Seen or heard

The Sunday Times reports that the Government is to generate €500 million from the auction of licences for high-speed broadband and 4G mobile services.

ComReg, the communications regulator, has set a minimum price of €410 million for 28 lots of radio spectrum, although competition is expected to drive the sale price higher.

The process should be completed by the end of July, the paper reports. Likely bidders are expected to include Ireland’s four main mobile operators, Vodafone, O2, Meteor and 3, while the auction may attract new players.

Thirteen lots of 800MHz and 900 MHz spectrum will be sold at a minimum price of €20 million each, while 15 lots of 1800 MHz spectrum will be sold at a minimum of €10 million. The prices are higher than expected, the paper said, although Comreg said they were set at the “conservative lower” end of an international benchmark. Comreg will limit the amount any one bidder can acquire.

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According to the Sunday Business Post last week’s deal on the Anglo promissory note generated “serious tensions” between the Government and the European Central Bank (ECB). A tough stance by the ECB necessitated a late move to get Bank of Ireland involved in the middle of the deal, the paper states.

The original Government plan to give a long-term bond to IBRC was scuppered by the ECB, the paper reports, which believed that extending ECB cash to a State-owned bank on those terms could breach its own rules. The Government now faces “a major job” in winning additional concessions, the paper reports.

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A report in the Sunday Independent states that the Central Bank and senior executives in Irish Nationwide knew about the problems in the building society nine years before the banking sector began to unravel.

A report from KPMG, dated October 12th, 2000, was submitted to Michael Walsh when he became chairman of Irish Nationwide in May 2011,

The 44-page report details an array of problems within the society. The building society was warned that it was over-exposing itself to individual borrowers, according to the report.