O'Brien's tasty share plan

One More Thing:Having paid €4 million to acquire Bank of Scotland (Ireland's) (BoS) 20 per cent share in O'Brien's Irish sandwich bars, the firm is drawing up a plan to offer the bulk of the stock to incentivise management.

"It gives us a pool of shares that we can use to create a share option scheme," O'Brien's founder Brody Sweeney said.

The main beneficiaries will be Fiacra Nagle, who heads the sandwich chain, finance chief Mark O'Neill, operations director Andrew Moyes, and London-based Forbes Petrie, O'Brien's international director.

BoS's shares were acquired in December by a company called Elealva, which is controlled by Sweeney, Nagle and O'Neill.

Plans are in train to mop up another €800,000 worth of shares - about 4 per cent of the equity - from some ex-employees and clients of Merrion Stockbrokers. It is understood that Michael Smurfit and stock market investor Tom Jones will not be checking out at this stage.

Sweeney and staff currently own about 86 per cent of the business. BoS became an investor in O'Brien's through its takeover of the former State-owned ICC Bank, which joined the shareholder register in 1999 for just €1.27 million. "They had been good investors and they got a decent return on their investment," Sweeney acknowledged.

The transaction places a value of about €20 million on the company and Sweeney believes it was good business by the directors.

"I wouldn't have sold my shareholding at that price."