Every March, St Patrick’s Day transforms Dublin — but few people know the man helping to turn a single parade into one of Ireland’s biggest cultural and economic events.
Richard Tierney is the CEO of St Patrick’s Festival, the organisation behind Ireland’s national celebration. In thispodcast with Ian Kehoe, Tierney explains how the festival has evolved into a multi-day, citywide programme — with free daytime events, night-time culture and thousands of participants — while still carrying the weight of national identity at home and abroad.
Coming from a background in live entertainment and major commercial deals, Tierney was brought in with a clear brief: make the festival financially sustainable without losing its cultural soul.
As managing director of Chevron Training, Karl Fitzpatrick runs one of Ireland’s largest providers of online childcare and healthcare programmes. However, the Wexford based entrepreneur also owns the Irish master franchise for a range of other businesses including Bricks 4 Kidz Ireland, Little Medical School Ireland and 4EverYoung Anti-Aging Solutions Ireland. In this podcast, he charts his own career and reveals how he manages his collection of business. He also talks about his role as an angel investor, his expansion plans and the impact of Covid-19 on his businesses - and the wider economy.
Most retail brands start off with a physical presence and migrate online. Gym + Coffee, the Irish athleisure brand, has done it in reverse – launching an online store in 2017 before rolling out a chain of retail outlets. However, Niall Horgan, a co-founder and chief executive of Gym + Coffee, says its online-first strategy has allowed it to scale during the current crisis. In a podcast with Ian Kehoe, Horgan also explains why he left a multinational career to help launch the business, and how it overhauled its supply chain in 10 days due to Covid-19. He also talks about the importance of community, brand and mission and reveals its strategy for international expansion.
Over the past year, The Currency has exposed the structures used by vulture funds to acquire tens of billions’ worth of distressed debt in Ireland. Thomas Hubert’s latest investigation into CarVal also revealed how profitable this business has been for the US private equity firm, and where its Irish-registered special purpose vehicles are headed next. From the policies that led to the mass securitisation of distressed debt to the 2016 reform of so-called Section 110 companies and its effect (or lack thereof) on the tax they pay here, and to the use of Irish vehicles to swoop on distressed debt as far away as Australia and China, Thomas joins Ian Kehoe to take stock on the presence of vulture funds in Ireland as pillar banks book a fresh round of loan impairments.
Over the past month, Investment Strategist John Looby has written a three-part series on what investors, policymakers and business leaders can learn from the thinking of the scholar and mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, Looby talks about the practical implementation of many of Taleb’s theories around probability, risk, and anti-fragility, and explains how investors can buffer themselves in an uncertain world. He also talks about what Irish politicians can learn from Taleb’s theories about the future, with Looby arguing that a significant policy goal should be winning the case with our EU partners for splitting the capital budget from the current budget, and funding the former with tailored, long-term debt.
With sport almost ground to a halt, the various Irish governing bodies have been warning about the financial impact of the crisis on their respective associations. In this podcast, Rob Hartnett, the founder and chief executive of Sport for Business, examines the business shock of Covid-19 on the GAA, the FAI, the IRFU and horse racing. Hartnett, whose company bridges the gap between business and sport, also talks about the impact on television rights, sponsorship and partnership deals, as well the new models that associations and clubs will have to implement to adapt to the new commercial reality.
US physicist Yaneer Bar-Yam has specialised in studying complex systems such as pandemics and financial crises. In January he wrote an influential paper with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of a best-selling book called The Black Swan, warning that the novel coronavirus emerging in China threatened the world. Bar-Yam has been paying close attention to Ireland's coronavirus response and argues that the best approach once the number of new cases has been brought near zero is to cut off routes for any fresh infection to spread. He tells Thomas Hubert: "You want to be as careful as possible to limit the possibility of starting a new fire and what you want to do is to limit travel as much as is reasonably possible and to quarantine people that arrive carefully so that they don't start a new outbreak."
The Irish social media analytics firm Newswhip has raised $9m from investors and counts Walmart, IBM, the Washington Post and Microsoft among its clients. In a podcast with Ian Kehoe, co-founder and CEO Paul Quigley talks about the company’s journey over the last nine years – and outlines its plans for the future. Quigley also talks about how the company helps publishers and companies track online engagement, something that he believes improves business decision making. He also discusses the media landscape, fake news and the importance of recurring revenue.
The economist David McWilliams has always been quick to spot societal and economic shifts. In this interview with Sam Smyth, he explains why Covid-19 offers an opportunity for the government to reimagine the Irish economy and the interaction between business and the state. McWilliams also talks about wealth, the future of the media, the Irish housing crisis, the importance of accessible economics and why Dickens was ahead of his time.
As the co-owner of Fire Steakhouse & Grill in Dublin’s Mansion House and Sole Seafood & Grill on South William Street, Padraic O’Kane runs two of the city’s largest restaurants. Shuttered for three months, both will reopen on Monday, but, due to social distancing, capacity at both will be reduced by 40 per cent. In this podcast, O’Kane talks about the economics of the restaurant business in the world of Covid-19 and outlines a range of measures to help the embattled hospitality sector – from Vat reform to new rental agreements. Plus, as the man who brings American football to Dublin each year, he talks about the impact of the pandemic on Irish tourism.
As managing partner of professional services firm KPMG, Seamus Hand has spent the last three months helping his clients – and his own firm – navigate through the crisis. In this podcast, he talks about the impact of the lockdown on different sectors of the economy and called for innovative policies to get liquidity to cash strapped businesses – including a zero Vat rate for some firms. Hand, who took over as managing partner last year, also spoke about why consumer confidence is key to a quick economic recovery, the opportunities for Ireland in a post-Covid-19 global landscape and the importance of learning lessons from this crisis.
