TikTok told to be ‘100% certain’ before requesting meeting with Coveney after it postpones two

TikTok called off two meetings with Minister for Enterprise Simon Coveney, and the Chinese-owned social media giant has been told not to ask for another one unless they’re sure they can attend. The saga, revealed in a series of emails released under the Freedom of Information Act, began at the end of June when an official from the IDA contacted Coveney’s office. A number of senior executives from TikTok, led by their VP of Public Policy Theo Bertram, would be visiting Ireland in September to brief stakeholders, the IDA said.

“TikTok wish to meet the Minister to discuss any concerns the Government may have around how the company stores European user data, and update them on the important role Ireland will play in this,” Coveney’s office was told. His officials offered a meeting on September 7th at 5.30pm, which TikTok accepted.

Just four days later, however, the tech giant was back to say “unfortunately something has come up”, and would it be possible to reschedule to an evening on the week of September 18th? Sure, said Coveney’s people, how about the 21st from 4.30pm to 5.15pm? Perfect, said the IDA on TikTok’s behalf, only to come back soon afterwards and say the tech giant’s executives had cancelled their Ireland visit.

“They plan to travel in Q4 but I’ve told them no request [for a meeting with Coveney] is to be made until they are 100 per cent certain they’re coming,” the IDA executive told the Department of Enterprise. The diaries have still not aligned. The inward investment agency says nothing is scheduled yet, but it is hoping to arrange a Coveney-TikTok meet-up before the end of the year.

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RTÉ seeks €350,000 for Claire Byrne radio show sponsorship

RTÉ is seeking a sponsor for Today with Claire Byrne, which becomes available from January. Previous sponsors of the show, which attracts a daily audience of more than 320,000 listeners, have included Opel and Allcare Pharmacy. RTÉ is offering two packages – a six-month deal costing €210,000 or a year-long sponsorship, at a highly ambitious €350,000.

Separately, RTÉ has slapped a €500 increase on the cost of TV advertising on Christmas Day. Last year the station charged €7,500 for a 30-second slot on a day when peak-time viewing on RTÉ TV averaged 475,000 people. This year it’ll cost €8,000.

Until 2012, the station was ad-free on Christmas Day, but then introduced breaks during Fair City and Mrs Brown’s Boys. This year there will be at most four “short” commercial breaks between the “key peak programmes”, with no more than two ads per break, RTÉ’s commercial department has told would-be advertisers. They reckon it’s the “perfect opportunity for your brand or client to get in front of a large, highly-sought-after audience [at a time] when their attention is completely undivided”. Or they’re asleep.

Ryanair dividend payments not so ‘stupid’ any more

Commenting on Ryanair’s new policy of returning 25 per cent of the previous year’s profit after tax to shareholders annually in ordinary dividends, its finance director Neil Sorahan said “it is a statement of our intent and a sign of our maturity as a business”.

Just for fun, let’s return to a time when the airline, or at least its chief executive, held a different view. In August 2003, the Daily Telegraph reported Michael O’Leary as saying: “We are never paying a dividend as long as I live and breathe, and as long as I’m the largest individual shareholder. If you are stupid enough to invest in an airline for its dividend flow, you should be put back in the loony bin where you came from.” Simpler times obviously.

True, the airline has, to date, returned more than €6 billion to shareholders through one-off special dividends and share buy-backs, but this scheme is different. The cost to Ryanair will be €400 million this year, and could rise to €750 million if the airline achieves its financial targets.

The biggest winner in all this? The very much still living and breathing O’Leary, who remains Ryanair’s largest individual shareholder with a 3.9 per cent stake, and will benefit by €15.6 million this year alone. Sheer lunacy.

Colm Kelleher to share his insights on banking at UK business school

Colm Kelleher from Cork, recently described as “Europe’s most powerful banker” by the Financial Times, is to lecture at Loughborough Business School in Britain. The chair of UBS has accepted the title of Visiting Professor of Banking and Finance at the school. In a statement, Kelleher said: “I look forward to sharing my insights and experience with the students and faculty. Together we can contribute to the advancement and practice in the field of banking and finance.”

And what insights and experience: Kelleher spent 30 years at Morgan Stanley, and was its CFO from 2007 to 2009 during the financial crisis. Earlier this year he led the €3 billion “emergency rescue” of Credit Suisse by its rival UBS. Students beware, though. Known as a great talker with a ready fund of abstruse academic references, Kelleher has also been described as “a disciplinarian known to lock colleagues out of meetings if they are late”.

The Barne Estate and its Cromwell connection

How deeply might the High Court explore the history of the Barne Estate, which is at the centre of a legal action involving billionaire John Magnier and his family? They claim the current owners of the 751-acre residential tillage farm in Tipperary intend to repudiate an agreement to sell it for €15 million. The case has been admitted to the Commercial Court on consent with the defendants, which include the Barne Estate and Richard Thomson-Moore.

The original sales brochure said the farm, 6km west of Clonmel, has been in the ownership of the same family since the 17th century. “Richard Moore, a glover, settled in Clonmel from Barnstaple, Devon in circa 1654, four years after Cromwell had laid siege to Clonmel for three weeks but was defeated,” the brochure said. Which is not quite the full story – while the New Model Army was initially repelled and suffered casualties, the town eventually surrendered.

The brochure avoids saying Cromwell gave the Barne Estate to the Moores, but Rev William P Burke’s A History of Clonmel does make a connection with the Cromwellian settlement. It says Richard Moore was among the “small body of active, enterprising traders” who followed the military settlers into the town. Moore “prospered exceedingly”, and “could not have foreseen in the wildest dreams of ambition” the part which his family were to play in Clonmel affairs.

Lawless brothers team up again at Gresham House

The Lawless brothers, Patrick and Greg, are back in business together. From Howth, the pair both have Davy Stockbrokers on their CVs, as well as Appian Asset Management, where Patrick was CEO, and Greg a shareholder. It was taken over by Gresham House, a UK investment manager, in 2021. That same year Greg oversaw the sale of his Arena Group, the main provider of hospitality structures and seating to sporting events such as the Ryder Cup and Wimbledon tennis championships.

Arena was bought by a United Arab Emirates-led consortium for €84 million, which represented a nice pay-day for the CEO, who owned 3.12 per cent of the company. He also had six million stock options that could be exercised for 1p each when control changed hands, netting another €1.4 million.

Earlier this year, the Lawless brothers were reunited at Gresham House Investments, with Greg joining the board of its commercial property fund as non-executive director. On Tuesday, it launched a €65 million Irish-registered vehicle for institutional investors. Greg’s title is deputy chair of the investment committee, which basically means he’s looking for businesses for the fund to invest in.

I see he’s also joined the board of Tennis Ireland, where Kevin Quinn took over as chief executive earlier this year after moving from Leinster Rugby. Lawless should ace the board meetings: he was a handy Irish tennis junior back in the day.

Web Summit ‘going to go very well’, says Portuguese president

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president of Portugal, clearly believes there is no such thing as bad publicity. He reckons the controversy that recently engulfed the Web Summit, which opens in Lisbon on Monday, may actually have benefited the event.

“[It] is going to go very well,” the president said, according to a report in the newsletter Portugal Today. “And I tell you, ironically, what happened only increased the attention on the Web Summit. It’s the kind of publicity that sometimes seems negative, but is the best publicity: say bad things about me, but talk. Or say there are small problems, but talk.” De Sousa, who sounds every bit as forthright as our own President, adding that for the world to be “messing with” a senior executive from the event “only proves the importance of the Web Summit”.

De Sousa said he would not be officially closing the event next Thursday, but would instead appear on another day “in an unexpected and surprise way, which is much more fun”.

Meanwhile, German economy minister Robert Habeck cancelled a planned trip to Portugal that was to include attending next week’s Web Summit, after more than 300 Israeli entrepreneurs wrote an open letter to him calling for a boycott of the event.

No need to cry for Boohoo’s Irish chief

Another tough week for Offaly businessman John Lyttle, chief executive of the UK online fashion retailer Boohoo. BBC’s Panorama programme sent an undercover reporter into its head office in Manchester, where she worked for 10 weeks as an admin assistant. According to the station, its reporter saw Boohoo staff putting pressure on suppliers to drive prices down, even after orders had been agreed. On one occasion she was told to impose a 5 per cent price cut on more than 400 orders, saving Boohoo thousands of pounds.

While the BBC suggested the fashion retailer had broken a promise to overhaul its standards, Boohoo responded that it experienced significant inflation over the previous year, which it absorbed, but as prices began to fall, suppliers were asked to reflect this through discounts, and these savings were passed on to customers.

Last month Boohoo recorded a 17 per cent drop in revenue for the first half of the year. Retail tycoon Mike Ashley is circling, having built up a 16.5 per cent stake in the company. No need to cry for the Boohoo CEO, though: Lyttle got a £650,000 bonus (€746,000) for the year to February, and took home £1.35 million in pay.