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Survey shows online shoppers wary of firms that have suffered cyber attacks

Half of all Irish consumers would stop buying from a shop that had their bank details lost or stolen in a cyber attack, according to a new survey.

A study by Deloitte found that six out of ten respondents would only make an online purchase if they felt confident that their data was secure – while three quarters would like to see businesses held responsible for the user data involved in a transaction.

Just over half of consumers actively control their privacy settings online, while only 42% said they understood how to control the level of information available about them.

According to the Deloitte Consumer Review – Navigating Cyber Risks, less than a third of respondents felt their mobile device was as secure as their laptop – but more than half of respondents said they felt comfortable checking their bank balance via mobile.

For more on this article, please visit: RTE Business News

Ireland feeling the first Brexit chills as exporters pounded by slump in sterling

Ireland’s largest companies are beginning to feel the effect of Britain’s debate over whether to remain in the European Union, and it may be a taste of what’s to come for the rest of the nation.

Concern about the outcome of the UK referendum in June has helped push the pound down 10pc against the euro since November.

About 60pc of Irish companies selling goods overseas are already affected.

“Sterling has deteriorated and that’s tough for Irish exporters,” Richard Pym, the English-born chairman of AIB, said in an interview in Dublin this month.

“Upon Britain leaving EU, one would anticipate that sterling would come under pressure again.”

Brexit is probably the single biggest risk facing the economy, the fastest growing in the euro region.

The question is over the EU’s integrity, according to Guillermo Hermida of CaixaBank Asset Management in Madrid.

Cracks in the bloc would undermine investor confidence in its weakest members, the so-called peripheral nations, he said in an interview in the Spanish capital. That would include Ireland.

Permanent TSB, a bank that’s still trying to recover from Ireland’s financial crisis, said this month that concern about Britain’s membership in the EU is hampering its efforts to sell £2.4bn (€3bn) of UK loans. “Brexit risk has caused me to slow down the process because I think we’re on the wrong side of the line,” Jeremy Masding, the bank’s chief executive, told analysts. “I want to wait until I see what the result of the referendum is and then see how the markets react.”

Irish-listed Dalata Hotels, which operates in London, Manchester and Leeds as well as in Ireland, warned this month that the UK might generate less revenue as sterling slides.

Ryanair gets about 27pc of its sales from the UK and will be the biggest Irish loser along with drinks company C&C and agricultural products company Origin Enterprises, according to securities firm Investec.

“We don’t think it would have an immediate impact on our business,” Ryanair’s chief marketing officer, Kenny Jacobs, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

“In the medium and longer term, it would create some uncertainty if Britain were outside of Europe.”

It’s not all bad news for Ireland, with Dublin presenting an “obvious choice” for financial companies seeking to relocate following a UK exit from the EU, the NTMA said in a presentation last week.

“Estimates suggest some €6bn of FDI might be attracted to Ireland in the case of Brexit,” the debt office said. (Bloomberg)

Article Source: Irish Independent

72% of Private Company CEOs don’t expect the Global economy to improve in the next year

PwC have today released their 19th Annual Global CEO Survey in which 1,409 interviews were conducted in 83 countries during the last quarter of 2015.

By region, 476 interviews were conducted in Asia Pacific, 314 in Western Europe, 170 in Central and Eastern Europe, 169 in Latin America, 146 in North America, 87 in Africa and 47 in the Middle East.

Of these respondents, 848 (60%) were CEOs of privately-owned companies across 79 countries.

The research shows that a large majority (81%) of private company CEOs around the world believe that their company is likely to grow revenues over the next year.

Only 28% of private company CEOs expect the global economy to improve in the next 12 months – down around 10 points on last year. And 66% of private company CEOs believe there are more threats to their company’s growth now than three years ago – up from 58% last year.

Fifty eight per cent of public company CEOs have concerns about public trust in business, falling to 53% of private companies and 43% of family firms.

An overwhelming majority (92%) of private company CEOs around the world are changing how they manage their brand, marketing and communications, and the same percentage are looking at how they define and manage risks.

According to the report, 90% are making more use of technology to assess and deliver on wider stakeholder expectations.

For more on this article, please visit: Business World

Over two thirds of Global Insurance CEOs see technology as a threat

PwC have today released results from their 19th Annual Global Survey of more than 1,400 CEOs, which includes responses from 101 CEOs in the insurance sector in 43 countries.

An overwhelming majority (79%) cite data and analytics and 76% cite relationship management systems as providing the greatest potential contribution to improving engagement with customers.

The report indicates that technology is also creating new benchmarks for customer experience, response and cost by making it easier for customers to judge and compare insurers against their competitors.

For insurance firms, the ability to meet these challenges is often hampered by slow and unwieldy legacy systems and traditional ways of working.

Nearly 70% of insurance CEOs see the speed of technological change as a threat to growth and more than 60% are concerned about shifts in consumer spending and behaviour.

Furthermore, only 28% of insurance CEOs now believe the global economy will improve over the coming year, reflecting a dip in optimism.  Interestingly, whilst 38% of insurance CEOs are very confident about their ability to increase revenues, this is down from 44% in 2015.

Seventy per cent of insurers are planning to implement a cost cutting initiative over the next 12 months and technology is the trend insurance CEOs see as most likely to transform customer expectations over the next five years.

For more on this article, please visit: Business World

Irish economy is the best in EU again

Ireland’s economy grew by 7.8% last year, making it the fastest growing economy in the Europe Union for the second successive year after growth accelerated sharply in the final three months of the year.

Ireland has rebounded quickly from a 2010 international bailout and its economy benefited in 2015 from further falls in unemployment, a bumper year for retail sales and a weak euro that boosted the country’s large export sector.

The economy expanded by 2.7% on a quarterly basis from October to December, up from 1.5% in the previous quarter, the Central Statistics Office said.

The government had forecast that growth in the economy might exceed 7% and the official forecast for 2016 of 4.3 percent would likely see it retain the mantle of the best performer in Europe.

While sterling’s recent depreciation against the euro may hit export growth this year – given Britain’s trade clout with Ireland – economic data in the first two months have been broadly positive.

Thursday’s figures showed personal consumption rose by over 3% last year, indicating that the domestic economy can pick up any slack.

Robust gross domestic product (GDP) growth is only gradually filtering down to many people, however, and was one of the major factors behind voters rejecting the country’s outgoing coalition at elections last month.

The election produced no clear outcome, making Ireland the latest euro zone state to face a prolonged political stalemate which senior ministers say could take weeks to break.

For more on this article, please visit: Business World

60% of companies have no female board members

There is a significant correlation between women in corporate leadership and profitability according to a global survey undertaken by EY and The Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The report was released to coincide with International Women’s day and was carried out across almost 22,000 publicly traded companies (52 in Ireland) from 91 countries worldwide. For having the most women-on-boards, the top five countries are Norway (40%), Latvia (25%), Italy (24%), Finland (23%) and Bulgaria (22%).

Ireland ranks 28th out of the top 56 countries for having women on boards (12%). Of the Irish companies surveyed, the results also indicate that 2% had a female chair and 8% had a female CEO.

Furthermore, the report found that nearly one third of companies globally have no women in either board or C-suite positions, 60% have no female board members, 50% have no female top executives and less than 5% have a female CEO.

Most countries are still far below the 30% threshold for women CEOs, and only Norway exceeded this standard for women on company boards.

The research also showed that while increasing the number of women directors and CEOs is important, growing the percentage of female leaders in the C-suite would likely benefit the bottom line even more.

The report claims that implementing policies relating to viable long term experience for women (specifically substantial maternity and paternity leave policies), access to education and elimination of discrimination were found to be of key importance to addressing gender balance and to advancing women in the workplace.

For more on this article, please visit: Business World