NEWS IN BRIEF
For the record 1 June
01-06-2007
by Emmet Ryan
Digicel criticises C&W claims | Smart Telecom to cancel AIM listing
The upcoming bank holiday weekend has seen the public rush online to find their ideal destination in Ireland. Failte Ireland's travel website, DiscoverIreland.ie, has experienced a 90 percent increase in user figures on the same period last year in the run-up to the June bank holiday. "This 90 percent year-on-year growth of user traffic shows that Irish people view holidaying at home as an increasingly attractive option," said John Concannon, director of regional development at Failte Ireland.
The Government's efforts to maintain Ireland's competitiveness have been criticised by Fine Gael in the wake of Dell announcing potential cuts to its 4,500-strong Irish workforce. "Ireland's future economic success depends heavily on reassuring the multinational sector and its employees that we have a competitive cost base for the future. Maintaining our competition is a key challenge for any incoming government. This is an area that the outgoing government have let slide," said Sean Barrett, Fine Gael TD for Dun Laoghaire. Micheal Martin, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, said it was too simplistic to assume 450 Irish jobs would be lost following Dell announcing it would cut its workforce by 10 percent because of the scale of the PC maker's operations in Ireland and their importance to the firm.
Smart Telecom has announced that it will cancel the admission of the company's ordinary shares from trading on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) on the London Stock Exchange. In a statement Smart said the firm's board believes that it would not be suitable for the company's shares to be admitted to trading on AIM following the imminent disposal of the business, assets and liabilities to Smart YuRoE Broadband, formerly called Calally Limited, as its only asset will be a 10 percent shareholding in a private company. Following the cancellation, the company's shares will not be traded on an exchange and there will be no formal mechanism for carrying out transactions in Smart's shares. Calally was the investment vehicle used by businessman Brendan Murtagh to acquire the debt-ridden Smart, which he bought for EUR1 and a 10 percent stake in BidCo in October last year.
Belfast-based digital camera maker Andor Technology has applied for a listing on Dublin's Irish Enterprise Exchange. The company is already listed on the AIM. Trading in the shares is due to being on 29 June. The firm has announced the appointment of Conor Walsh as chief executive with immediate effect. Walsh joined Andor in 2002 as finance director and company secretary. Hugh Cormican, current director for strategic development, has decided to resign in November, having stepped down as chief executive in August 2006.
Denis O'Brien's Digicel group has criticised claims made by its main rival in the Caribbean, Cable & Wireless (C&W), about its share of the market. "We are very proud of taking and growing the market in the Caribbean and, as a result, cannot understand how the former monopolist in those markets has recently made claims of achieving the number one market position in Grenada and being only 1 percent behind us in St. Vincent & the Grenadines. All of our own data and third-party research refutes this. I challenge C&W to substantiate these claims," said Colm Delves, chief executive of Digicel Group.
Lenovo has launched a new range of PCs, including the new ThinkPad X61 and X61s notebooks and the X61 Tablet PC. The new PCs are designed to perform better in areas such as wireless performance, battery life and security. "As the traditional work place environment continues to change, customers are telling us portability, reliability, connectivity and security are most important to them," said Marc Godin, vice president, Worldwide Notebook Business Unit, Lenovo. "We've engineered our latest ultraportable ThinkPad notebooks so that our customers can get the best from their PC in all of these areas."
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 