Dear Reader,

Welcome to our Autumn Newsletter. It’s been a busy quarter at Quintas as is evident from our recent news section. Domestically the same issues still dominate our economy, a deal on the bank bailout debt from Europe, depressed demand for goods and services, the public finances and the Croke Park deal, lack of credit and bank finance, and the lack of political will and knowhow to deal with these issues.  Yet there are tentative signs of confidence being restored in certain parts of the economy indeed some of our own clients recently availed of an opportunity to purchase a bank branch in Drogheda as a demonstration of this confidence.

We’ve had a number of enquiries about the Insolvency Bill, so my colleague Yvonne Barry has contributed an article as a guide to same. This will be enacted into law very soon and many by choice or otherwise will seek “the sanctuary” of the new law. Both Yvonne and Tim McCarthy have been appointed to the Irish Society of Insolvency Practitioners in preparation for this.

We continue to have a very positive reaction to our on-going internal seminars on a range of topics which are designed to assist and benefit clients and business contacts.

At this time of year we endeavour to focus clients on managing their tax liabilities and with the Employment and Investment Incentive (EII) there is an opportunity to reduce your liabilities by investing in such a scheme. Kenny Kane has explained the scheme from both the investor (ie obtaining the tax relief) and investee company (ie a source of finance) perspective. We don’t know what the budget will bring so we are encouraging clients to avail of the opportunity while it’s there.

For significant employers looking to reduce costs our partners IFG have offered a free evaluation of your Group Corporate Pension Scheme and a very competitive pricing structure to administer and manage same. This initiative has proved very popular with industry leading companies in the past few months as Finance Directors and HR Directors come to grips with the costs associated with their schemes.

Finally I’d like to ask readers to give us feedback on the newsletter. From our perspective it’s an important method of communication with our clients and business contacts but like anything there’s always room for improvement so we’d appreciate your comments on the newsletter and suggestions on content that you would like to see included.