IFG ‘confident’ of beating earnings target

IFG Group Plc, Ireland’s smallest publicly-traded financial-services company, will beat its target of doubling earnings per share by 2007 as the business benefits from a reorganisation, chief Executive Officer Richard Hayes said.

“I’m confident we’ll beat it,” he said, declining to be more specific.

“As the business starts firing on all cylinders it makes a very big difference.”

IFG’s shares gained 69% last year on optimism about Mr Hayes’s target of doubling earnings per share from about 10 cents in 2004 to 20 cents in 2007.

He has spent the past three years paring back a foray into the British financial-advice market, and plans to focus on IFG’s corporate trustee and administration business abroad and its mortgage business at home while paying off debt.

The company had a strong second half, and that continued into 2006, IFG said yesterday.

IFG is to report full-year earnings on April 12.

IFG also said it underestimated the cost of compensating customers of its Berkeley Jacobs pension-release business by 2.03 million. The payments followed an investigation into the sales practices of Berkeley Jacobs by the Britain’s Financial Services Authority. The unit was closed to new business in November 2004.

“It was disappointing not to have got the figure right in the first place,” Mr Hayes said.

“The last 20 or 30 cases came out badly.”