Executives in Dublin-based Icon plc, which runs clinical trials worldwide, had “motive and opportunity to defraud investors” when they sold almost $78 million (€74.3 million) worth of shares over 15 months at an “artificially inflated price”, before the stock slumped on the release of financial results in October, a US court filing alleges.
Icon has said it will “vigorously” defend itself against the US lawsuit, filed by shareholder Chang Kwok Shing, alleging it made “materially false and misleading” statements on its performance before reporting weaker-than-expected revenues last October. Joe Brennan reports.
Irish consumers are nervous about the potential impact of Trump administration policies on the Republic’s economy and their household finances, according to the latest Credit Union Irish Consumer Sentiment survey, as the mood among households remained subdued in February.
Based on a survey of some 1,000 people, the headline index for the month was 74.8, essentially unchanged from January when a typical post-Christmas bump in consumer sentiment largely failed to materialise. Ian Curran has the details.
Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary’s officials will next week officially start a search for investment managers to oversee assets in the auto-enrolment (AE) pension scheme, after months of delays.
A so-called request for tenders document “is being finalised with the assistance of the Chief State Solicitor’s Office and the Office of the Attorney General and is expected to be published next week”, a spokesman for the Department of Social Protection told The Irish Times. Joe Brennan reports.
Accounts filed recently by Balbriggan Textiles reveal that after-tax profits at the GAA kit-maker and supplier, which has manufacturing bases in Strabane, Co Tyrone and Dublin, climbed by 70 per cent to more than €2.8 million in the year.
Gross trading profits increased by just 9 per cent in 2023 but the directors of the Walkinstown-headquartered branch of the group, which employed some 138 people in 2023, said costs had fallen substantially, widening the company’s profit margins. Ian Curran reports.
Tines co-founder Eoin Hinchy is very clear about the opportunity that its most recent fundraising has brought to the company.
“We felt like it was the time to strike and go and capture as much of this market as we can.”
The workflow automation company recently announced it had raised $125 million in a Series C financing round led by Goldman Sachs. Ciara O’Brien reports.
If one thing is going to be hard to decarbonise, it’s a holiday. Don’t peek under the rug of airline emissions, because it’s not a pleasant sight. Holidays, at least as we have come to know them, have big carbon footprints, writes Neil Briscoe.
Well, perhaps not, or at least not all. There is at least one location in Ireland that has done enough to erase and offset its own carbon emissions. And it is now looking at doing the same for your emissions getting there and back.
It is clear that Trump and his cronies want to bury the rules-based international order and restore the great power competition that preceded it. They seem to prefer a world divided into spheres of influence under a handful of large states run by strongmen, writes Martin Sandbu in our Wednesday column.
Apple skins are not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about footwear but, as Finbarr Power, founder of Sampla shoes discovered, the waste from apple juice pressings can be turned into a leather alternative and used for making shoe uppers. Olive Keogh reports.
Cantillon notes that a top-to-bottom rebrand in 2022 failed to arrest SlimFast’s falling sales and as part of its full-year results yesterday Glanbia announced it planned to offload its underperforming brand, seven years after buying it from Kainos. He also finds that Dundrum Town Centre owners Hammerson’s results are a mixed bag.
Cantillon is also concerned that an increasingly two-, or even three-tier health system, is evolving – those who rely on the public health services, those who have private health insurance and now those who have the ability to pay privately for things even their private health insurer will not cover.
There is a new iPhone in town but, to everyone’s surprise, it is not an SE. The tech giant had been widely expected last week to unveil the fourth generation of the SE, which was last updated in 2022, but instead it unveiled the iPhone 16e. Ciara O’Brien takes it for a spin.
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