A round-up of today's other stories in brief.
Davy takes stockbroker awards
Davy has emerged as the top stockbroking firm, according to Finance magazine's annual stockbroking survey for 2006. The firm has scooped 13 titles, including recapturing the Best Irish Equity Research Overall title that it lost to Goodbody in last year's survey.
Goodbody came second, taking 11 titles. Davy and Goodbody are tied in top position of the stockbroking firm ratings for 2006.
African Diamonds 'making progress'
African Diamonds yesterday released its results for the year to the end of June, saying it had made substantial progress towards becoming the operator of a world-class diamond mine. The company, which is a long way off producing diamonds, is working on the AK6 site in Botswana with partner De Beers and during the year raised estimates for the resource at the site by 50 per cent to more than 60 million tonnes. The pretax loss was £385,637 (€573,639).
Ulster Bank raises funds of €3.9bn
Ulster Bank Group has raised funds of €3.9 billion in the largest Irish securitisation to date. This is the first mortgage-backed securitisation of Ulster Bank mortgages, and the funds will be used to support continued expansion.
Ryanair unveils route changes
Ryanair unveiled six new routes across Europe yesterday, but is also cutting six existing routes, including Frankfurt-Shannon. The airline also announced that it was increasing the frequency of flights from Cork and Shannon.
Minco's Mexico study due in 2007
AIM-listed exploration group Minco said the pre-feasibility study on its zinc, silver, copper and lead project in Bilbao, Mexico will be complete early next year. So far 7,135m of drilling has been completed.
NI jobs hit record high of 704,390
The seasonally adjusted estimate of jobs in Northern Ireland reached a record high of 704,390 in September, according to the latest Labour Force Survey.
The survey also found that the number claiming unemployment benefit fell by 400 in November to 27,400, or 3.2 per cent of the workforce. But the number of redundancies rose to 257, up from 230 the previous month and just 89 in November 2005.
Citigroup to buy Quilter for $500m
US banking giant Citigroup has agreed to buy wealth manager Quilter from rival Morgan Stanley in a deal understood to be worth about $500 million (€378.7 million). Quilter, which manages assets worth more than £5.6 billion (€8.3 billion), has a Dublin office.
Wavin's full-year revenue
In our issue of December 12th, it was reported that Wavin expects full-year profits of €1.5 billion. This should have read full-year revenue of €1.5 billion.
