Outside the box – Smurfit’s story in print

The launch of Dr Michael Smurfit's A Life Worth Living will be an eagerly anticipated occasion.

The former chairman and chief executive of the Jefferson Smurfit Group (JSG) is launching his autobiography on April 3rd, fittingly in the UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business in Dublin, which he helped create.

Smurfit has been a true trailblazer in Irish business, and an inspiration to others who came afterwards. Taking a small Dublin boxmaker onto the world stage was no mean feat. At a time when few, if any, Irish entrepreneurs thought of pushing into far-flung places like Latin America and China, Smurfit was not only there but also beating his established rivals in North America and Europe.

Two entrepreneurs who came after Smurfit, financier Dermot Desmond and telecoms entrepreneur Denis O'Brien, are both lined up to introduce the paper and packaging tycoon on the night.

“From a country with no developed forest products industry, [Smurfit] built the leading global player in the corrugated business, delivering average annual shareholder returns of 24 per cent,” O’Brien says.

Desmond meanwhile describes Smurfit as a “visionary and a contrarian . . . I believe his greatest legacy in life and in business is that he inspired a generation to successfully take risk”.

Smurfit spent 50 years as chief executive of JSG, and his book promises to take the reader inside his biggest deals, including his coup in bringing the Ryder Cup in Ireland, and his travails as chairman of Telecom Éireann.

A Life Worth Living , if it tells even half the Michael Smurfit story, promises to be a book worth reading.

Sanctions for football oligarchs mooted
Could the Crimean crisis play its part in the title race for the English Premier League? The "beautiful game" has long had an impact in high finance and geopolitics. This time, perhaps, the boot is on the other foot.

Last week, Alexei Navalny, a leading critic of Vladimir Putin, called for financial sanctions to be aimed not just at Putin’s inner circle but also “the oligarchs Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov”. The former is the owner of Chelsea FC and the latter is a major shareholder in Arsenal.

Navalny is not some ex-Soviet scouser or Manchester City crank seeking to wind up a rival for this year’s Premier League title. He is a Russian lawyer, anti-corruption activist and opposition politician, who put his case on the opinion pages of the New York Times.

So far, the focus of EU sanctions has been on Russian officials, but if it escalates into a tit-for-tat situation with Russia, football may feel the effects.

Neither Abramovich or Usmanov has public links with Putin and British officials reportedly said there was no question of sanctions against the pair. However, Navalny’s article has prompted calls – mischievously in some cases – for sanctions to focus on the moneyed classes from Russia who live in the more lavish areas of London, where they have their property, their assets and often their families. Many MPs, including some from the Conservative party, have echoed Navalny’s call.

Dr Andrew Foxall, director of the Russian Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society think tank, argued in the Daily Telegraph last week that there was a “legitimate case” for sanctions against Abramovich and other oligarchs because they help keep Putin in power.

It’s left to the terrace talk to speculate on what it might mean for Chelsea FC to fall foul of the Crimea sanctions campaign. It reported losses of £49.4 million last year, despite a turnover of £255.8 million.

Much as it may amuse fans of rival clubs to mock their Chelsea counterparts, it illustrates the reach of Russia’s moneyed classes into western society. The Crimean crisis has focused attention on the continent’s energy security, but also on Russian cash awash in the upper reaches of western society, particularly in Britain and “Londongrad” as some have dubbed its capital.

Despite this, any unease amongst fans is minor compared to the jitters City investors must feel about their interests in Russian investments, which would surely get caught up in any tit-for-tat sanction battle that would likely ensue from seizing the assets of people like Abramovich.

Draghi adds voice to Irish bank-bashing
Mario Draghi is the latest person to add their name to the list of people who are concerned things might not be as rosy with the Irish banks as the Government would have us believe.

In a written reply to Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath, the ECB president pointed out the coming EU-wide bank stress tests are a different kettle of fish to the ones carried out by the Government as part of the bailout exit. The upcoming tests will be forward-looking and stringent, he said, pointing out the banks still have a lot of non-performing loans.

Draghi (above)finds himself on common ground with Morgan Kelly, the UCD economist, who issued a warning earlier this month that the upcoming stress test could lift the lid on the true extent of the bad property debts associated with small and medium-sized businesses. Crystallising these debts could see many small businesses wiped out, he warned.

Moody’s also got in on the Irish bank-bashing act at the end of last week, warning the sheer scale of the bad debts in the Irish banking system means the prospect of an Irish bank failing the stress tests cannot be discounted.

The Minister for Finance and governor of the Central Bank, however, have been studiously whistling past the graveyard on this one. Michael Noonan told us Bank of Ireland had restructured 90 per cent of its SME loans, while AIB had restructured 65 per cent.

Patrick Honohan went a step further, claiming there was no mechanism whereby the stress-testing of Ireland’s banks could lead to increased pressure on small and medium-sized businesses.

He too relies on the banks’ assertions that they have been steadily working their way through their troubled SME loanbooks and breaking the link between viable businesses and the unsustainable property debts of their owners.

The core issue is clarly how sustainable are these solutions and whether realistic provisions have been made for the inevitable debt writedowns. The market would appear to be not quite as convinced the banks have faced up to things. Bank of Ireland shares fell more than 5 per cent yesterday before recovering somewhat later in the day.