PR firm Gordon MRM paid €490,000 by NTMA and Nama

Dublin- based PR firm, Gordon MRM, received more than €490,000 in fees for its public relations work with the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) and the National Asset Management Agency ((Nama) last year.

The €490,207 total – or an average of €9,427 a week – is more than double the €218,889 the firm received for its work for the State agencies in 2016.

The increase fees is due Gordon MRM winning the PR contract for AIB’s initial public offering (IPO) last year. It was the largest IPO in Europe in 2017.

In a written Dáil reply to Michael McGrath (FF), the Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe confirmed that Gordon MRM received €312,602 from the NTMA for the AIB IPO work in 2017.

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In relation to the IPO costs, Minister Donohoe said that the NTMA incurs the cost of professional advisers on matters relating to the work of the Department of Finance’s banking unit.

He confirmed that the €312,602 in costs have been fully recovered from AIB.

Mr Donohoe also pointed out that €91,202 of the €312,602 spend was for the provision of advertising in print media.

The Minister also confirmed that Gordon MRM received €88,560 for the provision of PR services to the NTMA and an additional €89,045 on its day-to-day PR work for Nama.

The firm recently secured an extension to its NTMA contract which could be worth around €480,000 over the next five years. This followed the PR firm – led by Ray Gordon – successfully tendering for an extension to its Nama contract in January of this year.

A spokesman for Gordon MRM declined to comment yesterday.

In a separate Dáil reply to Deputy McGrath, Mr Donohoe confirmed that Nama paid €73.84 million to third and connected parties last year.

However, the figures are skewed somewhat as €41.5 million of that amount was paid to the NTMA.

Outside the NTMA, nine firms received fees in excess of €1 million from Nama. They are Capital Asset Services (Ireland) Ltd , who were paid €8.26 million; AIB Group (Primary Servicer), who received €2.87 million; Eastdil Secured (London) , who got €2.2 million; McCann Fitzgerald, who were paid €1.88 million; Fenergo, who were paid €1.27 million; KPMG, who were paid €1.14 million; Aon Risk Solutions , who got €1.06 million; Dillon Eustace , who received €1 million and Arthur Cox Solicitors, who were paid €1.02 million.

The work carried out by the NTMA was also a boon to professional firms in 2017 with Knight Frank receiving €2 million and NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd receiving €1.958m.

The figures show that Bloomberg received €705,334 with Club Travel Ltd receiving €480,322 and Noonan Services Group Ltd receiving €368,530.