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High rollers face pension squeeze

The best news, analysis and comment from The Irish Times business desk

Some well paid executives may be caught out by auto-enrolment.

Peter Flanagan's face
Peter Flanagan
Tue Apr 30 2024 - 06:28

High-paid executives who have stopped contributions to their pensions to avoid breaching a €2 million tax-friendly threshold will inadvertently find themselves signed up to the Republic’s incoming auto-enrolment (AE) pension regime. Joe Brennan has the story.

Tesla has moved closer to introducing its self-driving system to China after a government-backed body approved its handling of personal data. Elon Musk’s company has also agreed a deal with China’s Baidu for the mapping and navigation technology self-driving vehicles need, according to media reports. Denis Staunton reports.

Staying with Tesla, Neil Briscoe reports that Tesla the car maker again been cutting the prices of its biggest-selling Model Y and Model 3 electric cars around the world in response to a continuing stalling of global electric car sales, and ever-increasing competition from Chinese brands.

As influencers become an ever greater part of our lives, in her column, Bernice Harrison looks at what regulators are clamping down on influencers and how they are used for advertising.

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In Your Money, Fiona Reddan looks at the bond market and asks if it can ever be a wise investment for individual investors. Meanwhile Dominic Coyle answers questions on what impact an inheritance could have on welfare payments, and why CRH is apologising for the impact of shifting its listing to the US on dividend payments.

After Bankinter said it would enter the Irish banking market on Friday, Cantillon reflects on why the Spanish lender is using what until recently had been a relatively unusual route into the Irish market. Cantillon also notes why we are all still paying for uninsured drivers, and asks if Irish companies are really ready for the coming AI revolution.

It’s a few years since Yanis Varoufakis was raging against the ECB and IMF as Greek finance minister during the euro crisis, but it did his public profile no harm at least, especially quitting after then Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras accepted the terms of his country’s bailout. Still, Varoufakis is sticking to his guns. He tells us why Ireland should have told the ECB to “bugger off.”

The Labour Court is expected to deliver its recommendation in relation to a pay claim worth more than 20 per cent over three years by Ialpa on behalf of pilots at Aer Lingus over the coming week. Emmet Malone reports.

Fingal County Council has refused planning permission for a boutique-style hotel in Howth which had been proposed by a company owned by mixed martial artist (MMA) Conor McGregor. Gordon Deegan has the details.

The Irish economy returned to growth in the first quarter of 2024 as activity in the State’s multinational-dominated technology sector increased. As Eoin Burke-Kennedy reports, according to preliminary data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 1.1 per cent in January, February and March when compared with the previous three months.

Staying with the economy, Eoin reports that inflation fell to a three-year low of 1.6 per cent in April, according to the Central Statistics Office’s latest flash estimate for the harmonised index of consumer prices.

European Green Transition (EGT), a company floated by serial entrepreneur Cathal Friel in London earlier this month, has acquired an option to buy into a project to extract copper left over from a Cypriot mine that was in production for four decades until 1978. Joe has the story.

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