Dinan to give talk on media

Tony Dinan, who made a sudden exit from media group Thomas Crosbie Holdings a few months ago, is an intriguing speaker at a conference organised by corporate finance house Raglan Capital.

Dinan will talk about investment bubbles and the media. The Corkman drove the expansion of TCH over the last two decades from its roots as the publisher of the Cork Examiner into one of the biggest regional newspaper and radio owners in the country. In the process, he spent millions of the Crosbies' cash buying up titles, including the Sunday Business Post.

A few months after Dinan's reign came to an end, staff at TCH's flagship Irish Examiner title were stunned to be told that they would have to take huge pay cuts and see drastic changes to their pensions as the group was facing serious problems. It will be interesting to hear Dinan's views about the future of Ireland's regional media now that the bubble has burst and owners are racking up huge losses.

Revolt at Trintech

Last week, the Sunday Tribune reported that Cyril McGuire's Trintech was facing an investor backlash against an offer by a private equity firm to buy the company. The man leading the revolt, Paul Johnson of Nicusa Capital, has a colourful past.

According to the US markets regulator, the SEC, Johnson was found to have violated federal securities laws by a jury in a civil trial dating from his time as a research analyst with investment house Robertson Stephens. The upshot of the case was that Johnson agreed to hand over profits gained as a result of his misconduct and also agreed not to work for a brokerage or a dealer for five years.

With a stake of just over 3%, it's unlikely Nicusa has enough support to prevent the takeover being backed at a shareholders' meeting in Dublin next month. But McGuire will be well able to swat away Johnson's claim that accepting the offer is "trampling" on shareholders' rights.

Good and bad news for BoI

Bank of Ireland has had mixed news in the last few days about its joint venture with the UK Post Office. The bank said on Friday that deposit-gathering through the post office network was "exceeding our expectations" – a welcome boost for the struggling bank which has seen "outflows of ratings' sensitive customer deposits" in the last few months.

But it could have been so much better for Bank of Ireland. The Labour government had announced plans to turn the Post Office into a fully-fledged bank. That would have helped Bank of Ireland in generating profits out of the UK. But the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat government has abandoned that idea, saying it was too costly.

The UK postal minister Ed Davey did say he saw more products being offered through the Post Office. Worryingly for Bank of Ireland, he announced an agreement had been reached with the state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland, allowing its customers to access their current accounts through the post office. Given its funding difficulties, Bank of Ireland will be concerned about RBS muscling in on its territory.