IN THE PAPERS
In the papers 8 November
08-11-2007
by Deirdre McArdle
Venture capital investment in Ireland hits EUR30m in third quarter | National Irish Bank urges government to promote e-payment services
The Irish Times reports that nearly EUR30 million in venture capital funds was invested in innovative young Irish firms in the third quarter, up from just EUR9.2 million in the same quarter in 2006, according to a study by Ernst & Young and Dow Jones Venture One. There was also an increase in the value of late-stage deals, totalling EUR19.1 million in the third quarter, compared to zero in the same period last year and EUR3.7 million in the second quarter of this year.
The Irish Independent says a teenage gunman who killed eight people in a rampage through his school in Finland on Wednesday, had uploaded a video to YouTube just hours before his killing spree in which he bragged about what he was about to do. This echoes a similar video posted to a US TV network by Seung-Hui Cho, the student who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University in America in April.
The same paper says that the two best performing global investments of the past few weeks are gold and Google. Gold recently reached 27-year highs and increased more than USD50 an ounce in the space of a month. And, while Google took over a year to get from USD500 (EUR343.50) a share through the USD600 (EUR412.20) level, it took it just another fortnight to break USD700 (EUR481) per share. It is currently trading at around USD730 per share.
The Examiner reports that Irish researchers have been ranked among the world's best in terms of the impact of their work on immunology. That's according to a global ranking in Lab Times journal, which is based on the number of times papers from each country's immunology research was cited by other scientists between 2000 and 2006. Ireland came in just behind first-placed Switzerland and ahead of the United States in third place. About nine in 10 top papers in immunology in Ireland are published by researchers at Trinity College Dublin.
According to the same paper, National Irish Bank has called on the government to promote the greater use of electronic forms of payment and phase out the use of cheques as part of an overall reform of the current payment system in Ireland. According to NIB Deputy Chief Executive, Kevin Gallen, Ireland is currently operating a "highly inefficient" payments system, which is costing the economy around EUR750 million per year and "unnecessarily adding to the cost of doing business in Ireland".
The Wall Street Journal reports that though Cisco posted a 37 percent jump in profit and a 17 percent increase in sales in its fiscal first quarter, the computer-networking giant disappointed investors by offering no change to its forecast. In its previous quarter Cisco had raised its long-term revenue-growth forecast, but this time, it said it would maintain its long-term revenue-growth forecast of 12 percent to 17 percent. Cisco's shares fell 9.2 percent in after-hours trading.
The same paper reports that satellite-navigation equipment maker TomTom has made a new bid for digital-map maker Tele Atlas that values the company at EUR2.9 billion, and is 41 percent higher than TomTom's bid in July. The move topped a counterbid by Garmin, which is trying to prevent its rival device makers from owning the two dominant mapping companies, Tele Atlas and Navteq. Navteq has agreed to be bought by Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia. The competition to buy the mappers is a result of the increasing popularity of global positioning systems (GPS) in an array of devices, from in-car navigation systems to maps on mobile phones.
The Financial Times writes that Nokia's strategic shift into mobile internet services received a boost on Wednesday when the Finnish mobile phone maker announced Vodafone would become a customer of its new Ovi portal, which offers music, games and maps. Nokia faced scepticism in August when it launched the Ovi brand, with many industry observers concerned that the service would be in conflict with operators who hope to make money from similar services. However, it is now seeing some of the largest telecoms operators supporting the project; the Vodafone agreement follows a similar deal with Telefonica last month.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 