How golf entrepreneur landed in the rough

BELFAST BRIEFING:HOW MANY Northern Ireland companies with Bank of Scotland Ireland loans have been placed in administration since December 2010?

It is a question Jim Treacy has been asking lots of people since his business was placed into administration by the bank last May. Like many others, he has not got very far when it comes to answers.

According to Bank of Scotland, it “does not comment on, or disclose figures in relation to their customers. All receivership appointments are a matter of public record”.

Treacy is a Fermanagh-born businessman who spent £30 million developing the five-star golf resort at Lough Erne.

He claims to have personally invested £10 million of his own money and dedicated more than 10 years of his life to creating what was his vision of a “world-renowned five-star luxury resort”.

There have always been people in the North who have quietly thought that Treacy was a little mad to sink that kind of money into a purpose-built golf resort in the rain-drenched county of Fermanagh.

But he has always believed – and still does today – that developing a five-star golf resort in Northern Ireland represents a good business opportunity.

Last week’s confirmation the Irish Open will be held at Royal Portrush this year may suggest Treacy was indeed on to something.

There is no doubt that when the sun shines on Lough Erne Resort it more than silences Treacy’s critics. The award-winning golf course designed by six-time Major winner Nick Faldo has attracted praise from every corner of world.

The continued success of its touring professional – US Open champion Rory McIlroy – is also helping to expand the opportunities for the resort to woo golfers to Northern Ireland. Despite the fact the company behind the Lough Erne Resort – Castle Hume Leisure Limited – is in the hands of the administrators it is still trading and according to industry sources “holding its own” in a very difficult market.

But what is it like to be the person left behind when an administrator moves in? According to Treacy, he has simply been “left high and dry by a bank that had taken every step of the way with me for nearly 13 years”.

When BoSI decided it was going to unceremoniously flee Ireland last December, Bank of Scotland plc, appointed an independent service company, Certus, to manage its former €32 billion loan book.

Certus is run by senior executives who had previously worked for BoSI – this means that some of the very same people who once made the decisions to award loans to businesses could now be involved in winding those businesses up.

How can that be right? Legally of course it is absolutely above board but is it honourable?

Treacy has his own thoughts on this.

“What this bank is doing is inhuman – it takes businesses and investments that people have taken lifetimes to build up and it destroys them in one swing.

“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you are – if you get the kind of phone call that I got where they just ring you up without any kind of warning and tell you that you have to pay them what you owe them or else, then where do you turn?

“There is nowhere to turn – that’s what it is like for people like me now – the banks don’t care, nobody cares – there is no one in this country with any power over the banks,” Treacy says.

But Treacy is not looking for pity over the fact that BoSI called in his estimated £25 million loan.

“This wasn’t a great passion – I like golf, I do, but I don’t want people to think that Lough Erne was anything other than a great business opportunity for me – one that I saw 10 years ago and I set out on a journey to make it happen. My heart is in Fermanagh but I believed in Lough Erne, I still do,” he says.

Treacy states that regardless of what anyone thinks about Lough Erne, there are some facts which he stands over.

“The resort reported earnings before interest, taxes and amortisation circa £350,000 in 2010 and I estimate it could have been in the region of £650,000 for 2011.

“In 2010 it attracted in excess of 30,000 guest nights – 15 per cent of guests originated from the international market.” According to Treacy, his “strength became his weakness” when it came to the Fermanagh resort.

“If I had sat on the fence and never taken a risk I would be much better off today – I wouldn’t have created jobs, I wouldn’t have invested my money – but that is not where we are today. We are in a world where it is okay for a bank to walk out on a business even though they made a commitment to that business in the past – it convinced people to trust them and then it turned their backs on them.”

Treacy is determined to fight on to get Lough Erne Resort back under his control – but it is hard to see how he will do it.

“I could just give up,” he says. “But this is part of my life – a big part.”