Sports Calendar

For Amos, let’s hope 888.com is a bit more harmonious than the fractious Gresham boardroom.

Also on the gaming front, Ireland’s least-known quoted company, New Media Lottery Services (NMLS), floated on Aim on St Patrick’s Day. The American-owned company is based here and has won a deal to supply the charity Rehab with mobile and internet games.

NMLS had planned to raise £6m (€8.6m), but trimmed the placing back to £1.8m. Maybe it’s planning a rollover.

In-house financial advice is a load of hocus pocus

BANK of Ireland has appointed special “in branch” SSIA advisers to tell you what to do with your money. That role is normally reserved for an in-house spouse.

Prepare over the next few months to be assaulted by a barrage of financial institutions trying to tell you what is best. Tell them all to sling their collective hook. Spend the money on a week in Sandy Lane, if that is your wont, put it on a nag at Leopardstown or stuff it in your pension.

(As far we know, Paddy Power is not employing an “in bookie” SSIA adviser to tell you which horses to back.) Based on previous experience, from insurance misselling at Irish Life, overcharging at NIB and forex diddling at AIB, you would be better off consulting tarot cards then sitting down with a bank’s financial advisers.

It is like the free financial health check, so beloved of banks. If you have a cough, you don’t go to Glaxo Smith Kline.

To paraphrase a certain ad campaign, whatever you want to be, you want to be an adult and make up your own mind.

• When BT Ireland boss Danny McLaughlin said recently that a €100m network investment programme was being put on hold as Eircom was not opening up its network to rivals, his comments rang a bell.
  
  In 2004, another BT executive, Andy Green, said that the firm was putting a €100m per annum spend on hold unless Eircom agreed to single billing and wholesale line rental. Both were introduced, but the sterling stayed firmly in the pocket. McLaughlin said: “There will come a time when credibility will be an issue.” Quite.

McLaughlin has been worried about the progress of local loop unbundling (LLU) or the opening up of Eircom exchanges to competitors. LLU in Ireland is among the lowest in Europe, alongside Britain, where the incumbent is, of course, BT.

Meanwhile, Comreg’s credibility took a battering last week when Ireland Offline claimed Irish phone prices were among the highest in Europe. The lobby group blamed the regulator for letting Eircom get away with murder on its line rental rates. In fairness, this was a point made by Green two years ago.

• AIB shareholders should be rubbing their hands with glee at getting the chance to approve a compensation package for the departing chief financial officer, Gary Kennedy. The one-time Nortel networks boss is leaving the bank with a €2m pension top-up and €580,000 compensation for loss of office. The agreement also provides for Kennedy to be hired as “a special adviser on finance and risk” for two years. The advisory post does not preclude him from taking other jobs. Once the consultancy is over, Kennedy’s pension will kick in. He also received €150,000 to cover legal costs.
  
  The key question for shareholders is how much Kennedy will be paid for his advice over the next two years.

  The AIB executive committee received a total of €20.2m last year in pensions, share payments and about €6.3m in pension payments. Ah, for a job in the bank.

• Rugby’s Celtic League has a new sponsor, Bulmers. Or for those viewers in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, Magners. The “six figure” deal highlights an interesting poser for Maurice Pratt. How long will C&C support two distinct brands in two markets with overlapping television and, indeed, sports audiences? Some years ago, Niall FitzGerald initiated a cull of Unilever’s local brands. Name changes did not harm Snickers (Marathon) or Starburst (Opal Fruits). Should Pratt lay Bulmers to rest?