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

Regulator fines Fexco 80,000

Fexco Stockbroking, a division of the Co Kerry financial services group, has been hit with a record fine by the Financial Regulator for failing to keep adequate control and credit credit risk measures.

The firm must pay a penalty of €80,000, which is the largest fine imposed by the regulator since it received powers to sanction companies in 2004.

The regulator said the stockbroking firm, which has offices in Dublin and Cork, failed to maintain adequate control systems to ensure compliance under client money requirements and failed to "develop and maintain systems to monitor and control credit risk".

Denis Crowley, a director of the stockbroking firm, said the "prudential fine" arose from an inspection by the regulator last July and related to "internal administration" and "procedural and documentary issues".

The regulator said Fexco had confirmed it had "rectified the majority of these breaches and is currently addressing the balance". The regulator also confirmed that there had been no loss to any customer and that no client had made a complaint about the breaches.

 Fyffes chairman's €946,000 pay package

David McCann, the executive chairman of Fyffes, received a pay package worth €946,000 last year, including a salary of €575,000 and a bonus of €225,000, according to the fruit group's annual report.

Chief executive Jimmy Tolan was awarded a total of €677,000, while chief operating officer Coen Bos received €671,000.

Finance director Tom Murphy was paid €497,000. Six non-executive directors shared a total of €260,000.

Northern Rock loss

Northern Rock, the British government-owned bank, sank to a loss last year and expects more losses for the next three years as rising bad debts on risky assets and home loans aggravated its funding crisis.

Britain's biggest casualty of the global credit crisis reported a statutory loss before tax of £168 million in 2007, compared with a £627 million profit in 2006. The bank, which was nationalised last month and which owes £24 billion to the Bank of England, expects to remain "significantly loss-making" in 2008.

- (Bloomberg)

Airport debt report

Former trade union leader Peter Cassells yesterday delivered to Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey a report on how Cork airport's €220 million debt should be carved up. The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) and its Cork equivalent disagree on how the debt should be split between them. The DAA, which is responsible for Cork Airport, has argued that Cork is sufficiently profitable to support a debt of €100 million. The Department declined to comment on the content of the report last night.

€1.5 trillion debt

The Republic's external debt exceeded €1.52 trillion at the end of December, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The level of debt increased €33 billion since the end of September.

However, much of the external debt is offset by holdings of foreign financial assets by Irish residents, the CSO said. The liabilities of financial institutions amounted to €785 billion and represented 51 per cent of the debt, while a large negative balance at monetary authorities at the end of September swung into a positive balance of €702 million by the end of the year.