In short

A roundup of today's other stories in brief.

Senior Eircom manager joins exodus

Eircom personnel chief Brian Montague is leaving the company to become chief executive of law firm A&L Goodbody.

Staff at the telecoms group said yesterday that Mr Montague, group human resources director, plans to leave the company to join the solicitors' practice.

He is the latest member of Eircom's senior management team to leave the company since its takeover by Australian venture capitalist, Babcock & Brown. Chief executive Phil Nolan, finance officer Peter Lynch and commercial director David McRedmond have all left the company since the takeover.

Goodbody advised Eircom on all its transactions since its original flotation.

Five apply to BCI for youth licence

The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland has received five applications for a new youth licence for the midlands/north-east region.

The applications include: ICE FM, which is part of TV3; Spin North East, which is part of Dublin-based Spin; Red FM's Carrarush Limited; I Radio North East & Midlands, run by Dan Healy; and Midlands North East Limited's FM107.

The service will cover Louth, Meath, Cavan, Monaghan, Kildare, North-East Laois, Offaly and Westmeath.

Industrial dispute days cut in half

A total of 1,054 days were lost to industrial disputes during the third quarter of 2006 compared with 2,398 for the same period last year, according to the latest data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

Four disputes began in the third quarter of 2006. Nine disputes began or were in progress in the first nine months of 2006, involving nine firms and a total of 6,262 days lost. During that period, the construction sector accounted for just over 63 per cent of the total days lost and almost 18 per cent were accounted for by the manufacturing sector.

Musgrave wins family honour

Musgrave Group, the SuperValu and Centra franchise operator, has won the Business Success Award at the fourth annual JP Morgan Private Bank Family Business Honours gala dinner in London.

JP Morgan Private Bank created the honours programme in 2003 to raise awareness of the significant role that family businesses play in entrepreneurship, employment and wealth creation.

Irish Nationwide raises £250m

Irish Nationwide Building Society has raised £250 million (€370 million) in tier 2 capital. It is the first time the building society has raised capital and the orderbook was four times over-subscribed, it said.

The bulk of the order book was from British institutions, although a number of institutions from Ireland, Denmark and Norway also took part. The arrangers were BNP Paribas, with Davy and Danske Bank as co-leads.

Eircom cited for slow unbundling

Communications watchdog Comreg has criticised Eircom over the pace of rollout of local loop unbundling (LLU) in the past year.

Comreg cited poor performance by Eircom in repairing faults, significant problems in order provisioning and restrictions imposed on consumers' ability to move between service providers.

"The pace at which these are being addressed is clearly unacceptable in a dynamic market," said Comreg commissioner John Doherty.