Mr Jim Flavin is about to go on a spending spree and with lots of money at his disposal after his wonderfully-timed sale of DCC's stake in Fyffes earlier this year, the DCC boss's ambitions will not be dulled by lack of resources.
Mr Flavin has done very well for his shareholders with the sale of the Fyffes stake for more than €106 million (£83 million). There is now a large group of British institutions, including Marathon Asset Management which emerged this week as a 5.3 per cent shareholder, who bought those Fyffes shares and are now sitting on massive losses and want nothing more to do with the Irish market or with Irish companies.
To reprise the situation. Mr Flavin was a non-executive director of Fyffes for many years until shortly after DCC sold its stake. He has stated emphatically that, when DCC was planning to sell the shares, he had no prior knowledge of the profits warning at the Fyffes a.g.m. which was the trigger for the downward spiral in the share price from a high of €3.96 (£3.12) to the current level of €1.10.
Similarly, Mr Flavin has said that, when deciding on the share sale, he had no knowledge of the poor market conditions that were to trigger that profits warning.
Current Account has no reason to doubt Jim Flavin's assertions, but the share sale - and particularly its timing - has left a sour taste in the mouth of the institutions who bought DCC's 31 million Fyffes shares and which are now sitting on a €70 million-plus loss on their investment in the space of a few short months.
The Irish market has always suffered from an image problem in London.
Current Account can remember a survey of London institutions a few years ago by PR firm Financial Dynamics. One of the conclusions of that survey was that British institutions felt they were always going to be on the outside when investing in the Irish market and would never be part of the nod and wink culture they felt was part and parcel of the Irish market.
Everything is about perception when it comes to attracting foreign investment in Irish equities. One chief executive of an Irish plc has told Current Account that the sale of the DCC's Fyffes shares and the sudden collapse in the Fyffes share price has triggered something of a confidence crisis in Irish companies among British investors, a problem that will be difficult if not impossible to resolve.
For Fyffes itself, the collapse in the share price from €3.96 to €1.10 presents serious problems that have to be addressed by the McCann family which runs the company.
Fyffes is now at a lower level than it was five years ago when a merger with Dole was abandoned over the issue of price.
And from a time only six months ago when Fyffes was bigger than Dole and seen as a potential bidder for the American company, the Irish company is now worth little more than one-third of Dole's market value of $886 million (€932 million).
With DCC now gone as a supportive shareholder, with an embittered group of British shareholders nursing heavy losses and with little sign of a recovery in its primary markets, the McCanns have some corporate thinking to do.
