IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 30 September
30-09-2009
by Sylvia Leatham
Payzone sells top-up businesses | FT chief faces storm over staff suicides
The Irish Times reports that a mentoring and business development scheme is being launched for students, with participants being selected from the annual BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. The goal is to give students the business knowledge they need to turn innovative ideas from their Young Scientist projects into commercial opportunities. The BT Business of Science and Technology Programme was launched at the Science Gallery at Trinity College on Tuesday. It will see a group of 40 student participants from the exhibition link up with senior staff from companies including BT, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.
The paper also says that Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, is the latest high-profile executive to come out in favour of the Lisbon Treaty. "Europe needs to step up both economically speaking and politically speaking. That treaty has to be clearly embodied and move on with all the citizens in Europe," he said.
The same paper reports that a conference on challenges facing rural businesses has been told of the lack of broadband in rural areas. Irish Rural Link's "Strengthening Rural Business in Challenging Times" seminar in Castlepollard, Westmeath, heard how one person worked overnight in an internet cafe because the company where she was employed did not have access to adequate broadband.
The paper also says that troubled e-payments group Payzone has sold its mobile top-up businesses in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands to Quam Equity International for EUR2.2 million. The price is less than the EUR4.01 million net asset value of the same businesses at 31 March. The subsidiaries have cash balances of EUR4.4 million, which form part of the deal. "The businesses were not a strategic fit in terms of where we are taking the company going forward. We got the best price we could for them," said Payzone chief executive Mike Maloney.
The Irish Independent says that organised crime gangs are reaping annual profits running into millions of euro from selling pirated DVDs and other counterfeit goods in Ireland. The growth of the worldwide trade in counterfeit goods was revealed at an international conference in Dublin, hosted by the Garda, the PSNI and Interpol. Experts were divided on the full extent of the financial gains but one industry estimate put the profits at EUR40 million.
The Irish Examiner reports that Irish consumers have become a prime target for overseas sales callers, according to a British-based company that stops unwanted calls. The Call Prevention Registry believes that at least one-third of unwanted sales and nuisance calls made to Irish consumers each year are from overseas. A spokesperson for the Call Prevention Registry said a third of unwanted and nuisance calls made to people in Britain were from overseas, and while there are no comparable figures for Ireland, the proportion of such calls was likely to be similar.
According to the Financial Times, France Telecom chief Didier Lombard is facing calls for his resignation following the 24th suicide by a company employee in 18 months. France's opposition socialists and far-left parties demanded that Lombard quit the company immediately and take "responsibility" for the management practices that unions say have pushed some vulnerable staff members to the edge. Members of the governing centre-right UMP party condemned the political "lynching" of Lombard but criticised the company for its management practices. France Telecom is 27 percent owned by the French state and 65 percent of its employees are classed as civil servants.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Hewlett-Packard chief Mark Hurd is finalising a plan to combine HP's printer and PC businesses into one unit under current PC chief Todd Bradley, according to sources. The details and date of the reorganisation are not yet decided and the move is contingent on Hurd making a final decision, these people said. It's also unclear what role current printer chief and HP veteran Vyomesh Joshi would play in the newly combined operations.
The paper also notes that internet advertising sales in the UK overtook television advertising sales for the first time in the first half of this year, according to new research by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Online ad sales grew 4.6 percent on the year in the first half to STG1.75 billion, giving it a market share of 23.5 percent. TV advertising fell 16.1 percent to STG1.64 billion, dropping into second place with a 21.9 percent market share.
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