In Short

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

Thomas Crosbie buys Echo group

homas Crosbie Holdings (TCH), which owns the Examiner newspaper, last night purchased the Wexford-based Echo group in a deal believed to be worth €12-€15 million. TCH now owns 18 papers.

The main beneficiaries of the deal are believed to be the Buttle family, which owns a number of businesses in Co Wexford. The newspaper group publishes papers in Wexford, Gorey, New Ross and Enniscorthy. The group has been for sale for several years. The Buttle family also has shares in South East Radio.

Fewer firms report vacancies

Job vacancies have declined slightly with the proportion of firms reporting vacancies decreasing by 2 percentage points to 14 per cent.

The latest employment and vacancies survey by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and Fás shows the construction and services sectors reporting a rise in vacancies, while the proportion of reported vacancies in the retail sector fell by 3 percentage points.

In spite of the decline in current vacancies, employer sentiment in the retail sector remained strong and reached its most optimistic level since October 2002.

Sentiment over prospects for current vacancies in the industrial sector remained flat, but expectations for the sector were more pessimistic than at any time in two years, with 11 per cent of employers feeling that employment levels will decrease rather than increase over the coming months.

Former Elan chair exercises options

Garo Armen, the former chairman of Elan, has realised a paper profit of about $2.65 million (€2.2 million) by exercising share options in the pharmaceutical firm. Mr Armen, a non-executive director of Elan, exercised 250,000 options at $3.84. The shares were trading yesterday at $14.44 in New York.

Contact4 expands to 80 employees

Contact4, the call centre operator owned by Cork native Pearse Flynn, said it has become the largest employer in west Kerry.

Its Dingle call centre now employs 80 people after opening almost a year ago with just 34 staff. Contact4 runs five call centres in Ireland and Scotland for companies operating in financial services and telephony, among other industries.

PwC conference on film finance

The Dublin International Film Festival will host Ireland's first film industry conference on February 23rd to address the changing nature of film finance in Europe.

The conference, sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers, will bring together leading film producers, financiers and industry advisors to discuss the challenges and opportunities in the Irish film industry.

PricewaterhouseCoopers expects the Irish film market to be worth $520 million (€435 million) by 2009, up from a 2004 valuation of $389 million.

Irish Broadband appoints chief

Wireless broadband provider Irish Broadband named Neil Parkinson, a former chief executive of Esat Group, as chief executive to help the company achieve its target of 75,000 customers before the end of this year.

Mr Parkinson has been working for Irish Broadband, which currently has 20,000 customers, on a consultancy basis for a number of months.