One More Thing

CIARAN HANCOCKon Mueller's cost of living concerns; Jam Media to produce programmes for Cbeebies; Fitzwilliam Square group loses subscription income; €3m investment in Socowave

Socowave nets €3m investment from Balderton

SECURING FUNDING might be a problem for fledgling businesses at the moment but Irish technology group Socowave has netted a €3 million investment from Balderton Capital, whose partner Barry Maloney will join the company’s board.

The investment has given Balderton a 33 per cent stake in the business and placed a value of €9 million on Socowave, which is still in development phase and has yet to book any revenue.

Socowave is developing technology that can be placed directly into antennae for mobile wireless technology.

It claims this will boost the data-handling capability of base stations while also reducing energy consumption.

“The energy consumption is dramatically less; about 40 per cent of the traditional set up,” founder Joe Moore told me this week.

Balderton’s investment will allow Socowave to push ahead with a field trial with a large mobile operator in Madrid next year. “We’ll be spending money on a prototype and increasing the headcount to allow us to develop the business,” Moore says.

He was coy though about the identity of the operator, citing commercial sensitivities.

Moore (55) has been around the block, so to speak. He went to England to complete an engineering apprenticeship and spent 17 years with Motorola.

His time there included a stint in charge of a large chunk of its European business.

He was also a former managing director of Sigma Wireless before setting up Socowave in 2008, with the support of Enterprise Ireland. Socowave currently has nine staff at an office in UCD and a research and development centre in Cork.

“In the next 24 months we’d hope to triple that [staff] number to help us ramp up the development of the company,” Moore says. “We are hoping to get some revenues flowing in 2011.”

BBC kids' shows for Irish animation firm

SOME GOOD news on the employment front. Irish animation group Jam Media has signed a contract with the BBC to produce three children's television series.

Founder John Rice says this will result in the Dublin-based company hiring an additional 40 staff. It currently employs 15 people.

"It covers off the next 2½ years for us in terms of production, which is great," Rice told me this week.

Jam is best known for its interactive cartoon Picme, which it sold to Nickelodeon.

The BBC productions will cost about €11 million, and Rice is hoping to raise about one-quarter of this through a section 481 investment, which offers film tax breaks here.

Rice would only confirm the title of one of the shows - Magic Baby - which Jam will start producing next year. All three will be run on Cbeebies, the Beeb's children's channel, and are aimed at pre-school kids.

Separately, the Kerry-born entrepreneur has taken a 22 per cent stake in new sports website Ubecha.com. It hosts fantasy sports events and holds the pool of money until the game has finished, after which it pays out the prizes minus a 7 per cent administration fee.

Fantasy Football is by far the biggest game. "We're also looking at Aussie Rules, Formula One and golf," Rice says. He adds that Ubecha.com will probably seek to raise about €1.5 million through a tax-efficient business expansion scheme.

So what are the odds on its succeeding? "It's fantasy football with a social network hook and we think it's exciting," Rice says.

Subscriptions to Fitzwilliam Square group down 30%

THE ILL wind of recession appears to have blown across the manicured lawns of Fitzwilliam Square park in Dublin. Accounts lodged by the Fitzwilliam Square Association Ltd show subscription income declined by 30 per cent last year to €36,844.

The association could only trim administrative expenses by 3 per cent to €53,200 and so was left with a loss of €16,356 for the year to the end of January 2010. That gave it accumulated losses of €26,359 at year end, offset by a sinking fund of €25,000.

The directors' report states that its only risk is the non-payment of members' subscriptions. "However, the directors are satisfied that non-payment is unlikely to be significant," it adds.

The association was set up in the early 1970s to "manage, maintain and improve the private park and ornamental gardens" for wealthy residents – including Sir Anthony O'Reilly – and office holders, who have keys.

Former lord mayor Dermot Lacey ran a campaign to open up the park to all but it remains out of bounds to Joe Public.

It was opened up in January 2008 though to developer Garrett Kelleher, who pitched a marquee to launch his 150-storey Chicago Spire with 600 invited guests. The Spire went the way of the Celtic Tiger but the party was a cracker.

Little Things

WHEN IT comes to generating headlines there are few better than Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary.

On Wednesday, O'Leary said Ryanair's Shannon-Paris Beauvais route would close on November 1st, and that the airline would also reduce services to Gatwick and Stansted airports in London.

O'Leary blamed this on an imminent rise in passenger charges at Shannon and the €10 air travel tax – giving both the Dublin Airport Authority and the Government a tongue-lashing in the process.

However, he neglected to mention that Ryanair will restart a route from Shannon to Lanzarote as part of the coming winter schedule. It will only operate once a week, but a new route is a route.

Ryanair's announcement generated plenty of reaction locally.

On local radio, former Shannon Airport Authority board member Tadgh Kearney, who helped to cut the deal on new routes with Ryanair in 2004, gave his view of dealing with O'Leary: "If you kneel before Michael O'Leary, he'll break your knees and then he'll break your back."

Kearney clarified his remarks when I contacted him yesterday. "He's tough to deal with but he will deliver the goods."

First it was the Big Switch to poach electricity customers from ESB, and now Bord Gáis is focusing on the Big Read to attract members for its new online book club.

Bordgaisenergybookclub.ie was formally launched this week by the State-owned gas/electricity supplier, and has already signed up an impressive 2,500 members.

Smart move really. What better way to spend those cold winter nights but with a good book in front of a roaring hot gas-fired radiator with the lights on full blast?

Cable TV and broadband operator UPC has won a two-year contract to supply data services to listed healthcare provider United Drug.

The contract is believed to be worth €200,000 and will involve connecting United Drug's sites on both sides of the Border in Ireland with high bandwidth data links carried over UPC's fibre network.