Rich payday for bosses at Re-turn and ESB and don’t put off checking your pension status

Ciarán Foley , chief executive of the Re-turn group in charge of recycling plastic bottles and aluminium cans and board members earned a €100,000 increase to their pay last year, bringing it to €700,000, Killian Woods reports. Fully electric cars are, for the first time, the best sellers on the Irish new car market, with more than double the registrations of diesel models, writes Michael McAleer. New car registrations for July under the new 262 number plate were up 8.63 per cent on the same month last year. Total registrations for the year up to the end of July are up 5.2 per cent at 114,228. A worker at a pharma company sacked after getting into a fist-fight with a takeaway driver in a row over a late order has won his job back, having spent 15 months out of work. The fracas broke out when staff refused a food delivery because their break was finished, the Workplace Relations Commission heard. Serial investor Donagh Barry , one of the Barry’s Tea family, earned a €4 million payout from his education group before a merger with a popular Dublin grinds school last year, writes Killian Woods. Barry and education entrepreneur Chris Lauder formed Axis Education Group last year to merge a number of colleges they owned. Actavo , the engineering services group owned by Denis O’Brien and Leslie Buckley has exited its events infrastructure division and sold the business’s assets to one of its main competitors in recent months. Ian Curran has the details. Over at the ESB , chief executive Paddy Hayes has secured a 29 per cent pay increase, adding just under €92,000 to his salary, bringing it to €410,000. A spokesman for the ESB said: “The sanction for an increase in annual salary to €410,000 reflects the scale, scope and complexity of ESB’s operations.” One of Ireland’s most recognisable eastern European-inspired supermarket chains took in nearly €100 million in revenue last year, filings from its parent company show. The company behind the Polonez grocery stores reported a pretax profit of more than €3.5 million. Stephen Conneely reports. The biggest businesses operating in Northern Ireland have collectively seen their pretax profits fall by 17.5 per cent this year, Stephen writes, culminating in a £315 million (€368 million) drop in earnings. Sales also dipped, only the second time this has happened since the Ulster Business Top 100 Northern Ireland Companies list was first published 38 years ago. Barry O’Halloran reports that Irish energy business Elgin has secured almost €600 million in backing from banks to fund expansion in the UK, the company confirmed on Monday. Elgin focuses on developing solar energy and storage projects in Ireland, Britain, Germany and Italy. Shareholders controlling more than 13 per cent of Irish-based multinational Linde – parent of BOC Gases – have backed a call on the industrial gas giant to boost its use of green energy. Barry has the details. Is the State pension your fallback plan for retirement? If so, you’d better get to grips with how much it’s likely to pay you, writes Joanne Hunt in Money Matters . if so. You might be surprised to learn your entitlement may not as big as you think. In his column, after the death of long-time Irish Nationwide boss, Michael Fingleton, John McManus looks back at his giddy rise and catastrophic fall, wondering at the business and regulatory climate that let it happen. Finally, Revolut founder Nik Storonsky is being sued for €17.5 million by one of the world’s top luxury yacht brokers, which claims that he went “behind its back” to avoid paying commission on a €350 million superyacht. If you’d like to read more about the issues that affect your finances try signing up to On the Money , the weekly newsletter from our personal finance team, which will be issued every Friday to Irish Times subscribers.