Smart's new chief to take stake in parent firm

Former UPC boss John Riordan is taking a 20 per cent stake in the company set to take control of Smart Telecom. Mr Riordan is also to become chief executive and lead a new management team at the troubled telecoms group.

Mr Riordan is due to take a 20 per cent stake in Calally Ltd, the entity controlled by Kingspan principal Brendan Murtagh that is due to acquire 90 per cent of Smart over the next three months. The takeover is a result of a rescue bid launched in October.

Mr Riordan's family's investment vehicle, Augustus International, will hold the interest in Calally. Mr Murtagh, a 20 per cent shareholder in Smart, owns Calally.

Neither side said how much Mr Riordan would pay for the stake as the transaction has not been completed.

Last month, The Irish Times reported that Mr Riordan was tipped to take a senior management role with Smart.

Calally announced yesterday that he will be taking over as chief executive and president of the telecoms company.

The current acting chief executive, former chief operations officer, Ciarán Casey, who has been with the company since it began trading, is planning to leave. Mr Casey took over as acting chief executive last September when the then incumbent, founder Oisín Fanning, left for health reasons.

Mr Casey has since seen the business from a situation where it was losing €2 million a month and forced to cut more than 200 jobs, to the rescue bid that involved the Calally takeover.

Calally intends to appoint Rob Gibson as financial controller and Pio Murtagh as chief operating officer, once it has completed the takeover of Smart.

Mr Gibson joined Smart in 2006 from Vodafone. Mr Murtagh joined Smart last year from Hosting 365, where he had worked as financial controller since 2002. Mr Riordan is from Kerry. He was chairman, chief executive and president of Netherlands-based UPC, Europe's biggest cable operator.

During his period at the helm, UPC turned around from a loss of €353 million in 2001 to earnings of €500 million two years later.

He was also a director of UPC's parent, United Global Com, which Nasdaq-listed Liberty Global bought in 2005. Before his time at UPC, Mr Riordan was chairman and chief executive of Princes Holdings, owner of Irish cable operator, Chorus.

He said yesterday that Smart intends to focus on providing broadband, data and voice over internet (VoIP) to homes and businesses.

The market is worth €2 billion a year and it currently has about 1 per cent of that business.

"I am looking forward to the challenge of guiding Smart Telecom's business to the next phase of its development," he said.