February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Harry Keaney
The Jurys Doyle hotel group is on the acquisitions trail, particularly in Britain, and it may eventually try to expand its presence in the U.S., according to Managing Director Peter Malone.
Last May, Jurys completed its acquisition of the Doyle group for £187.6 million. Malone said the acquisition created a powerful Irish hotel group with sufficient critical mass and scale to compete internationally.
Malone announced an 18 percent rise in Jurys’s pretax profits to £23.2 million for the 12 months to the end of April. "This is the last set of results for the old Jurys," Malone said.
Bad risk
For years, young drivers in Ireland seeking insurance discovered that their only hope of obtaining cover lay with the company PMPA. Now, because of worsening road safety standards, the company is refusing to issue quotes to young male drivers in Counties Meath and Louth.
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"We have had quite a bad experience with claims in the area and, because of that, we aren’t taking on new policies from young, male first-time drives," a PMPA spokesman told the Ireland on Sunday newspaper.
Electricworld jobs
Electricworld, the Belfast-based electrical goods supplier, is to create 750 jobs in the Republic. Last week, the company opened its first megastore in the Republic, at Blanchardstown Shopping Center. It will open three more stores in the Dublin area as well as in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.
The electrical market in Ireland is dominated by the semi-state Electrical Supply Board and Power City.
Focus on the figures
The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into the accounting practices of Irish pharmaceutical company Elan, shares of which are traded in the U.S. According to the Wall Street Journal, the SEC’s division of corporate finance sent a letter to Elan last January with questions about its accounting, especially in the area of research and development. The letter said that Elan’s accounting for transactions with third parties funded by Elan "may materially inflate reported earnings and interfere with an objective analysis of operating trends.
Elan’s chief financial officer, Thomas Lynch, said Elan was very close to a resolution of the matter. He did not believe Elan would have to restate its earnings.
Another CRH buy
For the second week in in a row, Cement Roadstone Holdings was on the acquisition trail in the U.S., buying the assets of Thompson-McCully group of companies in Michigan for$ 340 million, plus a deferred payment of $82 million, payable over five years.
The company, headquartered near Detroit, is the state’s leading integrated aggregates producer and has 11 modern asphalt plants. It also has a substantial bitumen terminal.
The purchase brings the amount spent by CRH on buying companies this year to over £1 billion.
Harry Sheridan, CRH finance director, said the company is now in the top five in its sector worldwide.
He said the process of add-on acquisitions will continue. The company has bought an average of two companies a month for the last three years.
Sheridan said the Michigan buy would open up a new area for CRH, which already has a strong presence in the U,S, Northeast through its Oldcastle subsidiary.