Mixed messages from Europe on debt
Ardagh has few problems raising cash to fund its transactions.
It has issued about €2.7 billion worth of bonds since the Impress deal went through in late 2010. Lenders clearly think that it is a good bet.
In 2011, the company announced plans to float, but subsequently put them on hold, as it became clear that the turmoil that gripped the markets was not going to end any time soon.
It is committed to floating, once there are real signs that the turbulence has passed.
Given the ease with which it has been able to raise cash to date, it looks like it can get along without the troublesome equity markets for now.
Online time-wasting that’s worthwhile
For those who have time to waste and want to do so on the internet, socialbakers.comis a reasonable port of call.The Czech-based social media monitoring start-up, backed by Index and Earlybird venture funding, has gained significant traction among big business and brands keen to assess their impact on social networks.
On the site you can look at what pages, brands and Twitter accounts etc are getting the most interest in your country and advertising data such as cost per click or per thousand impressions.You can also do a “fake follower check” to “determine the authenticity of your followers” on Twitter.
For Facebook, the latest stats say Ireland has 2.25 million users, and a 72.1 per cent penetration of the online population. For the population generally, the penetration is 48.7 per cent.
That is a huge number considering the fact that children under 13 shouldn’t be on the service, and older people (say more than 65) tend not to be.The number of users of the site grew by 127,060 over the past six months, according to the site.
More than half of all users were aged 18 to 34. The top five Irish Facebook pages indicate that our musicians are our most popular product among the global Facebook population, with some competition from alcoholic drink.
The top Irish pages, in descending order, are: U2, the Script, the Cranberries, Baileys (the drinks brand), and Enya.This music-leaning impression is reinforced by the stats on Irish Twitteraccounts that the service monitors and which show that Niall Horan (@NiallOfficial) of boy band One Direction has by far the most popular account, with 8.9 million followers. The second ranked account is Tim O’Reilly, (@timoreilly) the Cork-born US-based businessman and open source activist. The third is our very own Jedward (@planetjedward), who have 734,358 followers.
Overall, the figures and data on most popular sites/accounts etc indicate that when it comes to time-wasting, the Irish are no slouchers.
