In Short

Other business stories in brief

An Post gets Lottery extension

The Minister for Finance has announced that he has decided to grant An Post National Lottery a two-year extension of the licence to operate the National Lottery.

The current licence is due to expire at the end of 2008 and the company had sought an extension.

In a statement Mr Cowen said that following consideration of the issues, including the satisfactory performance of the National Lottery company to date, and its medium term plans, that an extension to the current licence was appropriate.

The Department will put arrangements in place in due course for the award of a successor licence to take effect from the beginning of 2011, it said.

Coolagh Group expands

Kerry-based Garvey Group has bought Coolagh Service Station in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, from a local businessman for an undisclosed sum.

This brings to three the number of forecourts owned by Garvey, which also owns the Garvey's Supervalu store in the town centre. The 25 people employed at the service station will be taken on by Garvey.

Creameries group to cut directors

Donegal Creameries has announced that it will reduce the number of directors on its board from 26 to 11. The company said this reduction in the size of the board was being made to improve its effectiveness and to strengthen the company's commitment to the standards of the combined code on corporate governance.

Speaking at its annual general meeting on Thursday, Donegal Creameries chairman, Lexie Tinney, said it had a satisfactory start to 2006 with all businesses performing broadly on plan.

Hibernian re-opens property fund

Hibernian Life & Pensions has re-opened its Irish property fund. The company had decided to re-open the fund following its investment in the AIB bank centre in Ballsbridge. The fund is managed by Hibernian Investment Managers and had returned 14.8 per cent in the last year. It is now valued at over €250 million.

AMD shares fall on sales warning

Shares in Advanced Micro Devices fell as much as 5.8 per cent yesterday on the back of a second-quarter sales warning.

AMD, which is being hurt by a price war with bigger rival Intel, said it expected revenues to be around $1.2 billion ( €0.93 billion) for the quarter ending June 30 - 9 per cent lower than those of the first quarter.

It had previously forecast sales would be flat to slightly down, and consensus estimates among analysts were for revenues of $1.3 billion. AMD blamed lower sales of entry level and mainstream processors for desktop and laptop PCs.

Intel has been aggressively cutting prices in these segments to win back market share, clear out excess inventory and make way for a new generation of processors appearing over the summer. - (Financial Times service)

Insurance profits

An article in Business This Week referred to Irish motor insurers making large profits consistently between 1997 and 2003. According to the Irish Insurance Federation motor insurers made consistent and significant underwriting losses for each year from 1997 to 2001.

The insurers made operating profits in 1997 and 1998 and operating losses in 1999, 2000 and 2001 and before returning to profit in 2002.