WILDGEESE: EMIGRANT BUSINESS LEADERS ON OPPORTUNITIES ABROAD:Mel Lynam, Finance director, Rapid Eye
MEL LYNAM, like many Irish immigrants in Germany, remembers being “stunned” by his first visit here, a short trip to Hamburg.
Walking around Germany’s second-largest city, the trained accountant realised that this place had nothing to do with his own stereotypes and preconceptions of the Germans as humourless, beach-towel owners.
“My view and indeed the common Irish view of Germany would have been driven – however much Ireland doesn’t want to admit it – by the British media,” says Lynam, who works for Rapid Eye, a geospatial data and information provider using their own constellation of five satellites in orbit above Earth.
“With the language barrier you’re less likely to go off and get the German viewpoint, as an English-only speaker you tend to get lazy and only get viewpoints originally written in English,” he said.
Lynam grew up on a farm in Rosemount, near Moate, Co Westmeath. Educated at the town’s Carmelite College, the 39-year-old went on to study accountancy at Athlone IT (or RTC as it was then) and qualified as an accountant doing night classes.
He began his career as auditor in a small Dublin firm, but moved on to work as a financial controller in everything from language schools to news organisations.
Following his wife’s work, he had a three-year spell in Denmark with TNT and is now working as head of finance for Rapid Eye in Brandenburg, selling satellite imagery to customers such as stock market analysts and governments interested in knowing about crop yields and infrastructure development.
Lynam enjoys working in an international environment – 28 nationalities in a company of 140 – and he has been pleasantly surprised by the experience.
“We’re still a relatively young company and I was their first finance person,” he said. “They were more interested in my experience in setting up finance departments and a multinational environment than in my knowing every nitty-gritty technical German ruling. You can look up the ruling if need be and, to be honest, I haven’t come across that much that I hadn’t seen before.”
For accountants, auditors and other financial professionals, moving here without speaking German limits one’s opportunities, he says. At the same time, new opportunities are arising as the financial world shrinks and multinationals push for similar rules and standards in their worldwide operations.
“I found the German rules are coming closer and closer to the US, UK and Ireland accounting rules, there is a big step towards standardisation,” he says.
“Germany has so many global powerhouse companies that they are going to push for that as well. It’s in Germany’s interest to go down that line.” Lynam says if finance professionals are considering Germany as an option, qualifications should not be much of an issue.
“In fact, there seems to be a shortage of qualified finance people,” he says.
Lynam’s German skills have improved through daily life, but he admits that his opportunities to practise his German are limited because of his English-based work life and home life. For finance industry graduates looking for opportunities in Germany, Lynam says they will probably follow the money south to Frankfurt, Munich and the Stuttgart region.
Berlin has no big money nor any industry of note, he says, but it does offer an unbeatable quality of life for anyone lucky enough to find work here.
“It’s a very relaxed sort of place where not having money doesn’t seem to stop people doing things,” he says. “For someone considering Berlin, money should only be a part of what you’re looking for because you’re not going to get that here. But there’s no harm taking a lower salary here because the place is cheaper and you can live a better life in Berlin on what in Ireland would be deemed a low salary.”
With two small children, Lynam has found childcare in Germany much more reasonable and healthcare far more efficient, if a little clinical and “colder” than in Ireland.
Attitudes to the Irish haven’t changed significantly in recent months, he says, despite the meltdowns of German banks in the IFSC or the recent EU-IMF bailout.
“When the Greek bailout was going on, the newspaper Bild was advising Germans not to holiday in Greece as it may not be safe. During the Irish bailout, they were advising people to holiday in Ireland as it had become so much cheaper,” he said.
As for the much-publicised cultural gap between the Irish and Germans?
“The Germans in Berlin and east Germans I come across as abrupt initially but are really a friendly bunch, sometimes almost childlike in the way they want to make friends,” he said. “Irish people are probably more friendly on the surface but reserved underneath.”
