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Opening Bell: The Tiger's back apparently, Primark hits Boston, fund promises more office space for Dublin

"Celtic Tiger roars back as growth soars to 6%" roars a headline on the front page of the busines...
Newstalk
Newstalk

07.47 11 Sep 2015


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Opening Bell: The Tiger&#3...

Opening Bell: The Tiger's back apparently, Primark hits Boston, fund promises more office space for Dublin

Newstalk
Newstalk

07.47 11 Sep 2015


Share this article


"Celtic Tiger roars back as growth soars to 6%" roars a headline on the front page of the business section of The Times (London), who are declaring that Ireland is back in boom-mode.

The piece acknowledges that the last boom didn't end too well - but it continues, "the wonderful thing about Tiger, or at least one of them, is that they are indomitable."

The Government received fresh data yesterday which suggests that the Irish economy will grow by 6 percent during 2015.

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The Central Statistic Office announced that it has revised its growth figures for the first quarter upwards to 2.1% - meaning that year-on-year growth to June was 6.7%.

This is comfortably the highest growth rate in the European Union, and twice the growth recorded in Spain which was the second fastest growing economy.

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Primark opened its first US store in Boston yesterday, the chain which operates as Penney's in Ireland hopes to open between 8 and 10 shops in the US.

At the opening was somewhat understated - when Primark opened it's flagship London store on Oxford Street in 2007 there was a stampede as 3,000 shoppers rushed past 50 security guards - leaving two people requiring hospitable treatment.

While barricades were erected in Boston the scenes were calmer. Speaking to The Guardian, John Bason, finance director of Associated British food - Primark's parent company - acknowledged the challenge that the company faces to increase brand awareness among shoppers in the US.

A second US store in Philadelphia will open in coming weeks.

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Investment fund IPUT is planning to make more than 400,000 sq ft of office space available in Dublin over the next three years.

As Ireland's economy has recovered office space in Dublin has become hard to come by, this has pushed rents up more than 50% during the last two years.

The fund launched its refurbished office block at 7 Hanover Quay - the former-Facebook building - which houses 68,000 sq ft of office space.

The Irish Independent reports IPUT chief executive Niall Gaffney's comments on the fund's future strategy: "Our focus is on acquiring and holding best in class commercial properties in prime Dublin locations in order to provide our shareholders with strong income returns.

"As long-term investors, we have the capacity to deliver a portfolio of high quality office space to the Dublin market - 7 Hanover Quay is the first building in our programme of six office schemes which we anticipate will deliver 400,000 sq ft within the next three years."

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Close to €2.5bn has been written off the value of Tullow Oil this year as it struggles to cope with sharply falling oil prices, a stretched balance sheet, and two major banking brokerages have now cut their target share price.

Tullow’s price fell by close to 7% yesterday to 194p in London, dipping close to its all-time low of 181p which it hit last month.

Investec has lowered its mid-term price target for the share by 5% to 175p and says the company’s getting close to a tipping point where it may need to raise new equity – which of course won’t do much to support the price.

The broker argues that recapitalisation followed by the sale of some key assets in East Africa may be needed to support the share price.

HSBC is less negative but has cut its target price from 514p to 310p, still significantly above Tullow’s current trading levels.


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