It’s 18 years since Eamonn Rothwell, the long-standing chief executive of Irish Continental Group (ICG), was at the centre of a three-way takeover battle for the owner of Irish Ferries.
The tug-of-war, followers of the Irish market will remember, ended in stalemate. Rothwell’s rivals – a consortium comprising the then Philip Lynch-led One51 holding company and Doyle Shipping; and boomtime developer Liam Carroll – were subsequently forced to sell off their chunky stakes, and crystallise large losses, during the financial crisis to pay down debt.
Rothwell never made another tilt at a group that he’s now led for 33 years.
However, his stake in ICG has increased significantly over the past decade – from 14.8 per cent to just over 20 per cent, as revealed on Monday.
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Some of it has been down to stock awards and the exercise of share options. Though Rothwell has cashed in some of these. For example, he sold €3.6 million of stock in March after exercising stock options, earning a profit of €1.1 million in the process.
The main driver of the chief executive’s take increase has been through ICG spending more than €136.7 million between the start of 2019 and June of this year, repurchasing and cancelling its own stock. ICG’s total number of shares in issue has fallen by more than 16 per cent to just under 159 million.
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Now aged 70, Rothwell is highly unlikely at this stage to attempt another takeover of ICG.
But what’s his endgame?
Would he likely sell down his stake whenever he hands over the reins to someone else?
Succession planning has never been seen as one of ICG’s strongest qualities. The group’s chairman, John McGuckian, has been a director since 1988 and has served as chairman for the past 20 years. Corporate governance codes recognised by Euronext Dublin as a standard for good governance say that non-executive directors should serve no longer than nine years.
Or is he holding out for a private equity or infrastructure-type bidder for the group to emerge?
