⏰ HERE! Ardagh weighs an AMP sale and Kingspan goes shopping in Argentina.

14 August 2026

Good morning, eventually. Today’s Tá is landing later than usual after briefly experimenting with a more Mediterranean approach to Friday mornings. Ardagh is weighing an AMP sale, Kingspan has gone shopping in Argentina and Budget season has produced some unusually specific ideas for Irish SMEs, while property, wind and energy infrastructure are all finding new ways to make simple things expensive. Let’s get into it.

1. Ardagh Opens The Door To An AMP Sale. Ardagh Holdings, having been taken over by creditors late last year from Paul Coulson, has hired advisers to explore selling some or all of its 76% stake in Ardagh Metal Packaging, potentially buying out minority shareholders first to enable a full sale. No transaction is guaranteed, but AMP enters the process in stronger shape, with Q2 sales up 18% to $1.7bn and adjusted EBITDA up 14% to $240m. For Ardagh’s creditors, a recovered asset is starting to look like an exit opportunity.

2. Kingspan Adds Argentina To A Busy Deal Week. Kingspan has acquired a majority stake in Grupo LTN, an Argentine insulated-panel manufacturer with more than 377 employees and two plants in Buenos Aires. Terms were not disclosed, but it is Kingspan’s first acquisition in Argentina and follows its up to €900m agreement for Meath-based BMC earlier this week. Kingspan already generates about €500m a year across Latin America, so this one is about geographic scale rather than another move into data-centre power.

3. Azets Wants Budget 2027 To Ease The SME Squeeze. Azets Ireland is calling for a freeze on minimum-wage increases until 2030, a delay to employer PRSI increases and a €5bn Home Grown Investment Fund in its pre-Budget submission. It also wants €350m from the National Training Fund ringfenced for SME AI training and 30% of public-procurement value targeted at Irish SMEs. None of it is Government policy yet, but it puts unusually specific numbers behind the argument that indigenous firms need more than broad competitiveness promises and none of the ideas are hard to understand.

4. I-RES Is Buying Again As Rental Earnings Rise. I-RES reported EPRA earnings of €15.3m for the first half, up 5.3%, while average monthly rent increased 3.3% year-on-year to €1,884 and its portfolio was valued at €1.277bn. The landlord has also agreed a €31.75m forward purchase of 77 apartments in Naas. After years when Irish institutional landlords were more associated with selling and regulatory pressure, fresh capital is starting to move back towards adding units.

5. Rural Planning May Get Easier, But Building Has Not. New rural-planning rules may widen access to one-off housing, but BCE analysis suggests the economics remain awkward. A standard three-bed one-off build is estimated at about €400,000 before buying the site, more than the median price of an existing home in 25 of 33 areas examined using CSO data. Permission can remove one barrier, but it does not make concrete, labour, or materials any cheaper.

Workday shares jumped nearly 18% after reports Silver Lake is in talks to take the software group private, although no deal is guaranteed; the Dublin-headquartered European operation employs about 2,000 people but it also is set to rent out a fifth of its new office space. OpenAI’s annualised revenue run rate has reportedly topped $40bn, roughly double its end-2025 level as it prepares for IPO, while Dali Rajic replaces Denise Dresser as chief revenue officer after just nine months... interesting. The UK economy unexpectedly grew 0.3% in June on the back of sun and World Cup hopes, offering some relief from the gloom, while Nigel Farage comfortably retained Clacton with 62.8% of the vote, denying Count Binface an admittedly ambitious upset. Maersk, meanwhile, has lifted its profit outlook again as port congestion spreads globally, with ships facing waits of up to 12 days in Shanghai.

Property & Energy

Wind and grid dynamics dominate energy this week, while property finance shows the market working around, rather than through, the traditional banks.

Wind Energy Ireland's latest figures capture the tension well. Five wind farms won planning approval last quarter, the strongest showing since early 2025, adding 311 megawatts of capacity. However, the group also flagged a "massive" backlog, with 48 projects now awaiting a decision from An Coimisiún Pleanála, up 70% on two years ago and representing 2,668 megawatts of stalled potential, some of it waiting more than two years.

Gas Networks Ireland connected its first biomethane producer directly to the network, Bia Energy's €90m plant at Huntstown, which will supply enough renewable gas to generate 120 gigawatt hours of electricity annually, against average daily southern consumption of 90 gigawatt hours.

On property, UK-headquartered Go Corporate Finance is expanding its Irish operation, targeting what its chief executive calls a "huge gap" in development funding between €2m and €10m, where banks remain thin on the ground. The broker arranges facilities from €200,000 up to €100m, averaging around €500,000, with rates from 5.5% and decisions promised within days rather than the three to four months typical of conventional bank lending. In Cork, it recently structured an €11.5m bridging facility to help a developer secure a mixed-use Docklands site with a projected €25m development value, illustrating the scale of deal it is chasing as it grows further in Dublin and Cork.

The forward watch is whether planning capacity at An Coimisiún Pleanála moves quickly enough this quarter to prevent the wind backlog from widening further.

In Monday’s Tá, the Sector Spotlight will be Tech & AI.

Friday – The Week in Summary…

Ireland's week was defined an early M&A season as capital chased infrastructure. H&MV Engineering hit a €1.4bn valuation, Kingspan agreed €900m for BMC, and Fairstone made its biggest Irish acquisition yet, alongside smaller deals like VitHit and M&M Qualtech. Manna actually launched its US drone delivery service in Tulsa, while Sony, SpaceXAI and Anthropic kept expanding their Dublin hiring.

Underneath that, the picture was patchier. Income tax kept rising, but unemployment ticked up and manufacturing and pharma exports cooled from last year's high base. Red C found most consumers still expect the economy to worsen, even as corporate valuations climbed.

Abroad, the Hormuz standoff kept oil and fuel prices elevated, US inflation eased enough to calm rate-hike fears without an actual cut, and Intel raised its share sale to $20bn. The picture is clear with investors pricing Irish infrastructure far more confidently than households are pricing their own outlook.

For those who said Wednesday’s eclipse “didn’t even get dark”, solar generation fell to near zero, and EirGrid had to fire up an emergency plant, so the grid noticed. Aldi, meanwhile, is launching a €29.99 rival to €400 hair stylers. And once you’ve put the new apparatus to work, the Business Post has somewhere to show it off: Mark Moriarty’s new 20-seat Friday restaurant at Wilton Park, where €150 gets you ten courses and apparently the best bread in Dublin. Darkness optional, blow-dry encouraged.

The Read - Business Post (Requires Free Account) – Bank of America: Why Financing Is Becoming A Pull Factor In Irish M&A Deals

After a week dominated by acquisitions, this is useful for understanding what is happening behind the prices. Bank of America argues that acquisition financing has moved from something arranged after agreeing a deal to part of the competitive strategy itself. Global deal value rose 48% year-on-year to $2.8tn in H1 even as transaction numbers fell 9%, with buyers concentrating capital into fewer, larger deals. For Irish companies looking abroad, the interesting point is that certainty of funding can now matter almost as much as the headline bid. Link: Bank of America: Why Financing Is Becoming A Pull Factor In Irish M&A Deals

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