debt crisis in Ireland.

The Carroll decision in the High Court last week will be important because the Dutch farmers’ bank that owns ACC may yet decide to opt for a fire sale of some assets in Ireland. The reason they will do this is (a) to get out of Ireland as quickly as possible and (b) to preserve their AAA status and not risk contamination from their association with Ireland.

Any sale will prove that the mantra ‘‘there is no market’’ is a lie. There is a market; it is just a very cheap one. This will give us an idea of the extent of the overpayment and, by the unforgiving logic of finance, the extent of our wealth transfer to shareholders.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. A much cleaner and fairer idea would be to wind down the banks now. Before we do this, we’d have to go to the ECB and argue that Nama is the wrong way of going about things. We value the ECB’s liquidity and believe there is amore productive way of using it.

When the guarantee goes next October, or when we announce that we will not continue it, the foreign banks that have provided liquidity to our domestic banking system will run for the door. To prevent the system seizing up, we need liquidity from somewhere else.

So why not say to the ECB: forget the Nama bonds, just replace the short-term liquidity that will flee the country. This way we can negotiate with the bank creditors in an orderly fashion and create a new banking system out of the old one. The shareholders, unsecured, and senior bond holders would take the hit.

The ECB injects liquidity into the system so that the system doesn’t freeze up and, in return, it is off the hook from the nonsense that is the Nama bonds. We institute a deposits guarantee and begin to wind up our banks.

It is at this stage that we go to the foreign banks and ask them would they like to be partners in a new bank. The government is therefore a broker in the deal, rather than a principal.

We sell the banks’ branch network and some other assets. The creditors get this cash. Then we start again. The developers are declared bankrupt and off we go.

No Nama, no old banks, no debts, no problem. By the way, it’s not radical, it’s called capitalism.

Source: David McWilliam's Blog

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JOB OPPORTUNITY | Human Resource Director | Papa New Guinea

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NEW C-LEVEL TELECOMS JOBS | Subscribe Today!

Direct Source Network is working closely with several International clients within the Telecoms, Utilities and Oil & Gas sectors who are now recruiting for their overseas operations, for more information,

visit our Main Website.

This week we've added a number of new C-Level and Middle Management Expat job opportunities to our main Jobs Pages, including:

1 X Human Resources Director (Telecoms, South Pacific)

1 X Chief Technology Officer (Telecoms, South Pacific)

1 X Chief Financial Officer (Telecoms, Central America)

4 X Finance Managers (Telecoms, Caribbean and China)

1 X Marketing Director (Telecoms, South Pacific)

1 X Commercial Director (Telecoms, South Pacific)

1 X Commercial Director (Telecoms, Central America)

1 X Chief Operations Officer (Telecoms, China)

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Irish diaspora can foster future success | David McWilliams

About ten years ago, while I was working in Israel for a Swiss investment bank, one of my Israeli colleagues asked me about the Irish diaspora.

He noted that, wherever he went on business – whether New York, London or Sydney – it seemed to him that there were always Jews and Irish involved in the business deals. He continued that Israel would be nothing without international Jewish support. He wondered how we, the Irish in Ireland, used our own global tribe.

It was difficult to give him a concrete answer because it was clear that we did not, in any organised way, use the great, untapped resource that is our diaspora. On an ad hoc basis, there were deep, deep links but, as a state, we didn’t embrace the Irish abroad at all. The Israeli thought this was a missed opportunity, which we might regret.

The diaspora want to be part of our story and we, the homeland of the tribe, seem to turn our backs on them. With so many prominent Irish people in positions of power around the world, this is quite an oversight. The Israelis got me thinking about how the economy – and business – works.

Three years ago, at the World Economic Forum in Davos high up in the Swiss Alps, it struck me again just how many people of Irish decent – not just from the US, but also from Britain, Australia and even Argentina – were movers and shakers in the world of business. The annual Davos conference gives many of these people a chance to meet up, exchange ideas and make deals. Watching how this worked, I thought that an ‘Irish Davos’, using the power and network of the tribe for the benefit of the homeland, would be a concept worth exploring.

After discussions with the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Global Irish Economic Conference at Farmleigh on September 18 will be this Irish Davos conference. It is aimed at harnessing some of the ideas and networks of the diaspora, to come up with plans for the long-term recovery and positioning of the country. I say long-term because it will not solve the banking crisis, the property market collapse or the fact that we are now facing a period of debt deflation, but if we really listen to those who have been successful abroad, we can only gain.

In fact, one of the reasons Ireland is in this mess is because we thought that we knew best. We thought that we were the smart ones – to use that nauseating phrase which was bandied about in the mania years, ‘‘the envy of Europe’’.

The narrow sectoral influences of vested interests got us into this predicament. The conference is trying to change that, to make us look at issues more globally and to do so with people who are familiar with us and emotionally bonded to us. They are our networks, our sales force, the people who maintain our brand – and they can be of great service to us, if we let them.

Because they want to be part of our story, we can fill a gap that they feel in terms of their heritage. The time has come for Ireland to be the recharging battery for Irishness around the globe. If the recession makes us think seriously about our role in the world, if it serves to help us re-imagine and reinvent the country, then it might not all be bad news.

And re-imagining is what we need.

Think about the potency of a global tribe in a world where communication is so easy. Today, we can keep in touch instantaneously and we can Skype each other for free. Immediately, your contacts and experience become my contacts and experience; and if you don’t know someone who can be of benefit to a certain project, your network does.

In a globally interconnected world, the country with the best network has a huge comparative advantage. Think about the power of the diaspora in a world where communication is immediate. The world is undergoing a communications revolution that will obliterate national power as we have come to know it. It will mean that a nation’s message becomes blurred, and the power of being sociable – sometimes in the past portrayed as a weakness, and the antithesis of the stoicism and aloofness of power – will dominate.

The world has 1.4 billion plugged-in internet users – and that number is growing by 250million a year. There are three billion mobile phones in the world, with another billion coming in the next three years. Ten hours of video are being uploaded onto YouTube every minute of every day.

This connectivity revolution, where the best salespeople for ideas will be individuals playing a giant game of ‘pass it on’, is ideally suited to dramatic initiatives, and the diaspora is a natural sales force for the country.

The winners will be those countries which have access to the best brains, are open to ideas and allow individuals to travel freely. We should be promoting much freer travel between Ireland and America for people of Irish heritage; we could see our potential workforce increase from four million to 70 million.

These people would not have to move here – although some undoubtedly would – but by telling them that Ireland is open to them and vice-versa, you create the network necessary to compete.

If we just consider the Irish in America, the commercial power of the diaspora is irrefutable. Of the 34 million Irish-Americans registered in the 2005 census, a third have bachelors’ degrees or higher. That’s over 11 million graduates.

More than 30 million Irish-Americans have a high school diploma. As 91 per cent of the total Irish-American population has completed secondary education, our American cousins are considerably better educated than us. Even today, only seven out of ten Irish children finish the Leaving Cert. Some 40 per cent of Irish-Americans are either professionals or work in management, and 72 per cent are homeowners.

The average income of an IrishAmerican household is $53,000.This puts them at the top of the ethnic league after the Jews, in terms of education, income and social class. Close to 900,000 English speaking Irish-Americans speak a second language. Their average age is 37,but there are over ten million Irish-Americans under 18.

This is an extraordinary reservoir of talent. The Irish-Americans define themselves as Irish; and while they are American, they also have a deep affection for, and affiliation to, this country. The 3.8 million Irish-Canadians, the 1.9 million Irish-Australians and the half-million Irish-Argentines have similar profiles in terms of education and income.

It’s time to re-imagine the country so that we become the guardian of the exiled Irish. This is why the Global Irish Economic Conference in Farmleigh on September 18 is a great start to what could be the next phase of our country’s development, where by Ireland reaches out to the diaspora. In the midst of the present despair, we should try to imagine a greater Ireland that transcends geography.

Source: David McWilliams Blog

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The decline of Russia's oligarchs

If you look up the word "oligarch" in the dictionary, you will find it means a member of a small group holding power in a state.

Today, though, it usually refers to the super-rich Russians who made their fortunes in the sometimes barbaric business world of their country in the 1990s.
In some cases, they sought to convert their new financial clout into political influence.
They grew even richer as oil prices and the Moscow stock markets soared in the boom years which followed.

Then, 12 months ago, as the global financial crisis reached Russia, the oligarchs got a shock.
"They have taken the biggest hit because they had the most to lose," says Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Uralsib, a banking and investment company based in Moscow.
"The stock market in the second half of last year fell almost 75%, and we've seen that reflected in the Forbes list of billionaires et cetera," Mr Weafer says.
"Just looking at the wealth of these individuals, they've taken a huge hit - hundreds of billions of dollars have been wiped from the value they had in the middle of 2008."
There is no formal oligarchs' club or association - and the way individuals have fared has varied depending on where their money was invested.
But any list of wealthy Russian businessmen would be likely to include Roman Abramovich - most famous outside Russia as owner of Chelsea football club - aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska and Boris Berezovsky, who has become an implacable opponent of the current Russian leadership. He now lives in Britain.

Public humiliation

As the crisis hit home, some of Russia's richest ran into difficulties.

In June, Mr Deripaska found himself in a piece of political theatre on Russia's biggest stage: the national television news.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in the northern Russian town of Pikalyevo to deliver a public reprimand to Mr Deripaska and others with a stake in the town's main factory. Workers had not been getting their wages.
Viewers saw Mr Putin call Mr Deripaska forward. He ordered him to sign an agreement to solve the problem.

It looked like a teacher telling off a pupil - especially when Mr Putin asked for his pen back.
"It's a very Russian approach. Nobody in Russia was surprised," says Zoya Trunova, an editor at the BBC's Russian Service.
"Everyone thought, 'Well, that's a fair thing to do. What else would the prime minister be doing?' And then Deripaska looked very intimidated by that, but then he would do what he was told, but obviously the state feels that oligarchs are almost their own team of people so they can tell them what to do."

This shift in power did not just come with the economic crisis. Vladimir Putin seems to have decided, as soon as he first rose to political prominence ten years ago, to rein in the oligarchs.
"He's made it very clear that he expects the oligarchs to look after the workers, to help the government in terms of the stimulus package," says Chris Weafer. "And today I think it's very, very clear who's calling the shots, and it's not the oligarchs."

Staging a comeback

The oligarchs' global fame - or notoriety - has been built on tales of extravagance.

Stewart Lansley - a co-author of the book, Londongrad, about their lives in the British capital - says their reduced spending actually fuelled the downturn in the luxury goods market in Britain. Now, he says, they're returning.

"What's happened in the last couple of months is that the Russians have been creeping back. There's evidence already that they've started looking for bargains in a number of areas, they've been reappearing in jewellery shops, they've been reappearing buying Rolls Royces and top end cars."

The oligarchs have usually excelled at reading the Russian political situation. Jonathan Eyal, from the Royal United Services Institute in London, agrees that the government currently has a political advantage - but, he argues, that does not mean that the oligarchs are finished.
"The oligarchs have many opportunities of influencing Russian political life, partly because Russian political life is itself now quite brittle," Mr Eyal says.

"We have a double-headed leadership - on the one hand, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on the other hand President Medvedev - and in that kind of a structure the oligarchs will always find a weak point, or will always be able to divide and rule."

The dictionary definition of oligarch doesn't refer to wealth. Russia's oligarchs have definitely lost part of theirs, and, as a result, they may also lose some of the "power they hold in the state".
Given their proven ability to survive and prosper in the toughest of times, they are not about to disappear.

Source: James Rogers, BBC News Online

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BUSINESS EVENT | Greenhouse Business Camp '09

The "Greenhouse Business Camp '09" is taking place in Limerick City (Ireland) on the 11th of October.

It is a FREE event for new and experienced entrepreneurs who wish to network and learn from other entrepreneurs experiences.

The event will offer an opportunity for people from all walks of (business) life to meet up and discuss the bet ways of how to grow, market & sustain their businesses in todays tough economical climate.

On the day there will be talks and workshops from seasoned Entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalist's, State & Private Sector Development Bodies and much more!

For more information and to register your attendence, please visit the Greenhouse Business Camp '09 website for further details.

See you there!

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JOB OPPORTUNITY | Chief Operations Officer | Telecoms | China

Direct Source Network is working closely with an emerging Telecoms player in the Chinese & Asia market place. Due to on going expansion plans at OpCo Level the company needs an experienced COO (Expat Assignment commit period 2-3yr duration).

Position Summary:

The Chief Operations Officer will report to the regions Chief Executive Officer and will be responsible for the company’s regional day-to-day operating activities.

Including:

• Financials (Working closely with CFO and others on the C-Level team, deliver on monthly, quarterly and annual financial goals)
  

• Revenue Generation (Deliver sales growth in the region) Expenature (Cost and margin control)
  

• The COO will have overall responsibility for directing the regional company’s strategies & design for all infrastructural installation & maintenance activities

• Work closely with relevant regulatory bodies and agencies An eye for infrastructural design and engineering details Provide leadership and direction to the company’s core heads in carrying out their functions

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