Business | NEWS
MInISTer o’Keeffe AnnoUnceS 300 joBS In corK AS
PArT of €3.5M ABTrAn InveSTMenT
THE MINISTER FOR ENTERPRISE, Trade and Innovation, Batt O’Keeffe TD, announced that business process outsourcing firm, Abtran is to create 300 high-value jobs over the next three years in Cork as part of a €3.5 million investment in research and development.
Supported by Enterprise Ireland, the 300 new jobs will be in management, business administration, finance, resource planning, information technology, and human resources. Further jobs will be created in providing finance, administration, sales and customer service support for Abtran’s clients. Abtran, which employs 1,000 workers, is the largest Irish company providing clients with business process services from finance and administration to sales and customer service. The announcement follows a €6 million Enterprise Ireland-backed investment announced by the Taoiseach last year which created over 250 jobs in Abtran’s Learning and Innovation Centre. The investment plan announced by Minister O’Keeffe in
April will enable Abtran to further enhance its expertise in business process development, allowing the company to innovate and target emerging market opportunities.
Abtran will use the new processes, knowledge and expertise to position Ireland as a centre of excellence in the €300 billion global business processes industry. “Enterprise Ireland’s strategy is to promote the development of innovative world-class Irish companies and help them grow to achieve strong positions in global markets,” said Chief Executive of Enterprise Ireland, Frank Ryan, speaking at the announcement. “Abtran is a prime example of such a company, focused on driving future growth through investment and research and development. This ambitious research and development project is the next significant step in the evolution of Abtran and towards its goal of becoming a world-leader in business process outsourcing.”
companies registration office upgrades its website
THE COMPANIES
REGISTRATION OFFICE’S (CRO)
redesigned and revamped website (
www.cro.ie) has been officially launched. The upgraded site has increased accessibility and usability as well as featuring an improved appearance. Users are able to navigate in either English or Irish on approximately 180 pages of the website, while the search
facility has been upgraded and information leaflets are available bilingually for download. The site is very widely used and is considered a vital source of information for company directors with over 100,000 unique visitors per month and 322,000 documents retrieved and purchased through it in 2009. In addition, 50 per cent of
european IPo market showing some recovery
THE EUROPEAN INITIAL PUBLIC
OFFERINGS (IPOs) market is showing some recovery in both numbers and value of IPO deals in the first quarter of 2010 when compared to 2009, according to PwC’s first quarter European IPO Watch.
just €35 million at a time when stock exchanges were suffering severely from the worldwide loss of confidence in the capital markets and the recession.
There were 77 IPOs on European exchanges in the first quarter of 2010 with an offering value of €4,671 million, along with 55 listings that raised €5,247 million in the last three months of 2009. Both quarters showed a dramatic improvement over the dismal first quarter of 2009 when Europe managed just 16 IPOs with a combined value of
By contrast the volume of IPOs on the US exchanges fell to 27 with an offering value of €2,968 million in the first quarter of 2010, well down on the previous quarter when 35 IPOs with an offering value of €11,557 million were recorded. It is the first time since the fourth quarter of 2008 that the offering value of IPOs in Europe has exceeded those on the US exchanges.
“Cautious recovery remain the watchwords for European IPO
all company documents are now filed online through the website making filing faster. This function
saved companies an estimated €3.6 million in 2009. In its first four weeks in
operation the new site has already had over 100,000 unique visitors with the company search function accounting for one third of all hits to the site.
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markets as investors continue to be focused on value against a background of economic uncertainty,” said John Casey of PricewaterhouseCoopers Ireland. “We have seen a number of abortive attempts in Europe to get IPOs away during the first quarter, but at the same time others have been successful and raised substantial sums where pricing has proved attractive in what is still a buyer’s market.” “With economic confidence across European markets remaining fragile, and with concerns over levels of government debt and political uncertainty in countries such as
the UK, it is difficult to forecast when the IPO markets are likely to fully rebound. Our prediction of the IPO markets gaining pace in the second quarter of the year may prove short-lived unless confidence shortly returns to the market. Above all, it remains a buyer’s market.”
InBusiness May 10 5
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