In short

A round-up of today's other business news in brief ...

Whatswhat.ie creating 50 sales jobs

Online business directory Whatswhat.ie is creating 50 sales agent positions across the country.

The Irish-owned company, founded in 2002 by Barbara Gordon, is expanding its sales team due to a substantial increase in traffic to its website.

The company announced yesterday that it was recruiting 10 area managers and 40 area sales agents. The recruits will work on a self-employed basis.

The website currently attracts an average of 4,000 visitors a day and up to 3.5 million hits a month.

Peugeot Citroën posts 343m loss

Peugeot Citroën does not expect to return to profit until 2010 after it made an unexpected loss for 2008 following hefty writedowns as the global economic crisis puts the brakes on car sales.

The group posted a €343 million net loss, and said it would focus on cutting stocks and minimising cash burn in 2009, when it expects another loss. – (Reuters)

Castlemartyr Hotel to reopen in April

The board of Dromoland Castle has confirmed that it will take over the management of Castlemartyr Hotel in Cork, which closed in November just over a year after it opened. Andrew Phelan has been appointed general manager of the luxury hotel, which will reopen to guests on April 3rd.

Castlemartyr Hotel is holding a recruitment day today.

Credit Suisse posts record annual loss

Credit Suisse posted a worse-than-expected fourth- quarter net loss of six billion Swiss francs (€4 billion), taking it to its biggest annual loss on record, due to a poor trading performance and restructuring charges.

However, the Swiss bank said it had a made a “strong start” to 2009, and all its divisions were showing a pretax profit in the year to date. – (Reuters)

Ulster Bank rating downgraded

International ratings agency Fitch has downgraded Northern Ireland-based Ulster Bank Ltd’s (UBL) individual rating to “C/D” from “B/C” in light of the bank’s “tight capitalisation” and exposure to property development finance.

However, it left UBL’s long-term issuer default rating (IDR) unchanged at “A+” with a “stable” outlook, reflecting the high probability of support from its parent group, Royal Bank of Scotland, in case of need.

Revenues up 13% at Genzyme

Genzyme, which employs 450 people at its biotechnology facility in Waterford, yesterday reported a 13 per cent increase in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2008 to $1.17 billion (€900 million), which brought total revenues for the year to €4.6 billion.

Net profit rose to $86.7 million, or 31 cents a share, from $78.9 million, or 29 cents a share, a year ago.

Future of Fortis in doubt

The future of Fortis was thrown into doubt yesterday when shareholders voted against selling parts of the financial group to French bank BNP Paribas and against the nationalisation of the banking and insurance group in the Netherlands.

Fortis was one of the first European banks to seek a state bailout last September but has since been split into nationalised Dutch banking and insurance businesses, a state-owned Belgian bank, and the listed group running the remaining insurance arm. – ( Financial Timesservice)