📚 Packed, but important read

26 August 2026

Good morning. It’s a busy Tá today, but there’s plenty worth your time in it as we explore investment-tax reform, Government spending, Irish banks, a busy run of company news and a fairly lively Finance & Markets section. Abroad, big companies are still spending heavily, with mixed results. Let’s get into it.

1. Investing May Finally Get A Tax Rethink. Government is expected to address Ireland’s controversial deemed-disposal regime in Budget 2027 ahead of the planned Personal Investment Account. Irish households are sitting on roughly €175bn in deposits, while IG-commissioned modelling suggests someone investing €300 a month over 30 years could build around €485,000 more than leaving it in cash if deemed disposal was removed. The exact tax treatment of the new accounts still has to be decided but this could be a major development in the prosperity of Irish people as the Government push for more personal investment.

2. Government Has A Lot On Its Plate. Simon Harris pushed back at IFAC’s criticism of Budget 2027, saying the watchdog is “not the government”, although he accepted its concerns about in-year spending overruns. Housing Minister James Browne is meanwhile threatening tighter deadlines and greater ministerial intervention if councils are too slow to rezone land for housing. On top of that, MetroLink has now absorbed around €530m before detailed procurement, with Transport Minister Darragh O’Brien saying it remains too early to set a precise final capital budget. Plenty of Government ambition, and increasingly large numbers attached to delivering it.

3. Irish Banks Are Looking For More Room To Lend. The pillar banks say they are working on risk-sharing mechanisms to address the equity gap facing smaller housing developers, after new construction and property-development SME lending fell 11% from €1.09bn in 2023 to €968m in 2025. Separately, AIB is reportedly working with Santander and Howden on transferring some of the risk attached to around €2.5bn of project-finance loans. That transaction could free up regulatory capital for more lending or shareholder returns if completed later this year.

4. Irish-Linked Companies Are In The Deal Flow. Micksgarage has been sold to Alliance Automotive Group for €9.5m, while Dublin-based CarTrawler reported €181.7m in revenue ahead of its acquisition by Expedia. DCC’s Certa has agreed to buy Meath fuel supplier Euro Oil, subject to CCPC approval, and businessman Eamon Waters has increased his exposure to ICG ahead of Friday’s €1.2bn takeover vote. Aer Lingus, meanwhile, is dealing with another complication in its proposed 500 job cuts after pilot talks ended after just 12 minutes.

5. Some Better Numbers Underneath Irish Business. Ireland’s commercial vacancy rate fell annually for the first time since records began in 2013, albeit only from 14.6% to 14.5%, with 30,611 properties still empty. CPL’s Japanese-owned parent also received a €150m maiden dividend from the Irish recruitment group, almost half the €318m paid for it five years ago, while more than $250m was invested in Irish AI companies during the first half of 2026. None of those figures tells the whole story, but all three are fairly substantial signs of capital, property and business activity beneath the bigger policy headlines.

Shein’s Hong Kong IPO order book is reportedly fully covered, putting it on course to raise up to $1.8bn at a valuation of roughly $27bn when it lists next week. Volkswagen is pushing further into restructuring as Europe’s carmakers continue cutting costs, while KPMG Australia is cutting around 5% of staff and 13% of partner pay amid pressure on the firm. Lego offered a happier consumer story, with first-half sales jumping 21% as Formula 1 and World Cup sets brought in new customers. Novo Nordisk’s acquisition record looks rather less cheerful: six of 16 significant pharma purchases since 2016 have effectively been written off, with another two facing failed trials. Big companies are still spending, but plenty are having to explain what they spent it on.

Finance & Markets

Markets spent the week digesting two big geopolitical scares but without really panicking.

Washington's promised "economic D-Day" of sanctions on Iran arrived on Monday with heavy rhetoric but no actual measures, and Brent crude, which had touched $94 on tariff and conflict fears, drifted back to around $88. The US-Canada trade relationship kept deteriorating in the background, with Ottawa's retaliatory tariffs on $27.6bn of American goods doing little to dent a resilient Wall Street, where the S&P 500 hit fresh records and the Nasdaq extended its tech-led rally into Tuesday.

The more consequential story was in bonds. After 30-year US Treasury yields hit their highest since 2007 and Irish 10-year yields touched 3.41 per cent, an unusual US Treasury buyback intervention calmed the selloff, pulling Ireland's yield back to around 3.35 per cent, though the dollar itself has slipped to a three-month low on suspicion Washington is simply engineering borrowing costs lower rather than fixing the underlying deficit.

In Europe, Monte dei Paschi's €34bn twin bid for Banco BPM and Banca Generali signalled the Italian banking consolidation wave has not slowed.

Irish-exposed names told their own story as Kenmare Resources topped the ISEQ despite earnings collapsing 91 per cent, while AIB and Bank of Ireland extended a rally that has lifted their shares more than 18 per cent and 14 per cent respectively this year. Revolut chief Nik Storonsky is separately seeking approval to borrow up to $250m against his stake, and 26 credit unions appointed a heavyweight board to build a new wholesale funding vehicle.

Watch Nvidia's results this evening for whether chip demand still justifies markets' calm.

In Thursday’s Tá, the Sector Spotlight will be Health & Pharma.

Wednesday - By The Numbers

€25bn: SK Hynix’s planned share buyback, covering up to 24 million treasury shares as investors question the durability of AI spending.

56.2%: the year-on-year rise in Irish wholesale electricity prices in July, alongside a 14.8% monthly increase.

$130m+: the price of new or modern second-hand vessels in the largest oil-tanker class, the highest since 2008 amid surging Gulf demand.

€1,046.88: average weekly earnings in Ireland in Q2, up 3.9% year-on-year and slightly ahead of 3.6% inflation.

14.5%: Ireland’s commercial vacancy rate in Q2, down 0.1 percentage points and its first annual decline since records began in 2013.

Sport is getting oddly commercial this week. Dublin is expecting 14,000 Americans for Saturday’s TCU v UNC college-football game, so don’t be surprised if parts of the city feel more downtown USA than usual. Lego sales are up 21% partly thanks to Formula 1 and World Cup sets, while Chinese tech giant Tencent has led a €15.4m raise for Dublin-based W4 Games, the company helping build the open-source Godot video-game engine. Then St Michael’s College got permission for pitch floodlights, provided they are off by 9.30pm and the Brent geese using the grounds are protected. Sport, gaming, Lego and protected birds. Fairly busy week for fixtures.

The Read – Business Post – All grown up: how Stripe went from PayPal's little brother to would-be owner

Stripe reportedly wants to buy the company it originally set out to beat, but the interesting part here is why PayPal would still be valuable to it. Former Stripe executive Sean Mullaney explains how PayPal’s stored customer wallets could help Stripe build a more closed payments network, moving money without Visa or Mastercard sitting in the middle. Add Stripe’s $7bn OpenRouter deal and its 300m-user Link wallet, and it is a useful look at just how much bigger the Collison brothers’ ambitions have become. Link: All grown up: how Stripe went from PayPal's little brother to would-be owner

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