Senior NAMA executive to leave

John Mulcahy, head of asset management and board member at the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), is to retire from both positions from the end of February 2014.

Mr Mulcahy will be succeeded as head of asset management by Mary Birmingham, currently a senior asset manager in the agency.

The former chairman and CEO of Jones Lang LaSalle Ireland, Mr Mulcahy joined NAMA upon its establishment in December 2009 as head of portfolio management. He was appointed to the board of NAMA by the Minister for Finance in March 2012 for a five-year term and was appointed NAMA's head of asset management in April 2012.

Brendan McDonagh, chief executive of NAMA, said that Mr Mulcachy was a “pivotal” presence at the property agency, and it would have been “very much more difficult to deal with the scale of the challenge that we faced four years ago without the undoubted expertise of John who was, and is, widely respected in the property business”.

In 2012, some 10 per cent of the agency’s workforce left, and it was recently disclosed that staff joining NAMA will now be subject to six month notice periods to prevent any potential conflicts of interest arising when they choose to leave the agency.