Aftermath of ISTC meltdown will be telling

Business Opinion: If you really want some idea of how far we have come in terms of creating a real entrepreneurial culture in Ireland, you should keep an eye out for what happens now to Tiarnan O'Mahoney.

International Securities Trading Corporation, the business set up by O'Mahoney after he lost out in the succession stakes at Anglo Irish Bank, was seen by many as little short of a stroke of genius.

O'Mahoney appeared to have spotted a gap in the market and moved quickly to exploit it. So far, so entrepreneurial. But what set ISTC apart was that it was playing in the major league from the off - no shortage of ambition or confidence there.

The company styled itself a global lender of capital to financial institutions.

At the risk of laying it on too thickly, its arrival on scene could be said to have been a sort of coming of age for Irish business.

Here was a bright guy with a very good idea, apparently able to raise the backing for a complex international venture without having to do very much more than get on the phone to a couple of his former clients. He knew them and they knew his reputation.

O'Mahoney set out to raise €50 million and ended up with €165 million, and after that things just kept getting better.

The business proposition was, in a way, quite simple. The €165 million was used as equity to raise funds on the capital markets, which were then invested in high-quality bonds and other instruments being issued by banks looking to raise capital. ISTC made a profit in its first year and was on track for a returns of 20 per cent.

And then it all fell apart two weeks ago. Having managed to weather the global credit crunch for most of the summer, ISTC finally came a cropper when some of the bonds it had invested in were downgraded to junk. This has had very serious consequences for the company's own credit rating and its banking arrangements.

In the current climate this is not a very nice position to be in, and it is hard to see ISTC surviving in its current form. A class of a rescue may be effected, but its equally hard to see an outcome that does not see O'Mahoney's backers - who put up an average of €2 million each - not feeling some pain. The shares, which are traded on a grey market and peaked at €345 ahead of the credit crunch - had slipped back to €175 over the course of the summer, and fell to €60 on the back of the downgrading. Trading has now been suspended.

And this brings us back to the opening statement. What will happen to O'Mahoney once a solution has been found to the current crisis. Will he be expected to slink off back to from whence he came and never again darken the door of corporate Ireland again, unless he can engineer some sort of Tony Ryan-style, against-all-the-odds comeback?

Hopefully, and one suspects probably, not. While it might be asking a bit much to celebrate the speed at which O'Mahoney appears to have burnt his backers' money, it should be remembered that if he has screwed up he has done so in the best of company.

The miscalculation - for want of a better word - behind the ISTC's problems is the same sort of issue that has forced billion-dollar write-downs at the world's leading banks. While it might not yet be the time for black humour, ISTC's global ambitions have certainly been met in that regard.

But the serious point remains that what O'Mahoney set out to do was truly entrepreneurial and did reflect the step change in confidence and ability that has taken place in business - and financial services in particular - over the past decade or two.

And anyone who pays even passing attention to such things will tell you that if you want more of that sort thing, then you have foster a culture in which business failure is seen in perspective. It has become something of cliche. Spend an evening at an event like the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and you can count your self lucky if you only hear the refrain a half-a-dozen times.

And that is what makes what happens after ISTC's meltdown so interesting. It will be a telling moment in terms of whether there really has been a change in mindset.

It is reassuring then to hear ISTC investors like property developer Paddy Kelly offering such strong backing for O'Mahoney last week.

Perhaps we have come some distance after all.