Cantillon

Inside the world of business

Few fresh faces as Nama panel set to advise Minister

MEET THE new boss, same as the old boss! It’s hard not to be cynical about the Nama appointments announced yesterday.

Frank Daly, the chairman of Nama is to be on the three-man advisory panel that it supposed to give the Minister an independent perspective on the activities of the agency.

The other member of the panel appointed yesterday was Dr Denis Rooney, the former chairman of the International Fund for Ireland who has very strong links to the Northern Irish business community.

Separately, John Mulcahy, the head of portfolio management and one of the agency’s founding fathers gets promoted to the board of Nama filling one of the vacancies left by a departing independent director.

Rooney’s appointment is clearly a response to the concerns expressed by the Northern Ireland Executive about Nama’s influence over the Northern economy. But the other two smacks of wagons being circled ahead of what could be a very trying few weeks for Nama.

The High Court will rule shortly on whether or not Treasury Holdings is entitled to a judicial review of Nama’s decision to appoint receivers to many of its Irish assets. A victory for Treasury would only be the start of a very long process, but Nama’s detractors would seize on it as proof the agency is heading the wrong direction.

Likewise, the British courts will this month be hearing Paddy McKillen’s challenge to the Barclay brothers raid on Maybourne Hotels. Nama’s central role in events will be highlighted and plenty of mud will be flung.

Bolstering Nama may seem like a good idea at this stage but could prove short-sighted. A lot of responsibility now rests on Michael Geoghan – the vastly experienced and respected former HSBC boss – who has agreed to stay on as chairman of the advisory group. He must ensure that the group challenges Nama when necessary.

Women on world stage despite recent figures on gender gap

IT IS International Women’s Day today, which notwithstanding western marketers’ attempts to turn it into a succession of cupcake-themed networking shindigs actually began life as a global action day dedicated to advancing the very basic human rights of women.

It started way back in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland with a campaign to recognise voting and working rights. Next to get involved were the Russians. International Women’s Day was actually born, therefore, of socialist traditions. It is now recognised as an official holiday in more than a dozen countries worldwide, and in some nations it has acquired a Mother’s Day-type status where men give gifts to women.

Equal pay, equal representation in positions of power, greater equality when it comes to sharing the wealth and other feminist aspirations cost more than flowers, however, and despite accounting firm Grant Thornton’s bid to highlight a not insignificant smattering of female finance directors at large Irish companies, Ireland’s performance on the equality scorecard is lacklustre.

The Central Statistics Office’s recent publication Women and Men in Ireland 2011 was blunt in its summary. Women are starkly under-represented in the Dáil compared to other national parliaments. Only five countries in the EU 27 – Slovenia, Romania, Cyprus, Hungary and Malta – have representation rates that are worse than Ireland’s 15.1 per cent. In 2011, men accounted for more than four-fifths of representatives in local authorities, while women outnumber men in Civil Service grades up until the higher-paid grades of assistant principal, principal officer, deputy and assistant secretary and secretary general, where men dominate.

The gender pay gap in Ireland, an indicator calculated by Eurostat, was 15.7 per cent in 2009. That’s better than the EU average of 17.1 per cent, but still indicates copious room for improvement.

Alongside measures to support affordable childcare, numerous other initiatives are required to boost women’s participation in public life.

These include genuine Government backing for campaigns to get more women on boards; quotas for the selection of political candidates; promoting gender pay audits at public bodies and large private companies, and a simple re-evaluation of the skills of women so that potential female leaders and managers do not become disaffected and disconnected from the paid workforce right at the time when they should be advancing their careers.

Grafton's eyes peeled for investments free of 'structural barriers to growth'

DIY CHAINS Woodies and Atlantic Homecare are the Grafton businesses with which most Irish people are familiar, but much of its operations are focused on supplying builders in Ireland and Britain.

Chief executive Gavin Slark said yesterday that Grafton is keeping its eyes peeled for the right acquisition opportunities. Not surprisingly, he stressed that anything the group buys will have to add value to the business. Its business has shifted in recent years. Since 2009, most of its profits have come from Britain. Last year, that market was responsible for 73 per cent of sales.

While it was hard for either Slark, or his executive colleague, Colm Ó Nualláin, to be definitive, their view was the British market is in marginally better shape than the Irish.

Both have plenty of room for growth when a recovery arrives. In Britain and Northern Ireland, new house starts were 118,000 in 2009-10, against an average of 191,000 over the previous decade.

In the Republic, probably fewer than 6,000 new homes will be built this year, and the rate at which they have been completed since 2007 has been well below estimates of the market’s latent demand, which is 30,000 to 40,000. Nevertheless, it would be safe to speculate that any acquisitions that Grafton makes will be in Britain, or elsewhere.

Buying a business here means investing in a market where “structural barriers to growth”, that is, the banks’ continued problems, are set to remain for some time. Any purchase it makes in the Republic is likely to raise competition issues, which could delay, or even dilute, a deal. Either way, it makes more sense for Grafton to continue its expansion away from these shores.

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TODAY

To mark International Women’s Day – Lucinda Creighton will address over 200 businesswomen at an event organised by Dublin Chamber of Commerce together with Fingal, Dublin City and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Enterprise Boards – 6pm Davenport Hotel, Dublin.