In Short

A round-up of today's other business stories

Tax adviser to succeed Bernanke

Edward Lazear, a member of President Bush's advisory panel on federal tax reform, is a leading candidate to replace Ben Bernanke as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), current and former administration officials said yesterday.

Mr Bernanke, who was last week nominated to replace Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve, is helping with the search for his successor, and Mr Lazear is a leading candidate among a small number of contenders.

Mr Lazear, a professor of economics and human resources management at Stanford business school, is primarily known as a labour economist. - (Financial Times service)

Irish employers bullish on jobs

Irish entrepreneurs are more confident of creating jobs than their European peers, according to a new study.

A survey of entrepreneurs in 44 countries found that Irish entrepreneurs rank alongside Britain and just behind the US, Australia and New Zealand in terms of the numbers expecting to employ 20 or more people over the next five years.

Accounting firm Mazars, carried out the survey with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

IMSG opts for London listing

International Marketing & Sales Group (IMSG), which is registered in the Republic but operates mostly in Russia, announced its intention yesterday to float on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (Aim).

IMSG employs 463 people and its clients include multinational and Russian companies operating in telecommunications, consumer goods, retail trade, banking and finance, automotive and pharmaceutical industries.

Turnover for 2004 rose by 75 per cent to €17.5 million, with pretax profits increasing over 200 per cent to €1.5 million.

Canada Life appoints director

Canada Life has appointed former Bank of Ireland Asset Management chief executive Willie Cotter as a non-executive director.

Mr Cotter has links with Canada Life going back over 20 years when he was involved in a joint venture between Bank of Ireland and the life and pensions group.

Lenovo reports 22% earnings rise

China's Lenovo Group reported a better-than-expected 22 per cent jump in quarterly earnings yesterday, but investors dumped its shares on profit-taking and concerns about falling margins.

After initially reacting with scepticism, investors have gradually warmed to Lenovo's $1.25 billion (€1.04 billion) purchase of IBM's PC assets in April, making it the world's third-largest personal computer maker.

Lenovo earned a profit of HK$354 million for the three months through September, compared with HK$290 million in the same period a year earlier. That beat the average forecast of HK$344 million. - (Reuters)

British house prices on the rise

British house prices rose in October at their fastest pace in 15 months, the Nationwide Building Society said yesterday, in another sign the property market is stabilising after a sharp slowdown in the last year.

The mortgage lender said prices rose 1.3 per cent last month, bringing the annual rate of gain up for the first time this year to 3.3 per cent from a nine-year low of 1.8 per cent in September, as the Bank of England's August rate cut helped boost consumer confidence. - (Reuters)