Colm Ó Briain: COLM Ó BRIAIN, a former president of the Irish Stock Exchange has died at the age of 78. A leading light in the financial services community in Dublin in the 1980s, he was also a keen sportsman.
The eldest son of former Circuit Court president Judge Barra Ó Briain, he studied law at University College Dublin and was called to the bar in 1953.
However, it was in stockbroking that he made his name. He joined O’Brien Toole, the firm founded by his uncle, Esmonde O’Brien, and Eoin Toole, in Dublin’s College Green in his early 20s.
At the time, institutional investors in the Irish market were limited and the firm specialised in private clients. Having become a partner in the firm, he succeeded his uncle in the late 1970s and ran the business alongside partner Frank Ryan, and later Jonathan Faulkner. It remained focused on private clients as the Irish stockbroking market developed and consolidated.
At a time when the Dublin exchange was a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange, he was known as a staunch supporter of Irish firms. His firm was the sponsoring stockbroker behind the successful flotation of Tullow Oil, now the most successful exploration stock on the Irish market.
The brokerage was also behind the stock market debut of another Irish exploration company, Glencar, which remains a constituent of the Irish exchange. It also served as broker to other exploration firms including Kish Resources, Celtic Gold and Andaman Resources.
However, peers recall him as a broker who eschewed excessive speculation and he was regarded as a shrewd judge of the bottom of a market cycle. At the time, the stock market was effectively a dealers’ business, with very little emphasis on the research and analysis side that has become such an important part of modern financial services.
Personal relationships were critical in the smaller Dublin financial market of the 1970s and 1980s, especially for private client firms like O’Brien Toole. He was a well-known figure through his involvement with Killiney Golf Club where he served as captain and at both Fitzwilliam and Carrickmines lawn tennis clubs. He was a keen follower of horseracing and a familiar figure at racecourses around the State. He was also an active member of the Stephen’s Green Club.
“These things mattered at the time and he worked,” recalls one of the his stock market peers.
In 1981, he became president of the stock exchange at a time when change was looming in global stock markets with the arrival of computerisation and the eventual demise of the traditional open outcry system of dealing where brokers traded shares on behalf of clients by shouting orders across the floor of the exchange. He served a two-year term, recalled mostly for his outspoken view of how stock exchange members should conduct their business.
He believed strongly in the financial independence of stockbrokers and, at a time when Irish banks were becoming more involved in controlling stockbroking businesses, argued strongly and publicly that only stockbrokers and not banks should run stockbroking firms.
In 1991, O’Brien Toole merged with a smaller Dublin firm Stokes Kelly, Bruce Symes Wilson in an ill-fated venture which later saw a partner in the latter firm, David McKenna, prosecuted for theft and forgery.
The merged firm, O’Brien Stokes, was dissolved in May 1994 but Ó Briain continued to working in stockbroking until his retirement in 2001. Even in retirement, he remained a keen follower and investor in stock markets, although he retained a traditional view of how they should operate, railing in particular against the growing influence of short sellers and hedge funds, which he considered to be to the disadvantage of the small retail investor with whom he had been associated throughout his career.
He also remained active, playing tennis well into his 70s and pursuing his lifelong passion for angling where he was a noted salmon fisherman around the rivers of the west of Ireland.
He is survived by his wife Breda and children Esmonde, Ruth and Colm.
Colm Ó Brian, born February 22nd, 1931; died August 26th, 2009