PTSB's day in court, a new boss at daa, and Bank of Ireland's app finally joins us in 2026.

28 October 2026

Good morning. PTSB's takeover battle is finally in court, daa has its new boss after a length search, and markets are finding fresh enthusiasm for AI. In Worth Your Time, Nuritas founder Nora Khaldi explains how her Irish biotech company is putting AI to work in the lab. Let's get into it.

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1. PTSB Takeover Battle Finally Reaches The High Court. After months of competing bids, shareholder objections and delays, the €1.62bn sale of PTSB to Austria’s Bawag is now being examined in the High Court, with proceedings expected to continue over the coming days. Four shareholders argue the €2.97-a-share offer undervalues the bank, while the court has permitted limited cross-examination of a senior Department of Finance official over the State’s support for the deal. Axis Capital’s potential €3.20-a-share rival bid remains unresolved. This will be a continuing story as it progresses over the coming days.

2. daa Finally Names Its Permanent Chief Executive. After last year's leadership controversy and a lengthy search for a permanent replacement, daa has appointed Land Development Agency boss John Coleman as chief executive on a seven-year term starting early in 2027. Coleman has overseen the LDA’s growth into an organisation with €8.75bn in capital capacity. His experience navigating planning and major development projects will be particularly relevant as the State-owned operator pursues expansion at Dublin and Cork airports.

3. Cabinet Considers Another €1bn For Ireland’s Future Fund. Finance Minister Simon Harris is seeking approval for an additional €1bn contribution to the Future Ireland Fund in 2027, bringing planned transfers to €5.8bn and its projected year-end value to €22.77bn. Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers will also update Cabinet on efforts to make State-owned land available for transport, water and energy projects. The first builds Ireland’s long-term financial reserves; the second tackles access to land needed for infrastructure delivery.

4. Standard Life Targets Ireland’s €65bn Pension Market. UK insurer Standard Life is entering Ireland’s pension risk-transfer market, offering employers another route to move defined-benefit pension obligations onto insurers’ books. The market holds approximately €65bn across 450 schemes, with Standard Life saying it is ready to transact following Irish Life’s €165m Greencore pension buyout. More competition could improve options for companies looking to reduce long-term pension liabilities.

5. Irish AI Property Start-Up Raises €5.7m. Dublin-based Lette has secured $6.5m (€5.7m) in seed funding to expand its AI-powered property-management platform in the UK. Founded by former Nory employees Mohan Sai and Jakub Rajek, the company automates tenancy renewals, maintenance requests and leasing administration. Lette says its technology already operates across more than 30,000 residential units, with property giant JLL among its customers. The funding will support expansion into a property sector still heavily dependent on manual administration.

Europe’s industrial ambitions are getting another investment boost, with German chipmaker Infineon committing €1.1bn to an Austrian semiconductor facility, months after announcing 100 jobs in Ireland. The ECB reports weaker eurozone mortgage demand as rising rates bite, with 27% of surveyed banks reporting a decline in the third quarter. Boeing shares fell as much as 10% after the manufacturer cut aircraft delivery targets and reported a $697m quarterly loss in its commercial aircraft division. In the Netherlands, regulators blocked the sale of Unilever’s Unox brand over competition concerns, while the Dutch government unveiled plans to cut 25,000 civil-service jobs through an AI-driven efficiency programme. Apparently, even the public sector is getting a Silicon Valley-style restructuring.

Finance & Markets

Markets are shrugging off AI jitters again, but bond investors are still pricing the cost of war-driven inflation.

France’s ten-year borrowing cost touched 5% last Wednesday, a level last seen in 2002, up from 3.2% in late February as the Middle East war and inflation bit. UK government borrowing hit £24.5bn in September, £1.9bn above the fiscal watchdog’s forecast, ahead of its Budget. Ireland looks calmer as its ten-year yield, the annual cost of borrowing for a decade, was 3.49% on Tuesday, about 0.12 percentage points above Germany’s 3.37%, with Brent crude at $113 a barrel.

Equities warmed from Anthropic’s IPO papers, which say it expects to list on Nasdaq as ANT. The Nasdaq closed 1.18% higher and the S&P 500 gained 0.60%. In Dublin, the Iseq rose 0.95% to 14,296.54, led by Kingspan, up 3.75% to €95.50. Cairn gained more than 2%, and AIB and Bank of Ireland also edged up, while Origin Enterprises fell 4.19%.

Boeing was the counterweight. It cut its 737 Max delivery target, pushed back its move to 52 jets a month until the second half of next year, and saw shares fall as much as 10%, an 18-month low. Its commercial division lost $697m, against $360.8m expected. Boeing did not mention Ryanair, but slipping production timelines are worth tracking for Irish carrier whose hoped-for early-2027 Max 10 could not be affected.

Watch Amazon’s third-quarter results on Thursday, 29 October, the next test of whether AI spending keeps being rewarded.

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

Wednesday - By The Numbers

$145bn: Meta’s upper-end capital spending forecast for 2026, as Mark Zuckerberg doubles down on AI despite investor concerns.

9%: The share of its global workforce eBay plans to cut, with the impact on roughly 1,000 Irish employees still unclear.

$4.4bn: SpaceX’s third-quarter net profit, more than double analyst expectations.

€100m: Bankinter’s Irish retail deposit balance reported for July, as the Spanish lender builds its local funding base.

150,000: Customers now served by Belfast-based broadband provider Fibrus, whose annual revenue rose more than 50% to £45m.

Bank of Ireland has finally rolled out its redesigned mobile app, bringing its interface into the 2020s with only a few years to spare. Meanwhile, Trinity College is asking Dublin City Council whether Dior needs planning permission to host a fashion show in its historic Long Room, and Apple is replacing faulty folding iPhones after some customers discovered that a €2,369 screen can fold a little too enthusiastically. Three very different upgrades, though it would be particularly Irish if Dior's models were ready for the runway before the paperwork was.

The Listen – Business Post - ‘It would have taken 30 million years without AI’: Nuritas’s Nora Khaldi on her trailblazing tech

Most AI talk this week has been about spending and risk. Here, a Dublin company uses the technology to do science. Nuritas founder Nora Khaldi tells Charlie Taylor how the business grew from Trinity College laboratories and why building in Ireland helped. She explains how its AI platform identifies plant peptides, short chains of amino acids, aimed at stopping muscle loss before it starts and improving sleep by lowering cortisol. A pipeline of clinically tested products is due soon. Useful listening for founders weighing deep-tech ambition against Irish realities. Link: Business Post Site, Listen on Spotify

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