WITH VARIOUS property tycoons and captains of industry being credit crunched, there were plenty of new entries to the Irish Rich List, produced recently by the Sunday Times. One was Michael Kelly, founder and controlling shareholder of Fineos, the Dublin- based financial software group.
He featured in 234th spot – along with Chris de Burgh and Pádraig Harrington no less – with an estimated wealth of €34 million.
Fineos has slipped off the media radar but accounts just filed show it is ticking over. It made a profit of €3.1 million in the six months to the end of June 2009 – a change in year end saw it file just six-month accounts.
This was just €200,000 shy of the surplus achieved in the whole of 2008 and was in spite of a “slowdown in revenue”.
A proposed €120 million initial public offering was pulled in 2001 as the tech bubble burst. These days the firm is valued at closer to €40 million. All in all, it’s not too shabby.
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