The interim figures will be the first set of consolidated results to include Meteor, acquired by Eircom last year, and the Australian bank, a 12.5% shareholder but reported to be lining up a possible bid for the company, will no doubt be looking carefully at Eircom's new revenue stream.

Eircom indicated in a trading statement in November that its new mobile division was performing ahead of expectations. Recent performance indicators released by rival mobile operators O2 and Vodafone show that both are still adding customers, but at a slower rate than in the past as the market reaches saturation.

NCB analyst Tricia McEvoy expects Meteor to have added some 50,000 new customers, a larger number than either of its two larger competitors, based on its recent rapid subscriber growth and Eircom's optimistic November statement.

McEvoy expects Meteor to contribute 20.5m to Eircom's total quarterly revenues for the three months to December 2005 and 55m over the first three months of this year.

IVERS JUMPS HORSE TO IRISH ESTATES FORMER Paddy Power chief financial officer Ross Ivers has wasted little time finding a new role following his resignation in December.

Ivers served out his notice period and officially left the publicly-quoted bookmaker at the end of January. Less than a fortnight later, he has been unveiled as the new chief executive of property and facilities management company Irish Estates.

Ivers takes over from Niall McFadden, who has been performing the joint functions of chairman and chief executive for the past two years, and who led the company's flotation on London's Alternative Investment Market and Dublin's IEX. McFadden will assume the role of nonexecutive chairman in May.

Ivers is a qualified chartered accountant, who began his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers before moving to Hong Kong to work for Asian conglomerate Jardine Matheson. As chief financial officer of Paddy Power, Ivers worked alongside both Stewart Kenny and recently- departed chief executive John O'Reilly.

Ivers was the bookmaker's point-man for investors and analysts.

He will also be familiar to many readers of the business pages from his numerous appearances in Paddy Power publicity shots, in which he has been seen posing for the cameras as a cowboy, a soldier, a jockey and a poker player.

DIAMOND RESULT FOR TEELING IN BOTSWANA JOHN TEELING'S African Diamonds continues to get a good run of things, with the share price rising a further 11% on Friday after the exploration firm said it had found more diamonds than expected during drilling at a site in Botswana.

African Diamonds' joint venture partner on the site, called AK6, is diamond giant De Beers. In a statement, African Diamonds said that a total of over 81.5 carats, totalling 1,022 stones, were recovered from 232 tonnes of material. Among the finds was a 4.56 carat octahedral diamond, the largest of its type ever recovered at the AK6 site.

Teeling said it was a "rare privilege for an exploratory company director to give shareholders results as good" as these. Shares of the AIM-listed company soared to as much as 93p and were trading at 87.5p by Friday lunchtime, valuing the firm at £58.6m.

Teeling, who is a director of a raft of exploration companies, could stand to make handy gains from African Diamonds. In August 2003, he was granted 250,000 options to buy stock at 7p a share, and he was recently awarded 350,000 options at 72.5p.

TESCO SCRAPS WITH THE BIG BOYS IN THE US WHEN TESCO opens its first Californian store next year, the US will become the thirteenth country in which the British retailer does business. That irony was not lost on a sceptical City of London last week, when it greeted the news that Tesco was preparing to take on Wal-Mart on its home turf with some trepidation.

Tesco has to keep going for growth because it is running out of options in the UK, where it has more than than 30% of the grocery market. Under the increasingly watchful eye of the UK competition regulator, the group is having to be ever more inventive in the types of goods it sells.

In Ireland, which was an early overseas foray for Tesco and where it is now the clear market leader in the grocery sector, it is mulling moves into the convenience market and filling stations. With its flags already dotted across the world, including the world's most populous country, China, Tesco has to keep expanding.

The US move is an interesting one because . . .

apart from its Irish business . . . Tesco has so far shunned western Europe in favour of faster-growing emerging markets, such as central Europe and Asia.

Tesco boss Terry Leahy has also opted to build his own convenience store chain in the US rather than buying an existing player, and has dispatched an executive director to run the new business.

Despite being a giant in Britain and Ireland Tesco remains a relative minnow in the world league, trailing Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Ahold by some margin.

The retailer's foray into the US will be closely watched because, if Tesco really is to take on the big boys, it will have to crack America.