In Short

A round-up of today's other stories in brief

Adviser warns on pension tax break cuts

Personal investment adviser Financial Engineering yesterday warned Minister for Finance Brian Cowen that cutting tax breaks for privately-owned pensions could have "disastrous consequences".

The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) recently recommended that the €1.5 billion spent annually on this tax break should go to social welfare pensions.

Speaking at the opening of its new offices in Dublin, which Mr Cowen attended, Financial Engineering managing director, Dave Gribben, said reducing the tax break did not make any sense in light of the pension funding problem facing the State.

Persian Gold finds gold indicators

AIM-listed Persian Gold has taken approximately 25,000 rock chip geochemical samples from its 1,800sq km concession area in Iran, the company said yesterday.

The samples have been analysed and a number of gold anomalies have been identified, said chairman John Teeling.

He was speaking at the plc's publication of its interim results for the six months to June 30th, 2005. The recently listed company has reserves of £1.2 million (€1.78 million) "and so we are well financed for the current exploration programme," he said.

Communication sector earns €4bn

Irish people spent close to €4 billion on telephone and electronic communications services in the year to the end of June, the latest figures show.

Communications regulator Comreg yesterday published a quarterly market review showing that the Republic's telecoms and broadcasting companies earned €3.9 billion in revenues in the 12 months to the end of June.

The overall revenues represented a drop of 4 per cent on the year to the end of last March. Comreg blamed seasonal factors in the mobile and fixed-line markets for the fall.

Over nine out of 10 Irish people have mobile phones. Over the 12 months to the end of June, Irish people sent an average of 91 text messages a month to each other.

Glanbia chief raises €130,000 in sale

William Murphy, a non-executive director of Glanbia, raised €130,000 from the sale of 50,000 shares in the company, at a price of €2.60 each last Thursday.

Heinz to sell its frozen food unit

Food giant HJ Heinz said yesterday it is looking to sell on its European seafood, vegetable and frozen food operations as it tries to focus on ketchup and other businesses to drive up earnings.

The overhaul of the European portfolio would replicate steps that Heinz took in recent years to jump start its North American business.

"The final phase of our transformation is to fix Europe like we did north America," chief executive William Johnson said in a meeting with financial analysts yesterday.

The European business has suffered from higher costs in the seafood business and the growth of deep discount retailers. Among the brands Heinz is putting up for sale are John West and HAK.

It plans to concentrate on products like ketchup, sauces and baby foods. The moves are part of Heinz' latest three-year plan. Its last three-year plan, unveiled in 2002, led to an overhaul of the north American consumer products business, including the sale of Starkist Tuna and other big brands to Del Monte Foods.