Ireland’s newest mobile network iD opens for business today - it claims it can save consumers an average of €166 per year.
It will focus on flexible plans - allowing users to find the right mix of talk - text - and data allowances.
iD promises transparent pricing, and will allow customers to change their plans from month to month without any extra costs.
Average plans will cost close to €20 per month.
The company - which is owned by Dixons Carphone - is hoping to gain 6% market share over the next 5 years.
______________________________________________________
Pre-tax profits for the 3Arena in Dublin fell by 50% last year.
New accounts filed by Live Nation’s Apollo Leisure Group Ltd show that pre-tax profits were down from £5 million pounds to £2.5 million - or €3.6 million euro - last year.
It’s estimated that almost 471,000 music fans attended gigs at the venue during the year which featured sell-out shows from Beyonce and Ed Sheeran.
Beyonce’s 4 shows in March of 2014 brought in €1 million per-night - while Ed Sheeran ticket sales raised €2 million for his 4 concerts.
Overall its average capacity for live events was 81%.
______________________________________________________
AIB launched a redress scheme yesterday for 110,000 credit card customers who paid for insurance that they didn’t need.
The average compensation per customer is likely to be €66.
If all affected customers claimed this money the total payout would be more than €7 million.
However - The Irish Examiner reports that in similar redress schemes from Bank of Ireland, MBNA, and Ulster Bank - only 40 percent of the affected customers actually claimed their money.
AIB will be contacting customers - and explaining how they can get their money back.
______________________________________________________
The Irish-Swiss food group Aryzta has completed the acquisition of a 49% stake in French company Picard.
Aryzta’s main presence in the Irish market is the Cuisine de France range.
The group will have the right to exercise a call option in the next three to five years to acquire the rest of the company.
Picard specialises in ready meals and frozen foods. It had a turnover of €1.37 billion last year - and is valued at €2.25 billion.
______________________________________________________
The minutes of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee’s meeting in July were released last night.
They suggest that the bank is still on-course to raise interest rates in 2015 - but its timetable is unclear.
It has been suspected that the Fed’s first rate hike in almost 10 years would come in mid-September - but the recent volatility in China may delay this move.
The US’s recovery has been slow to trickle down through the economy - and the minutes note that some committee members believe that the economy is still not strong enough to support an interest rate increase.
