Energia sale nears endgame as final bids called for Monday

Power company Energia’s owner, US investment firm I Squared, has is calling for final bids for the power company on Monday, Joe Brennan reports. Three bidders understood to remain in the race.

Private equity group KKR is said to be among the suitors, as is a joint effort by Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board and its UK power supply business, Octopus Energy. Energia was put on the market earlier this year with reported estimated enterprise value of €2.75 billion, including net debt.

Columnist Pilita Clark calls time on bosses boasting about 4am starts and making those of us who cannot imagine such a life feel inadequate. Their stories fuel the tedious idea that career success requires superhuman levels of early rising discipline, while sleep is for lazy losers.

In our Q&A, Dominic Coyle teases out what is allowed and what’s not under the €3,000 small gift exemption. If you’d like to read more about the issues that affect your finances try signing up to On the Money, the weekly newsletter from our personal finance team, which will be issued every Friday to Irish Times subscribers.

Cerberus, the New York distressed debt giant, is among bidders vying to take over a potential sale of a portfolio of AIB non-performing loans, including debt that had soured during the Covid-19 pandemic and never recovered. Joe Brennan reports.

Loans in Project Fir had an original value of €500 million as the sale was being prepared earlier this year, including mortgages, unsecured loans and small business loans. It is likely that the par value of the loans has since declined as a number of borrowers moved to refinance or redeem borrowings before a sale.

In Me & My Money, Stephen McCabe, managing director of McCabe’s Coffee, tells Tony Clayton-Lea how a trader in Morocco told him: “You barter like a Berber man. I took that as a real compliment.”

In our Opinion piece, Dublin Bus CEO Billy Hann says we should set aside our fixation with sending school leavers to college and do more to promote apprenticeships.

In his weekly column, John FitzGerald looks at Germany’s stuttering economy.

FT writers went inside China’s gigantic iPhone factory and report on long hours, discrimination and pay delays.