Let's be honest, 2019 didn't do the business world in Northern Ireland any favours. All of us were marched to the top of the hill several times as Brexit deadlines approached, only to be marched back down to uncertainty after spending millions of pounds in preparations.
Evidence from three recent large capital projects shows the financial consequences of cost overruns. At the time of writing this report, the Auditor General said that:
Managing public sector pay questions has become more complex as the UK government now tries to move away from the austerity constraints of recent years.
The general election high drama is truly upon us and while the majority of folk here are focused on the local party manifestos, the business community has been mulling over what the Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives' great plans mean for Northern Ireland.
When you think about how much you are paid for working, do you feel rich, poor or just plain average? Following BBC's Question Time last week, a lively online discussion ensued online about what it means to be well-off.
If you are one of the 79% of NI-based employers who said they expect to hire additional staff in the next year then you will have found that this year's Hays UK Salary & Recruiting Trends report provides much food for thought.
Post-Brexit the implementation of changes in UK rules on the recruitment of non-UK workers to take jobs in Northern Ireland is casting a shadow over business prospects for several important parts of the local economy.
The chance to offer ideas to improve business rates ended yesterday. Hopes for radical reform have been stimulated but the prospects for radical change are less dramatic.
In May this year I announced a fundamental review of business rates in Northern Ireland.
The British election comes at a time when the prospects for the NI economy are less optimistic than we would like. The uncertain Brexit decision-making, together with the postponed departure from the EU at least until the end of January 2020, is affecting inward investment and consumer spending.
Spirit AeroSystems Inc is a successful components contractor operating across the aerospace sector. It brings to Shorts-Bombardier a competitive reputation in advanced manufacturing.
Rose Mary Stalker, the new chair of Invest NI, has an ambitious dynamic agenda for her new job. She has a clear ability to articulate convincing arguments to any professional audience.
Brexit may not be happening this Thursday any longer, but that doesn't mean businesses - and the Government - can take their feet off the pedals when it comes to preparations.
The revised Northern Ireland Protocol which formed part of Boris Johnson's renegotiated withdrawal agreement has not been without controversy.
Well, this time I could obviously have written about the UK Government's latest Brexit plan. The problem is that the plan could have changed massively by the time this article is published! Instead, let's go back a little in history.
For many, the Northern Ireland backstop, designed to avoid a hard border in Ireland immediately following Brexit, had been among the most controversial elements of Theresa May's withdrawal deal.
Northern Ireland, as these words are being written, has shaped the Brexit headlines. The changed customs and regulatory alignment arrangements contained in the Withdrawal Agreement agreed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week would bring a new complex baseline for decision making.
In its most recent financial year to March 2019, Translink did not quite balance the books. In the conventional accounts, Translink earned £238m and after deduction of expenditure showed a trading loss of £19.5m. Balance sheet financial reserves fell by £30m.
It's approaching that time of year again, when people start thinking about... Christmas. The mere thought brings smiles to most people's faces and elicits feelings of sweet anticipation and nostalgia.
Invest NI, the development agency for business in Northern Ireland, carries responsibility for the delivery of improved performance by local businesses and attracting investors in new businesses.
An agreement has been signed that the assets of Harland and Wolff can be sold to an ambitious specialist business, InfraStrata plc, to great joy from the shipyard workers.
Three long years have passed since the Brexit referendum result was announced in the early hours of June 24, 2016. The date, forever etched in the political annals, has triggered a series of unprecedented political developments. Britain is now on its third prime minister.
Wrightbus has been caught in the globally disruptive move to electric buses. Despite its proven capabilities in the production and design of urban buses, it ultimately had no bus ready to compete in this new and exploding market.
Just 16 months ago, William Wright was knighted in a ceremony at London's Buckingham Palace, lauded as a captain of industry, the patriarch of an all-conquering family business.
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe made the right decision by presuming the worst about Brexit in framing next month's budget. Why go for tax cuts and higher spending increases when things could really start to get hairy by the beginning of 2020?
The Belfast Region City Deal gained official support from six Northern Ireland local authorities, the Stormont administration (in the absence of an Executive) and the UK Treasury. Together, a near £900m budget has been promised to secure the delivery of 20,000 new and better jobs over a 15 year period.
Three years ago, Wrightbus in Ballymena was celebrating its 70th birthday, revelling in its unbroken record of seven decades in the same family.
Talk over the last few days of an all-Ireland zone for food as a means of avoiding the backstop could be a glimmer of hope in the attempts to avoid a hard border on the island after Brexit.
Congratulations to the Department for the Economy: it has published a frank study of the factors involved in consideration of how to improve Northern Ireland's aviation connectivity, prepared by consultants at Oxford Economics.
Last week marked back to school for many households and holiday memories were fading fast. But while pictures captured on smartphones will provide reminders of the summer, what will perhaps stick in the mind most for many who holidayed abroad is the expense, with the weakness of sterling the fly in the sun lotion.
Ireland's finance minister Paschal Donohoe has some tricky decisions to make ahead of next month's Budget. Budget calls are always tricky. This time is different as Brexit looms large. So too does a possible general election in the Republic. There has been a strong feeling that if the direction and nature of Brexit became a little clearer, there would be a need to clear the political air in Ireland too.
It is common in modern homes these days to find that there isn't a physical phone installed. Rather, people are opting to rely solely on their mobile phone.
Earlier this month, there was UK-wide comment on the prospect of reduced electricity prices because the wholesale cost of natural gas has recently been falling. Northern Ireland energy market observers were surprised to learn on August 14 that the Regulator had approved a 6.1% price increase for domestic customers from October 1.
The politics of 'the deal' are everywhere right now. Donald Trump is pursuing foreign policy interests by treating everything as a deal.
The last three and a bit years of Brexit discussion has been littered with buzz words and an obvious lack of substance.
In the three years that have passed since the UK voted to leave the European Union, it would be fair to say that the performance of the economy has been relatively sluggish.
In the absence of an Executive, the day-to-day functioning of most public services which should fall within the competence of local ministers, rests heavily on the discretion of the top civil servants, usually holding appointments as permanent secretaries or exceptionally in other senior appointments (such as the Comptroller and Auditor General).
The 'high street' in many town centres is in long-term decline. Customers are being attracted to other retail and service outlets and too frequently the headlines read: "High streets hurting as Northern Ireland is bottom of (the ) footfall league again."
As farmers blockade beef processing plants around the country, the ramifications are starting to move along the food chain, as it were. Beef processors are worried they will lose important retail contracts and may have to start letting staff go. The whole situation is an unfortunate, sorry mess.
Last week my colleague Paul Mac Flynn in this same column warned about the need to ensure that people are not left behind in our increasingly more probable crashing-out of the European Union without a deal.
Ireland's housing market has long been a game of snakes and ladders.
The UK will leave the EU on October 31. That statement seems unambiguous. The problem is that there is no prospect that all of the hundreds of detailed arrangements will be ready for the change that will come on November 1.
It is now more likely than not that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union on October 31 without a withdrawal agreement or any negotiated settlement on future relations with the EU.
We have now endured three years of turbulence since the Brexit referendum and clearly we need this resulting uncertainty to be removed as a matter of urgency.
An exit from the EU without an agreed withdrawal deal is the worst conceivable economic crisis of the year. Now an official professional commentary says that 40,000 local jobs are at risk.
A no-deal Brexit is the single biggest threat to the Northern Ireland economy since the Troubles, a retail body has claimed.
A version of the old adage 'with great power comes great responsibility' could be applied to the position the Irish Government finds itself in with several of the US tech giants right now.
The list of grievances at the heart of the Irish housing crisis remains very long. Twelve years after house prices started to fall and close to six years after they began rising again, the problems with housing seem as intractable and contradictory as ever.
Economists are stereotyped as being, let's say, not the most rock 'n roll of people. But of late, those of us working on Norther n Ireland have had reason to focus strongly on drugs, cigarettes and heavy metals.
There is a serious need for a better-informed debate about the way in which Government services are financed. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to examine this, since the Department of Finance makes it difficult to find answers to basic questions.
