Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly is to invest €400m in a new manufacturing plant in Limerick which will employ 300 permanent staff when it is completed. A further 500 people will be temporarily employed in the building of the facility. The plant will be used to produce biologic ingredients for use in a range of therapies developed by the company. | Apple is overcoming the costly global shortage in computer chips, posting record sales over the key Christmas quarter, beating profit estimates and forecasting that its shortfall is narrowing. The iPhone maker is the world's largest company by market capitalisation. It has handled supply-chain challenges such as factory shutdowns and shipping delays brought on by the pandemic better than any of its top peers, analysts said. | Raising capital and recruiting and retaining staff are the biggest challenges facing Irish tech start-ups, according to the findings of a survey carried out by Scale Ireland. 230 start-up founders and CEOs contributed to the survey, which aims to gauge the sentiment of entrepreneurs in the sector. It looks at key issues including the economy, employment, taxation, state supports and incentives, skills, gender, and sustainability. | A US appeals court has thrown out the convictions of two former Deutsche Bank traders for rigging Libor, once among the world's most important financial benchmarks, and ordered acquittals for both men. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan found a lack of evidence that Matthew Connolly and Gavin Black caused Deutsche Bank to make false Libor submissions. | Sweden's H&M has today reported a bigger profit rise than expected for the September-November period on the back of well-received collections and cost control. Pretax profit at the world's second-biggest fashion retailer grew to 6 billion crowns ($640.1m) from a year-earlier 3.67 billion in the period, its fiscal fourth quarter. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had on average forecast a 5.43 billion crown profit. | Eir has agreed a deal with InfraVia to set up a joint venture partnership for its wholesale fibre broadband network that will help to accelerate the roll-out of high-speed internet across the country. InfraVia is private equity firm which specialises in infrastructure and technology investment. Eir said the new investment will increase the pace of expansion of its fibre broadband network and it now estimates that 200,000 homes will be passed in 2022, increasing to 250,000 homes in 2023.   |||