The Irish Independent reports that Ryanair has called on the Aviation Regulator to demand more information on the logic behind the Dublin Airport Authority's €1.8bn development plan.

The Irish Independent also reports that drama series commissioned by RTE are receiving millions of euro in tax breaks each year.

The Irish Times reports that Dublin-based drug firm Azur Pharma, led by former Elan executive Séamus Mulligan, has spent more than €20 million on the buy-out of the privately held US firm Pharmelle of Phoenix, Arizona.

The transaction marks the start of a concerted effort by Mr Mulligan, the chairman and chief executive of Azur, to achieve scale in the US. Pharmelle sells urology and female health products but its sales force of 35 is located throughout the US.

Azur wants to make use of such personnel for the sale of non-Pharmelle products. The firm is also understood to be exploring opportunities to acquire other pharmaceutical companies and products.

"We are actively engaged in exploring other transactions," said a spokesman.

Formed in 2005 with €40 million in capital from private clients of Davy Stockbrokers, Azur specialises in the sale and distribution of strong drug products that are nearing the end of their patents.

The company sometimes modifies patents and it continues to sell the drugs when they come off patent.

Azur does not engage in research and development, although another firm linked to Mr Mulligan, Circ Pharma, does.

Azur's 2006 revenues were in the region of $10 million (€7.59 million). It is understood that the Pharmelle transaction will bring its annual revenues to $20 million. The consideration was not disclosed but is understood to be in excess of €20 million.

While the deal was funded through Azur's own resources, the firm believes it would have access to significant funding from outside the firm should appropriate acquisition opportunities arise in the future.

The Pharmelle transaction is Azur's second big acquisition since its formation.

In January 2006, the firm spent $11 million on the acquisition of a product called Gastrocrom, for the treatment of a gastrointestinal disorder known as mastocytosis, from US group UCB Pharma Inc.

Mr Mulligan worked for 20 years with Elan until 2004, most recently as executive vice-president business and corporate development. In the latter part of his career with Elan, he led a restructuring process that saw the group realise more than $2 billion on the disposal of 40 assets over 18 months.

The identity of the Davy clients behind the investment in the company is not known.

The Irish Times also reports that the Competition Authority has written to Ibec over a warning by the employers' sub-group, Food Drinks Industry Ireland (FDII), that prices would have to rise because of higher business costs.

Chaired by Dr Bill Prasifka, the authority has also written to the Irish Auctioneers' and Valuers' Institute (IAVI) after it warned that estate agents' fees would have to rise because of a slowdown in the market.

The move by the authority is seen as a shot across the bows of the two representative groups and a warning to other industry sectors not to act in concert to push up prices at a time of rising inflation. A spokesman said the authority was concerned that recent public statements by the two groups could be interpreted as amounting to directions to members to raise their prices.

"Price signalling can facilitate firms who should be competing against each other to raise prices in a co-ordinated manner, thus depriving consumers of the benefits of competition," the spokesman said.

FDII had warned that food prices were likely to rise in the coming months due to "spiralling" business costs.

FDII and the IAVI have replied to the authority saying they are aware of their responsibilities under the competition Acts.

The National Consumer Agency (NCA) has expressed concern at FDII's warnings about price rises.

The agency's chairwoman, Ann Fitzgerald, told an Oireachtas committee last week that shortages of commodities or crop failures would have some impact on grocery prices. However, she said this impact should be proportional and should not become embedded into prices on a permanent basis.

The Irish Examiner reports that the Green Party yesterday vowed to increase the State pensions by €25 a week each year if elected to Government.

Unveiling new financial policies, the party’s finance spokesman, Dan Boyle, said it would result in a pension of €334 a week by the end of the next term of Government.

Speaking on the last day of the party’s annual conference in Salthill, Mr Boyle said its long-term plan was to increase the pension to 60% of average income.

The Greens also promised to introduce a new pension incentive scheme based on the SSIA account as well as give people the option to continue working until they reached the age of 70.

However, Mr Boyle categorically ruled out tax cuts after the next election, saying the Greens would not follow the promises made by the Labour Party and the Progressive Democrats in recent weeks.

Instead, he said, the party would concentrate on copper-fastening the index-linking of tax credits and tax bands, as well introducing refundable tax credits.

In his leader’s address on Saturday night, the party’s leader, Trevor Sargent, said the Greens were involved in action politics and not auction politics.

Mr Boyle denied yesterday that its financial package was another example of auction politics by a political party in the run-up to the General Election.

He said the party was committed instead to bringing equality into the tax and pensions systems, and was directing the bulk of its initiatives at the lower paid, carers and volunteers.

The measures, he claimed, would not be prohibitively expensive and said the party would fully cost them with the assistance of the Department of Finance.

However, the actual figures will not be released for several weeks.

The main provisions of the Greens’ proposals are:

* A €25 per week increase in pension each year for five years.

* A SSIA-type scheme for pensions targeted at savings at lower amounts. A €20,000 per year saving would receive matching State funding of 50%. A €100,000 per year saving would receive matching funding of only 30%.

* To offer people the option to continue working full-time or part-time until the age of 70.

* Index-linking of tax credits and tax bands.

* No reduction in taxes.

* Introduction of refundable tax credits for those on the lowest income.

* A new carers and volunteers’ tax credit worth €500 per annum.

The Financial Times reports that the Dutch banking regulator has intervened in the battle for control of ABN Amro, warning that a hedge fund’s campaign to push for a break-up of the banking group is “a bridge too far”.

The warning by Nout Wellink, president of the Dutch central bank, raises the stakes in what is expected to be a fierce battle for the future of ABN.

Mr Wellink’s comments came days after The Children’s Investment Fund, the London-based hedge fund, asked ABN to consider breaking itself up to reverse years of poor share price performance.

TCI, which has a 1 per cent stake in ABN, has drafted five resolutions for the bank’s annual shareholder meeting in April.

TCI’s campaign is believed to be the first time an activist shareholder has directly taken on one of Europe’s large banks.

Mr Wellink indicated that the outcome could have repercussions for other European countries, as well as for the stability of the banking system. He suggested that the central bank would oppose plans to sell one of ABN’s subsidiaries and return the proceeds to shareholders.

“TCI’s letter implies: you work out what you are going to sell, but send the proceeds to us. For us, that is a bridge too far,” Mr Wellink told NRC Handelsblad, the Dutch newspaper.

Mr Wellink’s intervention is sensitive because ABN two years ago fought a bitter battle with the governor of Italy’s central bank, Antonio Fazio, after launching a bid for Antonveneta, the mid-sized Italian lender.

ABN succeeded after a scandal forced Mr Fazio from office. The European Commission has since moved to reduce the power of national central banks to veto foreign takeovers.

Mr Wellink met Rijkman Groenink, ABN’s chief executive, last Friday to discuss TCI’s letter.

ABN has not yet formally responded to TCI, though it has indicated that 2007 would be the year in which it delivered on promises to shareholders.

TCI, which in 2005 led the successful campaign to block Deutsche Börse’s proposed takeover of the London Stock Exchange, has called on ABN to consider selling or spinning off some businesses, or putting itself up for sale.

If it were to invite bids for the bank, which has retail operations in the US, Brazil and Italy as well as in the Netherlands, it would be likely to draw interest from large European and US banks.

ABN believes several other hedge funds have built up similar stakes to TCI, though it has not named them.

Mr Wellink said that any group that wanted to vote shares worth more than 10 per cent of ABN would need permission from the central bank to do so.

The FT also reports that German airline Lufthansa plans to introduce a voluntary emissions surcharge on tickets before the end of the year, with the takings going to charities and projects that fight global warming.

The airline said the move was prompted by customer requests. But it could also be seen as a reaction to pressure for airlines to sign up to the EU’s carbon dioxide emissions trading scheme.

German airlines have only recently come round to the idea of buying certificates to pollute. The EU scheme spurs energy producers to cut emissions by allowing the sale of surplus licences.

But Wolfgang Mayrhuber, Lufthansa chief executive, is sceptical, arguing instead for more efficient air traffic control systems and less circuitous air corridors.

The airline said it had commissioned a feasibility study for the surcharge, including a list of groups that could use the proceeds.

“A lot of customers have approached us asking to make contributions to climate research,” he said. “They obviously feel this is an important way of doing their bit.”

The New York Times reports that about two weeks ago, Fred Krupp, the president of a nonprofit advocacy group called Environmental Defense, received an unusual phone call.

William K. Reilly, the former administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H. W. Bush, was on the other end. But before Mr. Reilly would explain the reason for his call, he said he needed an assurance from Mr. Krupp that he would keep the conversation confidential.

After receiving such a pledge, Mr. Reilly dropped a bombshell: the TXU Corporation, the Texas energy giant that had become the whipping boy of the nation’s largest environmental groups, was in talks to be sold to a group led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company and Texas Pacific Group, two large private equity firms.

Mr. Reilly, who works for Texas Pacific, said he wanted to negotiate a cease-fire. If the investors succeeded in taking over TXU, Mr. Reilly said, they would commit themselves to scale back significantly on TXU’s plan to build 11 new coal plants and adhere to a strict set of environmental rules. In return, he wanted the support of Mr. Krupp and his peers, who had spent the past several months waging a bitter and public war against TXU.

Last night, after several weeks of marathon negotiations that brought together both environmentalists and Wall Street bankers, the board of TXU was moving toward a vote to accept the bid from Kohlberg Kravis and Texas Pacific for about $45 billion, which would be the largest buyout in history.

The deal would be noteworthy not just for its size, but for the confluence of business decisions and environmental concerns that drove the ultimate transaction. Because private equity firms are unregulated and historically have valued their privacy, neither Kohlberg Kravis nor Texas Pacific were eager to become an “enemy combatant” of the environmental groups, people involved in the talks said. Reducing the coal plant initiative will also free up billions of dollars in planned spending that the firms will be able to use for other projects or to help finance the transaction.

Within TXU, the controversial plan to build a raft of coal plants had become so damaging to its stock price that its board had been privately weighing a plan to scrap part of the project, said people involved in the talks, bringing the number of new plants to 5 or 6 from 11. Shareholders had sent the stock on a roller coaster ride from more than $67 a share to as low as about $53 over concerns about the risk and vast expenditure; the stock closed at $60.02 on Friday.

Indeed, it was the quick drop in TXU’s stock price that got the attention of Kohlberg Kravis and Texas Pacific, which look for undervalued companies and try to turn them around. Together, both firms approached C. John Wilder, TXU’s chief executive, in January with an offer for the company, these people said.

At the time, neither Kohlberg Kravis nor Texas Pacific told TXU about their ambition to scale back its controversial coal plants. But behind the scenes, both firms had been developing a new strategy for the company with the help of Goldman Sachs, their lead adviser.

Goldman Sachs has been a longtime proponent of reducing carbon emissions. Its former chief executive, Henry M. Paulson, now the secretary of the treasury, was also the chairman of the Nature Conservancy, an environmental activist group.

Texas Pacific’s co-founder, David Bonderman, is member of the board of the World Wildlife Fund, and Mr. Reilly is chairman emeritus. Mr. Bonderman called Mr. Reilly to help work on the deal and create what they ultimately called The Green Group, a committee of advisers that included Mr. Reilly, Roger Ballentine of Green Strategies and Stuart E. Eizenstat, the former chief domestic policy adviser for President Jimmy Carter.

“We didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history,” said a person involved in the bidding group who was not authorized to talk about the transaction before its formal announcement, which is expected today.

Under the terms of the deal, Kohlberg Kravis and Texas Pacific will pay $69.25 a share for TXU, people involved said. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup are expected to take small stakes in TXU as well as help finance the debt with J. P. Morgan Chase. In addition, the investor group will assume more than $12 billion of TXU’s debt.

The deal represents about a 17 percent premium over TXU’s closing price on Thursday before word of the deal began to leak and was reported Friday on CNBC after the market closed.

It is unclear whether shareholders will agitate for a higher price from the investor group or push for other suitors to emerge. Several recent “go private” deals have drawn opposition from shareholders who expressed concern that they were being shortchanged.

The investor group has not laid out any specific plans to grow revenues through alternatives to the coal plants, but TXU is not likely to lose money, at least initially, as a result of scaling back. Three of the plants are already in the works and other eight that will be canceled would not have been built for years.

And the group will be getting more than just a utility. TXU is in the midst of an experiment to run broadband Internet over its power lines as part of a venture with Current Communications.

Both TXU, which was advised by Credit Suisse and Lazard, and the investor group spent weeks holed up in three conference rooms at the Gaylord Texan, a hotel just outside of Dallas. With armies of bankers and lawyers that frequently numbered more than 40, the group negotiated the buyout deal, including an unusual provision that will allow TXU to seek higher rival bids over the next 50 days. This clause could potentially create a bidding war, perhaps bringing other private equity firms and utilities into an auction.

Mr. Bonderman and Henry R. Kravis, the founder of Kohlberg Kravis, pleaded their case to the Texas governor, Rick Perry, on Thursday in person at his mansion, mindful that Oregon had rejected Texas Pacific’s deal to buy Portland General and that Arizona had rejected Kohlberg Kravis’ deal to buy UniSource Energy. The pair has also reached out to James A. Baker, a Texan and former Reagan cabinet member.

But perhaps the most difficult talks were with the environmentalists, who often seemed more like Wall Street negotiators than green activists.

Mr. Krupp of Environmental Defense used his conversation with Mr. Reilly as an opportunity to negotiate even harder for further concessions. The men agreed that Mr. Krupp’s lieutenant, James D. Marston, who was leading the charge against TXU in Texas, would meet with Mr. Reilly and other representatives of the buying group. And representatives from Natural Resource Defense Council, another climate-control advocacy group, was brought into the discussion to help formulate a plan that all sides could agree on.

So last Wednesday, Mr. Marston flew to San Francisco, where he found himself face to face with Mr. Reilly over breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental hotel. There, over scrambled eggs and croissants, Mr. Reilly laid out a plan that included reducing the coal plants from 11 to 3.

Then the men went to Texas Pacific’s conference room overlooking Alcatraz and the San Francisco Bay for a day-long negotiation that stretched until early the next morning. The group, which included Mr. Reilly, Mr. Bonderman and Frederick Goltz of Kohlberg Kravis, worked out a “10-point plan” that included a commitment by the investors to return the carbon-dioxide emissions by TXU to 1990 levels by 2020 and support a $400 million energy efficiency program.

When an agreement was finally struck, at 1 a.m. the next morning, Mr. Reilly grabbed a bottle of pinot noir from his colleague’s office to toast the group. But he couldn’t find a corkscrew. So he ran back to the Mandarin Oriental to borrow one.

Not all of TXU’s historical opponents are popping corks. Some noted that a decision by one company did not sway the others that are building plants. In Dallas, Laura Miller, the mayor and leader of a coalition of municipal officials that has spent $600,000 fighting the TXU plants, said the agreement with the environmental groups might not get TXU as much help as it wanted.

Ms. Miller pointed out that one of the three surviving projects, a plant near Waco, is still opposed by local officials and had drawn a negative recommendation from a panel of Texas judges. She said she hoped that TXU’s plans would leave an opening for cleaner projects, like a proposal to build a power line to West Texas, where power producers propose to build large wind farms.

The NYT also reports that no one would mistake the Ask a Jew guy for Lonelygirl15, but these days YouTube contributor Shmuel Tennenhaus is feeling like a hot commodity.

Mr. Tennenhaus, an aspiring comedy writer who gained a modest following on YouTube for his droll question-and-answer clips and other spots featuring his grandmother “Bubby,” is being wooed by the site’s competitors, including Metacafe, ManiaTV and others, with promises of guaranteed exposure, a share of advertising money, or both.

“It’s all very odd,” said Mr. Tennenhaus, speaking from Hallandale, Fla. His YouTube channel, Oneparkave, has logged roughly 32,000 visits and a few hundred subscribers since last fall. “My parents say I’m special, but I can’t imagine I’m the only guy they’re contacting.”

He has that right. The most popular YouTubers, who have generated millions of visits and tens of thousands of subscribers, say they have received overtures from multiple sites. And YouTube, meanwhile, appears ready to respond to the challenge.

“I think everybody that has a site has contacted me,” said Paul Robinett, whose YouTube persona Renetto has attracted 1.19 million views and more than 23,000 subscribers. Mr. Robinett, who is based in Columbus, Ohio, and frequently posts commentaries on YouTube-related issues, said: “They’re not throwing a ton of money around. It’s kind of chump change. And I haven’t responded because I know revenue-sharing is coming to YouTube.”

Few performers will divulge what kind of money is being thrown around. But Metacafe pays $5 for every 1,000 views, with their most popular acts netting tens of thousands of dollars, figures that the site will mention when trying to persuade YouTube stars to defect.

In January, YouTube’s co-founder, Chad Hurley, said the company would in the coming months begin sharing advertising revenue with contributors. The company last week said it would not elaborate on that plan, or on the efforts of competitors to lure its contributors away.

But Mr. Robinett said he was contacted by a talent agency claiming YouTube plans to share about 20 percent of the advertising money gleaned from each video clip with the clip’s producer. Mr. Robinett said he could not confirm that claim with a YouTube executive.

YouTube is by far the most popular video site on the Web, with about 26 million visitors in December, according to comScore Media Metrix, an Internet statistics firm. Yahoo Video had 22 million, while the closest independent site, Heavy.com, had about 6.5 million visitors.

But YouTube has been stung by the departure of its most popular acts. Last fall, Lonelygirl15, an online show about the exploits of a fictitious teenager, left YouTube for Revver, which pays producers half of all advertising revenue. The comedy duo Smosh, another of YouTube’s biggest stars, moved to LiveVideo.com, where its videos begin and end with that site’s branding messages.

The Smosh stars did not return e-mail messages seeking comment, but David Peck, LiveVideo’s vice president of operations based in El Segundo, Calif., said: “Just as every TV network, film studio and record label in America has done for decades, we are proactively signing talent to bring their work to new audiences.”

Mr. Peck would not disclose the terms of its deals with contributors, but other popular YouTube contributors say LiveVideo has recruited them with promises of money in exchange for the right to show their videos exclusively for an introductory period.

James L. McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, an Internet consultancy in Cambridge, Mass., said YouTube’s executives can expect hardball tactics from competitors, given the stakes.

“It’s not at all bad form to try to poach other users,” Mr. McQuivey said. “The people providing the best content are obviously valuable. The only problem is, no YouTube competitor can say, ‘We’ll get you millions of eyeballs in a week.’ ”

As a result, Mr. McQuivey said, YouTube’s competitors must offer cash. “And who’s going to pay them? Advertisers. But advertisers also want to see millions of eyeballs.”

Revver, with a monthly audience estimated by comScore at about 400,000, is big enough to attract advertisers, said Steven Starr, the company’s chief, speaking from Hollywood. But in luring Lonelygirl15’s producers to his site, he said he had offered nothing more than Revver offers any other contributor, nor did it demand exclusivity.

Other sites “are making noise around advancing guarantees to their talent, but we don’t do that,” Mr. Starr said. Because Revver earns ad revenue based on the number of clip views, he encourages producers to distribute their videos on as many sites as possible.

Allyson Campa, the vice president of marketing for Metacafe in Palo Alto, Calif., said the site, which shares advertising revenue with its producers, routinely recruits contributors from other video sites.

“We don’t have a specific strategy to poach specific creators, but we’ve certainly increased our emphasis on getting the word out and letting creators know we have a great system,” she said.

Ms. Campa added that Metacafe has not offered incentives to contributors to join the site, but that she “would not rule out” such an approach.

Drew Massey, the chief executive of ManiaTV, a video site based in Denver on which users create channels with homemade clips and professionally produced content, acknowledged that the site has recruited YouTube contributors with pledges to feature them on ManiaTV’s home page.

“I’m sure every site does it,” Mr. Massey said. “We’re not saying ‘Here’s a ton of money.’ It’s more like, ‘Check us out and get exposure if you’re really good.’ For producers, two things are important: fame and fortune. In that order.”

Indeed, some of YouTube’s stars say they don’t necessarily want money. Mr. Tennenhaus, who recently received an e-mail overture from ManiaTV, said: “It’s a no-brainer, especially since the e-mail didn’t talk about me doing exclusive content.”

“This is not about the money,” Mr. Tennenhaus said. “Right now, it’s an unbelievable opportunity to showcase my stuff and get feedback from real people. For me it’s like going to college, and getting hands-on experience.”

Ben Going, creator of Boh3m3, another of YouTube’s most popular channels, started his YouTube series in part because he aspired to work with the “Jackass” team. Mr. Going, a waiter in Huntsville, Ala., who shoots videos from his bedroom, now says he hopes “video blogging might become some kind of career.”

“I’ve seen people mentioning that now that Google has given YouTube $1.6 billion, they’re going to share it with users,” Mr. Going said. “That’s not going to happen, but if the site keeps escalating, maybe in six months it’ll grow into something very profitable for everybody.”

That is what Mr. Robinett, a k a Renetto, is hoping. Mr. Robinett recently posted a video chastising YouTube stars who have bolted to other sites. He said the video was tongue in cheek, though many in the YouTube community missed the joke.

Loyalty does count for something, Mr. Robinett said. “If YouTube stays on top, would you like to be the loyal guy who stuck it out, or the one who ran from here to there to be popular?” he said.

Then again, Mr. Robinett added, no one has tested his loyalty with a truly lucrative offer.

“These companies don’t quite understand,” he said. “If they understood the power and influence that some of the bigger people bring to the table, they wouldn’t think twice about paying me and 10 other people $100,000 apiece to blog for three months. If they thought twice about doing that, they’d be nuts.”