Aer Rianta chief stays grounded in a world of uncertainty

While Séamus Brennan has plans to break up the airport operator, MargaretSweeney is busy getting on with the job of running the company, writes Emmet Oliver.

Margaret Sweeney says change and uncertainty are inevitable in commercial life - and she should know.

While she landed the chief executive's job at Aer Rianta just before Christmas, how long she will be staying in the role is anyone's guess. It is a lucrative post. Aer Rianta have not yet disclosed Sweeney's salary, but her predecessor John Burke had a total remuneration of €315,000.

The one man who may know is Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan. His break-up plan for the airport company, while highly ambitious, has run into fierce union resistance and nobody is willing to say when the break-up will actually take place.

That leaves Ms Sweeney nervously awaiting news of her fate. She is chief executive of Aer Rianta, but the company's board - and presumably her job - will be dissolved as part of Mr Brennan's plan. When asked what might happen she is non-committal, simply saying she is busily managing the company for now.

To be fair, Ms Sweeney has significant corporate experience via KPMG and she is probably not too nervous about the Government's plans. She is unlikely to be jobless no matter what happens.

She could, of course, surface again as chief executive of the new Dublin Airport board and the valuable experience she picks up over the next few months will certainly bolster her chances of landing that job.

While the Government's instinct may well be to cut all ties with the current Aer Rianta board, Ms Sweeney has as good a chance as anyone of surviving the restructuring and re-surfacing in Mr Brennan's brave new world.

The real contention surrounds who might join her; will all Aer Rianta staff be there for instance. Are jobs for life on the table?

"I don't think I will get myself embroiled in the union negotiations," she says. Demonstrating that sort of caution is often the hallmark of accountants and Ms Sweeney is even coy about when the whole saga might end.

"I wouldn't call a date on it at this stage. That would really be outside my jurisdiction."

Asked about the specifics of Mr Brennan's plan, including transferring the debt of Shannon and Cork to Dublin Airport, she is circumspect. Asked will Shannon and Cork survive the break up, she chooses her words carefully.

"Cork Airport has very strong growth, growing by 12-13 per cent. It is now putting in new infrastructure. There are new routes, new services there.

"In relation to Shannon Airport, Shannon has a more complex business than the other two actually. And Shannon, over the years, if you look at its history, it has always had to reinvent itself. It is not a city airport. It doesn't have the luxury of a large catchment area like Dublin or Cork.

"At one stage it was very dependent on Aeroflot. People said if Aeroflot goes, Shannon will have to go as well and that didn't happen. But it has strengths. It has a very good airfield, good terminal and it is about getting the right proposition to make sure its commercial.

"The Shannon management will have to work much harder to grow the business, there is no doubt about that. They already have to work twice as hard to get the business. And I think they do that. I think in Shannon's case you have a good asset and so, absolutely, there is a good business there for Shannon in future."

While Aer Rianta is not a company everyone immediately considers a haven for corporate high-fliers, Ms Sweeney is a well-connected executive and she rubbed shoulders with some of the State's most prominent chief executives during her time at Stokes Kennedy Crowley (SKC - later KPMG), among them Michael O'Leary.

"Yes, we worked together in the same group. Let's just say, when he worked in SKC he wore a tie," she recalls.

Other SKC/KPMG alumni include banker Cormac McCarthy and Brian Kavanagh, chief executive of Horse Racing Ireland.

KPMG opened more than a few corporate doors for Ms Sweeney and during her time she worked on acquisitions, auditing and corporate finance deals for General Electric and GPA among others.

The GPA work certainly sharpened her skills - at one stage she found herself re-structuring or disposing of 20 joint ventures GPA had with aircraft manufacturers.

The GPA work seems to have been an influential period for Ms Sweeney. "We worked night and day on it. At one stage, I think we worked three weeks on the trot with no time off at all. You just did the stints because you would have been working a lot with Japanese leasing companies and banks so there would have been those time differences as well. It was good experience," she recalls.

Another company she worked for was Aer Rianta. She helped set up its Russian operations and, in about 1996/1997, she says the then Aer Rianta chief executive Derek Keogh approached her about leaving KPMG and becoming company secretary at Aer Rianta.

Asked why she left, she replies: "I suppose its like a lot of accountants. A lot of people move, when they just qualify, into a business. I probably always had it in my gut that I wanted to move out into a company. I didn't see myself in practice till I retired." She was 36.

Since then, Ms Sweeney has been involved in a wide range of work for the company, including introducing new technology, driving the retailing business and overseeing Aer Rianta's overseas investments.

Aer Rianta International, which comprises various international retail operations and stakes in several European airports, is now contributing one third of Aer Rianta's after tax profits. That was according to the 2002 annual report; 2003 is expected to show this business contributing even more.

But with more than 90 airlines now using Dublin Airport, the company's core business remains airport management. Its performance in this sphere is rarely admired and Ms Sweeney candidly admits that the service is not always what it should be.

"Fairly or unfairly, customer service has become a big issue at Dublin Airport, particularly the service to passengers. I take it on the chin. But the key is peak periods and during the summer. But the building was designed back in 1972 with an extension built on to it and, since, we have had to deal with 50 per cent more capacity."

She says Aer Rianta is trying to address the congested feel of Dublin Airport, adding that the company is going to create a senior role for a customer service manager, who will focus exclusively on the passenger side.

Focus groups and workshops with business and leisure travellers are also scheduled so that the company can hear first hand about the problems.

While Ryanair remains implacably opposed to what it calls the Aer Rianta monopoly at Dublin Airport, other airlines, including Aer Lingus, have called into question Aer Rianta's ability to cut its costs in the way hard-pressed airlines have had to.

Ms Sweeney says cost cutting is firmly on the Aer Rianta agenda.

"We are looking at that very actively at the moment. Every head of business unit has to review their costs and look at where we can take out discretionary costs, so we can make it as lean and efficient as possible."

She says operating costs for Aer Rianta run at about €200 million, with Dublin Airport accounting for about €120 million of this. Unlike Aer Lingus, she says Aer Rianta does not have a headline grabbing figure like €300 million to cut out of its operations.

She says "fairly tough" targets have been set, but adds that costs at the three airports are not out of line with international airports.

She says, for example, a comparison with Stansted delivers a favourable impression of Dublin's cost structure, although insurance costs are out of line in the Republic.

While slow to comment on the idea of a competing terminal, she does concede that extra space is needed at Dublin. She says Aer Rianta welcomes competition and is ready to meet it.

For example, she denies the charges in its shops are out of line with what is available in the city centre. She says the price of a coffee is far dearer on a lot flights out of Dublin nowadays.