Little things

Aer Lingus has hired UK agency Golley Slater to handle marketing and public relations for the launch of its new base at London’s Gatwick airport in April.

Golley Slater has won awards for its role in developing recruitment advertisements for the British army. This might come in handy given that Aer Lingus has effectively parked its tank on easyJet’s lawn.

Accounts just filed for UPC Communications – which operates cable television companies NTL and Chorus – show it recorded a loss of €11.6 million on revenues of €37.9 million in the nine months to the end of December 2007.

The accounts show that the company received a capital contribution of €342 million from its immediate parent company, Limerick-registered UPC Broadband. Curiously, the accounts state that UPC’s 845 staff were paid an aggregate €5.8 million in wages and salaries – an average of just €6,886. Clearly, this is one Irish company not suffering from competitive problems.

Johnston Press’s largesse when it came to buying Irish regional newspapers was truly extraordinary. It is estimated to have spent €250 million buying up regional papers here earlier this decade when we were all high on the smell of money.

But just 12 months ago, when the economy was starting to melt, the Scottish media group was given the green light by the Competition Authority to proceed with a £1.5 million (the equivalent of about €2.2 million at that time) acquisition of the weekly freesheet South Tipp Today.

It was a hefty price to pay for a paper with a 20,000 circulation, net assets of €249,000 and turnover of about €500,000.

Not that its then owners, Joseph O’Sullivan and Ann Brennan, will be complaining.