Johnny Ronan, a property developer, failed to secure several assets from the list of 11 that were up for market sale earlier this year, as reported by the Sunday Times. The portfolio, consisting of properties such as historic Bewley’s cafe on Grafton Street and Kilmore House in Spencer Dock amongst others, had been priced at €150 million by receivers assigned to oversee it.
In June, it had been reported that Ronan managed to receive financial support from the European investment company Landfair for a bid on all 11 properties. However, his bid of €100 million was deemed insufficient by receivers appointed by AIB and Bank of Ireland, lenders over the portfolio, as indicated by a recent report from the property website Green Street News.
The Sunday Times also revealed that Davy Real Estate has agreed to purchase the residual shares of three properties they partly own with Ronan, whereas other investors are taking the lead in bidding for other assets in the portfolio.
In other news, the government is gearing up for a €13 billion pre-election budget bonus which exceeds its originally introduced €8.3 billion packet. This is seen as an attempt to cover up the actual extent of their plan, as stated by the Business Post. The government claims the official €8.3 billion package will result in a 6.9 percent rise in spending, surpassing its own 5 percent spending rule. The report also stated that amendments had been introduced to the government’s spending rule definition. It is expected that this will help offset the cost-of-living spending package for the current year. This significant policy divergence, as mentioned by the newspaper, includes adding previous temporary spending to the spending base hence enlarging the base for future calculations.
The Sunday Times has stated that PTSB could possibly resume dividend payments earlier than predicted, following their agreement last Friday to sell a largely deep-in-arrear mortgage portfolio, worth €348 million, to a consortium made up of US private equity behemoth Apollo and loan servicing company Mars Capital. PTSB is slated to detail their plans for reinstatinig dividends for the initial time since the financial upheaval next month, after regulators removed a preventative measure on its dividend payments in the latter part of last year. Diarmaid Sheridan, a Davy analyst cited by the newspaper, suggested that the loan sale could expedite the reinstatement of PTSB’s post-crisis dividend by a year, originally forecasted to occur in early 2026 based on 2025 income. Sheridan also mentioned it might be more logical for PTSB to utilise excess capital for purchasing some of the state’s remaining 57% share in the bank.
Concurrently, Aircoach, an airport bus service operator, has discretely cancelled up to a third of its scheduled services on some routes in the past few days due to a disagreement over scheduling with their drivers, as reported by the Sunday Independent. The Siptu trade union group has revealed that Aircoach employees have been working under objection since July 6th after the company introduced major scheduling changes without consensus. Aircoach, a subsidiary of the UK transportation multinational FirstGroup, insists that this issue is transitory and does not believe they are violating the provisions of their National Transport Authority licence, the newspaper reported.
Additionally, the Sunday Independent reported a rise in Louis Vuitton’s Irish business, with a 21% boost in sales last year, amounting to €36.5 million, even though other markets (especially China) saw a downturn for high-end labels. The company’s Irish operation witnessed an increase in pre-tax profits from €9.6 million to €11 million in 2023. The lion’s share of Louis Vuitton Ireland’s sales happened in physical stores, with fewer than €5 million was made through online transactions.