US private equity firm Oaktree Capital plans to put the Square shopping centre in Tallaght, Dublin, on the market this year for €170 million, €80 million less than it paid for it, the Sunday Times reports.
Oaktree bought the shopping mall in 2019 for €250 million from the National Asset Management Agency, the State’s bad bank.
The lower asking price is thought to reflect the current state of the market, the newspaper says.
The mall has 53,000sq m (570,486sq ft) of shops across more than 130 outlets, a cinema, along with planning permission to extend and a site potentially suitable for housing.
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The newspaper reports that Companies Registration Office filings for Indego, one of the Square’s operating companies, show that it extended a €191 million loan with AIB for 12 months this year.
The Sunday Times also reports that Zoom Video Communications paid €202 million for Workvivo, the Cork-based software developer, which the conferencing giant bought in April.
Sanjay Rao, Zoom’s head of corporate development and mergers, told investors last week that the company had been tracking Workvivo for some time.
He dubbed it a “hyper-growth company” that was beating bigger, more established rivals day in day out.
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Brian McElligott, partner at leading law firm Mason Hayes & Curran, has warned staff against using AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, and told them never to use these systems on work for clients, according to the Sunday Business Post.
The newspaper reports that he told staff in an email that ChatGPT and similar tools “should never constitute the primary basis of legal advice or analysis sent to a client”.
“We are sure you are aware that the use of this powerful technology is not without risk. There is an obligation on all of us to actively manage this risk every time we use ChatGPT and other LLMs (large language models),” the newspaper says staff were told.
AI will also loom large at London Tech Week, according to the Observer. The yearly industry gathering runs until Friday, and British prime minister Rishi Sunak and Labour Party leader Keir Starmer will give their views on the rise of the bots.
Antony Walker, deputy chief executive of trade association TechUK, told the British Sunday newspaper that AI would be “the big one” among the hot topics debated this week.
Revenue will demand that tenants paying rent to landlords based outside the State supply it with rental income details and other information, the Sunday Independent says.
From next month, the Finance Act 2022 will require tenants paying rent into non-resident landlords’ Irish or overseas bank accounts to file a rental notification within 21 days, the newspaper reports.
The notification will require details including the landlord’s tax reference number or their email address and phone number, the local property tax ID reference, and the amount and date it was paid.
