IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 13 October
13-10-2009
by Sylvia Leatham
Multinationals site high-end ops in Ireland | Smart legal actions settled
The Irish Times reports that Waterford Institute of Technology lecturer Michael McCarthy delivered a talk to secondary school students on Monday entitled "How does your iPod work?", as part of Maths Week. McCarthy explained that trigonometry is used to first compress and then decompress music files so they can be played back again. The MP3 player uses a set of instructions which tells it how to interpret the sine and cosine shorthand that was used to compress the music file. It is then able to reassemble the original wave file so it can be played back as music, he said.
The paper also says that multinational companies are now more likely to base high-end operations in Ireland rather than low value-added production. That's according to an annual survey by National Irish Bank (NIB) and the Irish Management Institute (IMI) which found that 70 percent of firms operate strategic centres in Ireland. Only a quarter of foreign-owned multinationals have basic production operations here. "Ireland has succeeded in transforming itself over the course of the last decade from a country that was successfully attracting low value-added jobs to one that is now attracting very high quality jobs," said Dr Tom McCarthy, chief executive of the IMI.
The Irish Independent reports that legal actions arising from the buyout of Smart Telecom have been settled at the Commercial Court. Jim Breslin, for Smart, told Justice Peter Kelly that the actions, which were due to open on 3 November and run for four weeks, had been settled and could be struck out with no further order. The cases included a claim by Smart YuRoE Broadband (SYB) and related companies against former Smart Telecom chief Oisin Fanning for more than EUR1.1 million, over alleged unjust enrichment during his time as boss.
The paper also says that more than one-third of Irish adults are now accessing their bank accounts online. Research commissioned by National Irish Bank shows that the ability to pay bills on time and avoid having to take time off work to visit a bank branch are the major attractions of online banking. Survey results show that the people most likely to use online banking services are between the ages of 25 and 44.
The Irish Examiner says that online payments firm PayPal is to create 100 jobs in Dublin. Read the full story on ENN.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration has shelved a plan to raise more than USD200 billion in new taxes on multinationals following complaints from businesses, including tech giants. A contingent of Silicon Valley chief executives travelled to Washington DC in September to speak out against the proposal to change how the federal government taxes overseas profits. Obama aides say the administration has set the idea aside for now but may return to it as part of a broader tax overhaul sometime next year. The White House had billed the proposed change as an overdue fix to the tax code and potentially a key revenue-raiser.
The paper also notes that Arthur Levinson, chairman of Genentech, has resigned from Google's board amid a US Federal Trade Commission probe into his membership of the boards of both Google and Apple. The move comes two months after Google chief Eric Schmidt abandoned his seat on the Apple board after facing the same scrutiny. Over the past year, Google and Apple have increasingly competed with each other in areas such as browsers and software for mobile phones. Around May, the FTC launched a probe looking at the overlapping directorships of the companies.
According to the Financial Times, cuts in marketing spend may at last be bottoming out as confidence in financial prospects improves among businesses. According to a survey published by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, spending on marketing activities fell for the eighth quarter in a row in the third quarter, but at the slowest rate in more than a year. The survey tracks spending on marketing categories including internet advertising, traditional media advertising, public relations and sponsorship. Spending on internet advertising rose for the first time since the first half of 2008.
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