Profit at LinkedIn’s Irish business surged to $427 million (€376 million) as the company added more members and increased its advertising business.
The Irish subsidiary, LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company, recorded turnover of $8.9 billion for the 18 months to June 30th 2024. Cost of sales for the period was $5.7 billion.
The professional networking site has changed its reporting period to bring it in line with that of parent company Microsoft in Ireland. The tech giant bought LinkedIn in 2016, with LinkedIn continuing to operate as a stand-alone unit. Ciara O’Brien has the details.
Axa Ireland, the largest general insurer in the market by customer premiums, decided to hold off paying dividends to its French parent on last year’s earnings, marking the first such hiatus in five years, as it built up capacity to start underwriting health insurance for its Laya Healthcare brand from the start of this year.
The Irish unit, officially known as Axa Insurance Dac, had paid €270 million in dividends to Paris-based Axa Group over the past four years, including money that was temporarily stored during the Covid-19 pandemic when regulators ordered insurers to avoid payouts and preserve capital. Joe Brennan reports.
The European Central Bank (ECB) lowered borrowing costs by a further quarter point (0.25 of a percentage point) on Thursday as the market turmoil from US tariffs overtook inflation as the chief concern.
With ECB president Christine Lagarde warning about a “major escalation in global trade tensions” and increased “downside risks to growth”, Frankfurt policymakers cut interest rates for seventh time in less than 12 months, bringing the bank’s benchmark deposit rate down to 2.25 per cent from 4 per cent. Eoin Burke-Kennedy reports.
As Storm Éowyn showed, we are highly dependent on electricity today for everyday life not only for light and hot water, but also to run our domestic appliances, heat our homes, charge our phones and, increasingly, power our cars and bicycles, writes John FitzGerald in his weekly column.
Wind-generated electricity is also Ireland’s main clean energy source. Given how dependent on electricity we have become, surely we should be even quicker to deliver a vital interconnector today than we were in the 1940s.
Fergal O’Leary, the bond market veteran who co-founded a company that made millions finding buyers for Irish debt following the 2008 financial crisis as big-name investors fled the scene, reckons his latest venture can bridge gaps in another market: mortgages.
Núa Money, the nonbank lender he set up in 2021 with some former Citigroup bond market colleagues and Kazakh fintech whizzes, and backed by the Allen beef barons of Wexford, began issuing loans last summer through brokers. Joe Brennan find out what makes him tick.
In Agenda, Eoin Burke-Kennedy meets three companies – Clonakilty Distillery. Ornua and Edge Innovate – to find out how the US tariffs are affecting them and what they are doing to meet the challenge of Donald Trump’s topsy-turvy trade policies.
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