Phil Hogan declares €1m revenues from consultancy firm

Former European commissioner Phil Hogan has declared some €1 million in annual revenues from his consultancy firm, as he forges a new career advising big-league corporate clients.

Three years after he lost the prestigious EU trade commissionership in the fallout from the Golfgate affair, Mr Hogan has set out his fee income for client work in an official filing to the authorities in Brussels. The former Fine Gael minister was previously agriculture commissioner.

His declaration this week on the EU Transparency Register shows the estimated annual revenue from the relevant activities in 2022 was greater than or equal to €1 million. The business activity was advancing the interests of clients.

Mr Hogan’s clients include payment card business Visa, from whom he received revenues last year between €200,000 and €299,999.

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He received revenues in the same range from Vodafone, the mobile phone group, and from Ardagh, the glass and metal products supplier.

Mr Hogan also declared revenues between €100,000 and €199,999 from JP Morgan, the US banking giant, and revenues in that range from DLA Piper, a global law firm with lawyers in more than 40 countries.

Each of the groups were also listed as clients in the current year, in addition to Proof of Trust, a tech company whose products validate data and digital contracts for business and governments. Mr Hogan is an adviser to that company, as is Mick Mulvaney, a formerly a senior White House official in Donald Trump’s administration.

The declaration submitted by Mr Hogan was first reported by Brussels-based journalist David Cronin on his online newsletter, davidcronin.substack.com.

Mr Hogan is the owner of Triton Advisory, an unlimited company based in Dublin which trades as Hogan Strategic Advisory Services which he established in 2021. He did not reply to a request seeking comment on his financial declaration.

Brussels had placed strict limits on the firm’s activity by saying he could not lobby the European Commission or advise clients on trade or agriculture until the second anniversary of his resignation, which was in August 2022.

He was required until that month to inform Brussels of his clients and contracts, under restrictions imposed on foot of reports to the commission by an independent ethical committee.

The stated objectives of Mr Hogan’s firm are to provide “high level advice and services” for company managers and support “stakeholder relationships.”

The main EU legislative proposals or policies targeted are in financial, banking, sustainability and telecommunications areas, as well as energy security, health and proposals linked to the “general sustainability” agenda.

Company activities linked to such policies included “communications campaigns, events and contributing to consultations.”

Former Brussels figures have run into trouble in the past when taking on business roles.

José Manuel Barroso, a two-term commission president, lost “red carpet privileges” when taking on a top role with Goldman Sachs in 2016.

In 2010 former Irish commissioner Charlie McCreevy resigned from a British banking venture after an EU ethics committee found a conflict of interest with his work as commissioner in charge of financial regulation.