London-based energy specialist InfraStrata announced a deal to buy Harland & Wolff for £6m. The firm said the 79 workers who did not take voluntary redundancy when the yard went into administration – would keep their jobs. It followed a nine-week sit-in by shipyard staff. Infrastrata said it planned to increase the size of the workforce by several hundred over the next five years.
A number of US firms announced major recruitment drives in October following their Invest NI-backed move to Belfast. Georgia-based insurance giant Aflac said a new technology centre in the city centre will create 150 jobs over the next five years. Texas-based ESO, which develops software for emergency services and hospitals announced 120 jobs over three years in a new software engineering centre in Belfast.
Kevin Holland was named as the new head of Invest NI, replacing the outgoing Alastair Hamilton, who held the post for a decade. A former British diplomat to China, Mr Holland is originally from Bristol. His business background includes 10 years at Unilever and 15 years with US life sciences company Baxter, working across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Professional services giant EY announced plans to create 136 new jobs in Belfast. The major recruitment drive is part of an all-island effort to recruit 600 people over the next year. It will bring the company's headcount in the north to over 650. EY said it follows a period of double-digit growth for the group over six consecutive years. The 136 new positions left Belfast as the largest beneficiary outside Dublin in the October announcement.
Fast-growing Belfast tech firm Novosco was acquired by German group Cancom in a £70 million deal. The IT service provider, which saw pre-tax its profits grow 20 per cent to £3m last year, was absorbed into the group's 3,500 global workforce. Based in Munich, IT solutions provider, Cancom is already established in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Slovakia, Britain and the USA.
Outgoing SINN Féin MLA Máirtín Ó Muilleoir put his west Belfast media business up for sale in October. Mr Ó Muilleoir is managing director of Belfast Media Group, which produces the Andersonstown News, North Belfast News, South Belfast News and New York based Irish Echo newspapers. He announced that the start of consultation process with staff, stating that his newspapers had experienced a decline in both print circulation and advertising revenue. In December, the South Belfast MLA announced his plans to depart the Assembly.
South Derry construction giant FP McCann vowed to "robustly appeal" a £25.5 million fine - one of the biggest in Northern Ireland corporate history - imposed for its role in an alleged price-fixing cartel. It was implicated along with two English firms following a years-long investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The CMA found that the companies broke competition law by taking part in an illegal cartel in Britain from July 2006 to March 2013, when the companies agreed to fix or coordinate their prices, shared the market by allocating customers and regularly exchanged sensitive information.
