FORGET about technology, genetics and pharmaceuticals. If it’s the next big thing you’re looking for, lower your sights a little and consider the merits of rubbish. Waste management seems to be just about the hottest sector around with no shortage of big-name players trying to break into the industry.

Treasury Holdings, which is displaying an appetite for investments well beyond its original specialised area of property development, is in the thick of negotiations with investors to raise the funds required to revive Herhof Environmental, the waste management business it acquired in 2003 for €20m.

The German company with pan-European contracts, is currently in administration but if Treasury’s owners, Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett, can effect a rescue expect Quinlan Private, the top-end private equity house run by Derek Quinlan, to take a slug of the action. Don’t bother trying to work out the relationship between waste management and Quinlan’s investment in trophy assets such as Claridge’s hotel. There isn’t any. It’s all about money,

not synergy.

Separately, Philip Lynch’s move on NTR has more to do with the company’s ownership of Greenstar than its much-publicised control of the country’s money-making toll roads. Lynch’s IAWS Co-op has acquired a blocking stake in NTR valued at more than €160m. Tom Roche, the biggest shareholder in NTR, will possibly be cursing his decision to allow share trading in the grey market in his not-quite-public company. Lynch is keeping everybody guessing as to the endgame but Roche may find ridding himself of this unexpected shareholder could cost him ownership of Greenstar.

Confirmation that waste is the biggest game in town was last week’s deal involving Bill McCabe, a pioneer of

the Irish technology industry, who knows an opportunity when he sees one.

McCabe’s Bedminster International has signed a €200m deal with one of New York’s largest construction outfits that will see his company “convert post-consumer organic material into a high-quality biofuel in the United States”. Bedminster will initially process 200 tons of organic material, doubling at full capacity.

The ink was barely dry on the American venture when McCabe’s investment vehicle, Oyster Technologies, confirmed our report from last November that it was set to become a big player in AES, one of the country’s leading waste management companies. The industry may not smell that sweet but it’s attracting investors like flies to . . . well, you know.

Bubble trouble

There is nothing in the economic news emanating from the eurozone’s biggest members to suggest that the European Central Bank will be moved to increase interest rates any time soon. However, growing concern that France is enjoying house-price inflation similar to the double-digit levels previously confined to Ireland and the UK could give central bankers an excuse to take action.

Ireland, as one leading international fund manager said last week, “is in the top tier” of European country performers but as a small member of the eurozone our house-price inflation was never going to influence monetary policy in Frankfurt. The British housing experience, of course, is totally irrelevant to Europe’s policymakers since our closest neighbour is not even a member of the euro currency area.

While property-price inflation in the eurozone hit 8.7% last year, the rises in Spain (17.2%) and France (15.5%) outpaced the 8.6% recorded at home. Those familiar with the inner workings of the ECB claim it is the rampant asset-price inflation in his home country that has inspired Jean-Claude Trichet, the French-born president of the bank, to refer to the unsustainabilty of house prices in certain parts of the eurozone.

In the absence of market cooling, homeowners could soon face higher mortgage repayments for reasons totally unrelated to economic fundamentals.

Medical matters

Diageo, the international drinks giant, claims to be worried about what it calls “ongoing difficulties in the on-trade” but you could have fooled us. In the six months to the end of December the company saw Guinness volumes decline by 1% but, hey, not to worry because it still managed to push up its sales by 5% after excluding excise duties. The company says this was achieved “with some benefit from pricing”, a strategy that has a limited shelf life.

Consumer resistance to the cost of drink in pubs has been growing over the past 12 months and with publicans dropping their own prices in an attempt to drum up business we imagine that Diageo, which remains the biggest drinks distributor in the country, will eventually be forced to share the burden.

Nurse, the screens

Denis Brosnan and his fellow shareholders at Barchester probably weren’t too surprised when the former top management team of Westminster Health Care, acquired by Brosnan’s nursing home business late last year for £525m (€760m), turned up for work at Four Seasons, an arch rival, last month.

Tony Heywood, Nick Mitchell, and Tim Street, respectively Westminster’s former chief executive, finance director and director of corporate development, have taken the reins at the UK’s second- biggest healthcare operator after Bupa.

The management trio, backed by Charterhouse, had thought they were competing with the private equity group Blackstone to acquire Westminster before Brosnan, backed by John Magnier, JP McManus and Dermot Desmond, blew the competition out of the water.

Despite raking in millions from the deal the emergence of Barchester did not please Heywood who would have anticipated making even more had his own bid succeeded. Westminster has a very motivated rival as it pursues its UK growth strategy.