BusinessAny Other Business

Little green left at troubled London Irish

Any Other Business: Denis and the Damsel in Distressed; economists in a spin over Higgins; Quinn Country’s second life; EI’s funding gap; two takes on Paddy Cosgrave

London Irish rugby club, with a low turnover and no stadium of its own, has debts of £30 million, including a chunky tax bill. Its financial situation is so precarious that the American consortium on the verge of taking over the club had to cover the March payroll. The players have not been paid this month, and were told on Wednesday that banking delays in the US were the reason for the holdup.

There’s no fleck of green in this new consortium. It’s being fronted by Howard Thomas of the Redstrike group, and reportedly includes the American investment firm 777, which is also considering an investment in Everton FC and already owns football clubs Sevilla and Genoa.

It is expected London Irish will become tenants at AFC Wimbledon’s ground, Plough Lane. Which, for those who recall the consortium of businessmen who wanted to buy Wimbledon FC in the 1990s and move it to Dublin, is the closest London Irish may come to having an Irish connection.

The club is currently coached by Declan Kidney, and is having its best season since 2009. Fifth place in the league is at stake in tomorrow’s match against Exeter – presuming the unpaid players turn up.

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Denis and the Damsel in Distressed

Billed as “the first hedge fund memoir by a woman”, Damsel in Distressed was the catchy title of a recent book by Dominique Mielle. A former partner at a big hedge fund focused on distressed investments, Mielle retired in 2018 and has been a full-time corporate board director since.

Just the right person, then, to have on the board of Denis O’Brien’s Digicel, which she joined in July 2020. It’s currently undergoing another massive restructuring, with bondholders set to take a majority stake in return for a debt write-off. But hang on: we’ve just spotted that Mielle, a bondholder nominee, stepped off the Digicel board in February before the latest restructuring agreement was announced.

The Damsel would only confirm to us that she has left. “I’m afraid I really cannot comment at this point, I’m very sorry,” she told AOB.

Higgins has economists in a spin

Some lecturers in economics seem to be fretting about the future of their faculties after President Michael D Higgins’ criticism of how the subject is taught. Robert Gillanders, associate professor of economics at DCU, has tweeted: “The academic discipline of economics is not what [the President] seems to think it is and I hope his comments don’t deter students from any part of the political spectrum from studying economics.”

Also wringing his hands was Alan Barrett, chief executive of the ESRI, who posted that “it would be a great pity if the president’s unfortunate comments” on the teaching of the subject “put any prospective students off taking economics in school or in college”.

Frank Crowley, co-director of the Spatial and Regional Economic Research Centre in UCC, claimed the president’s comments “don’t accurately reflect research and teaching”, while his UCC colleague Seamus Coffey insisted that there is “no evidence supporting the claims about the teaching of economics in Ireland”.

To make his point, Gillanders posted a sample of the essay questions he has set for final year economics students at DCU. How about if next year’s crop is asked: “President Michael D Higgins’ criticisms of the studying of economics are unfair. Discuss.”

A second life for Quinn Country

Quinn Country, the three-part documentary series about the former billionaire Sean Quinn which was broadcast on RTÉ Television last December, is having a second life online. Bankrupt Billionaire is the title of a 90-minute version now available on Amazon Prime.

“It’s actually a straight cut-down from the RTÉ series,” producer Andrew Tully of Finepoint Films tells me. “We were contracted to deliver a 90-minute feature-length film to the distributor Abacus Media. We obviously had to lose content for time, and then the film was scored by the brilliant composer Eoin O’Callaghan. It’s great to have the film on a streamer and ultimately bring it to a wider audience.”

To sell the riches-to-rags story of the Cavan man to a worldwide audience, Abacus Media’s website explains that he was “the world’s biggest single loser in the 2008 global financial collapse” and is “known throughout Ireland simply as Quinn”.

Mind the EI funding gap

The Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund is a €500 million pool of cash to encourage companies to invest in game-changing technologies. Administered by Enterprise Ireland since 2018, it has proven popular with SMEs in particular, and €306 million has been awarded to 91 projects so far.

But there’s one hitch – the length of time it takes for successful applicants to draw down cash. The problem was raised at last November’s meeting of the Enterprise Digital Advisory Forum, a talking shop set up by the Government to provide feedback on challenges in the tech sector. It includes representatives from Google, IBM and Microsoft.

“Forum members observed that the application process for the fund may discourage some applicants, with a particular emphasis placed on the duration between application and payment (one applicant described a period of 15-16 months),” say the minutes of November’s meeting. “It was noted that delays can be a significant issue for SMEs, but that a timeline like the one described can prove difficult even for multinationals.”

We asked the Department of Enterprise if any action has been taken since. It says all enterprise partners must clear certain financial assessments to show they are not undertakings in difficulty (UiDs). This means Enterprise Ireland has to “undertake vigorous efforts” to ensure projects can be funded. But the department is aware of the “burden” this has put on companies, and has taken steps to revise the process.

In Call 6 of the fund, for which applications close on May 31st, the UiD assessments will happen alongside the evaluation process, which should mean the results are announced in Q4 this year, “ie, within the typical six-month timeline for completion of such calls”.

Two takes on Paddy Cosgrave

Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder of Web Summit and financial backer of The Ditch website, told his Twitter followers last week that they will be able to read his book in 2024. No mention of what it will be called, however. In a tweet last July, Cosgrave said the working title was Four Floors: The Dossier, which sounds like an architectural manual. In fact, the themes were said to include start-ups, venture capital, a British spy and Silicon Valley.

It won’t be the only Cosgrave book to appear next year, however. A leading business journalist in Dublin is already preparing an alternative account.

Joyce’s Qantas exit makes O’Leary top dog

Later this year, Michael O’Leary should become the best-paid Irish airline boss in the world. That’s because Alan Joyce, the Tallaght native, is stepping down as chief executive of Qantas, where he earned AU$5,575,000 (€3.36 million) last year. O’Leary had to get by on a package of €2.76 million in fiscal 2022.

Australian media have been doing the maths on Joyce’s total earnings since he took the Qantas job in 2008 – it’s estimated at $125 million. Has he given value for that? The Dubliner had delivered a cumulative profit of about $1.6 billion up to 2019, but then along came Covid. “The long-term record has been okay, without being fantastic,” Steve Johnson of Forager Funds Management told ABC-TV this week.