Legitimate decision

amounted to 11 per cent of profits. Ireland charges a 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate, which would have resulted in a bill worth $8.7 billion (€7.9 billion)

Including deferred tax charges, Apple Operations International paid a total tax bill of $11 billion (€10.1 billion) for the period in question.

Apple has been present in Ireland since 198, currently employing approximately 56,600 staff, 6,000 of whom are based in Ireland.

In 2020, the European Commission ordered the Cupertino (California) technology company to pay a record €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland, on the grounds that it benefited from a sweetheart tax deal.

This amounted to illegal state aid between 2003 and 2014, Brussels said, enabling Apple to pay a maximum tax rate of just 1 per cent and as low as 0.005 per cent in 2014.

THE UK’s largest insurance broker warned of impending disaster if the industry had to pay claims arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The sector was not designed as a ‘backstop’ for the costs of war, David Howden, CEO of the Howden Group, told the Sunday Telegraph. “We’d all go bankrupt,” he maintained.

Howden’s comments came as the owners of approximately 500 commercial aircraft seized by Russia shortly after the invasion prepared to sue Lloyd’s of London insurers who refused to pay out around £8 billion (€9.12 billion).

Their decision not to pay up was legitimate, Howden argued. War had never been something covered by insurance, he said.

There was not enough capital in the insurance market to cover the impact of the conflict, he said.

“If policies were expanded the government would need to bail out bankrupt insurers,” Howden added.

Too much

RIO TINTO, which has raised its chief executive’s pay by 70 per cent, now faces a rebellion from shareholders at the next meeting. Jakob Stausholm took home £4.8 million (€5.48 billion) in 2022 after the FTSE100 mining giant made record profits on the back of soaring commodity prices.

Going down

SPAIN’S Industrial Production Index (IPI) fell by 0.8 per cent in February compared with February 2022. This was 2.2 points lower than in January, the National Statistics Institute (INE) announced on April 5, marking a return to negative year­onyear rates following January’s 1.2 per cent rise.

Holding on

MORRISONS said that cutting £700 million (€800 million) in costs over the next three years would allow it to reduce prices during the squeeze on consumer spending. The supermarket chain also announced a 0.1 per cent increase in samestore sales during the three months to the end of January.

RIP Josep Pique

JOSEP PIQUE, a Catalan politician, economist and businessman who headed several ministries between 1996 and 2003 during the governments of Jose Maria Aznar, died on April 6 in a Madrid hospital. The former president of Vueling, who was 68, had been suffering from cancer for some time.

Online flatline

UK customers return £7 billion (approximately €8 billion) of internet purchases each year, while more than a fifth of all clothes bought online are sent back. Increased returns owing to the cost of living crisis, were responsible for Boohoo’s 94 per cent slump in pre­tax profits, the retailer said.