By Business & Finance 
Business & Finance brings you the day’s Irish business news in brief.
Students urged to engage in biopharma and medtech sectors
BioPharmaChem Ireland (BPCI) and the Irish Medtech Association believe the continued rise in students participating in the BT Young Scientist underscores interest and opportunities in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) careers. Over 4,500 students will participate in this year’s event.
While medtech has seen steady annual jobs growth with nearly 3,000 jobs added in recent years, biopharma will see a new wave of jobs growth with 8,400 jobs to be added by 2020. The Ibec groups are set to highlight career opportunities to the 50,000 visitors at the BTYS with companies Eli Lilly, DePuy Synthes and Cook Medical demonstrating some of their innovative products at the event.
Irish Film Board production activity surpasses €250m for the first time
Bord Scannán na hÉireann/Irish Film Board (IFB) today published its slate of all IFB supported productions coming to audiences in 2017.
With Irish films achieving record global box office figures, and production activity surpassing the €250m mark for the first time, the industry continues to grow.
The IFB has ambitious plans to maintain the momentum currently being enjoyed in the thriving Irish film, television and animation industries, and to support the industry in its ambitions to scale to the next level.
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IQ Pharmatek announces 200 new jobs in Tipperary
The former Suir Pharma plant in Clonmel is reopening under new ownership.
Suir Pharma closed last year with the loss of 130 jobs.
Speaking with Tipp FM, IQ Pharmatek spokesperson Azzam Hussein said: “We are hoping to be back into production within one month’s time. 100 people are going to be employed within a month, and for one year we will continue with 100 employees. And our target by next year is to have another 100 people employed.
“The plan for the site is to continue contact manufacturing for international companies and we are targeting the US market, UK market and the Far East market. In the next year it will be contact manufacturing, and we will be developing our own range of products.”
Rising confidence among employers brought salary growth during 2016
Despite global economic and political uncertainty in 2016, confidence has remained high among professionals and employers in Ireland with wages increasing to reflect growing demand for professionals across a range of sectors, according to the latest Robert Walters salary survey.
Ireland’s pillar banks increased their headcount across all disciplines of risk management as they returned to profitability and started lending more aggressively, with senior risk professionals seeing basic salary increases of up to 16%.
Candidate movement led to salary increases in private banking, stockbroking and asset management as firms continued to lean towards private client advisory and tailored wealth management solutions in the retail and corporate client markets.
Drop in insolvencies recorded during 2016
The latest insolvency statistics published by www.insolvencyjournal.ie show that the total number of corporate insolvencies recorded in 2016 was 1,032. This represents a 2% decrease on 2015 (1,049).
On the positive side, the retail industry posted a 38% drop in insolvencies, down from 154 in 2015 to 96 in 2016, largely due to a more benign environment on the high street.
However, not all sectors were able to reduce their insolvencies.
David Van Dessel, partner in Deloitte Restructuring Services, said: “Many companies have spent so long in survival mode that when new orders do start to finally come through they often rush to take advantage and can end up over-trading and running out of cash. This problem is compounded by the difficulty companies can still face accessing financing & loan facilities and, as can be seen from Insolvency Journal’s statistics, this can be fatal.”
Enterprise Ireland launches fund
Enterprise Ireland has announced a new Competitive Start Fund (CSF) totalling up to €750,000 to support start-up activity in all sectors.
The fund, which provides €50,000 in equity funding for each successful applicant, will open for submissions on January 25th and will close February 8th.
The Competitive Start Fund provides entrepreneurs and start-ups in all sectors with the critical early stage funding to test the market for their products and services and progress their business plans for the global marketplace.
The fund is designed to enable those companies reach key commercial and technical milestones and is open to applications from individuals, early stage companies or prospective businesses.
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