THAT WAS a startling headline in the business pages on Wednesday, over a story about National Toll Roads chairman Tom Roche and his family. "Roches to gain €118m in NTR liquidity event," it read, writes Frank McNally.
I've been to a few liquidity events myself over the years: many involving a fundraising element, if only indirectly. There might be a raffle at some stage of the night, or even a formal collection. And the flow of liquids does certainly improve people's generosity, I have noticed.
But I doubt any event I attended ever came close to raising what the Roches were said to expect. It certainly put the Fianna Fáil tent, with its measly €160,000, into perspective, I thought. And on top of liquidity, remember, FF had to lay on food.
Impressive as it sounded, however, I also couldn't help worrying whether this was the sort of thing NTR - of all companies - should be involved in. That was until a colleague from the business section explained to me that a "liquidity event" has nothing to do with drinking.
Apparently, it's just corporate lingo for a range of methods by which company owners can convert equity into cash. Grandiose as the term sounds, it is necessary to distinguish it from "liquidation", a horse of a different colour entirely. You can imagine how relieved I was to hear this.
ON A broadly similar theme, I chanced upon an Irish blog the other day, a posting on which referred to an earlier discussion about "the best coffee in Dublin". The blogger - unidentified but based "in Rathmines" - wrote that this "got me thinking just how much coffee - and other liquids - means to me. I'm fussy. And a snob." Fair enough. The body is the temple of the spirit and all that. We can't be too careful about what we pour into it, even at the risk of appearing snooty.
But further on, confessing her love of "big, intense" wines, the blogger noted that "South African Pinotage and Merlot, Italian Barbera d'Alba and the often slighted American Napa Cabernet (single varietal) feature constantly on my rack." And then she added this curious detail: "I'm trying the subtler juice like Pinot Noir but I'm cursed with the Irish pallet."
I know it's none of my business. Even so, when you sense another person's cry for help, you have to intervene. And all I can say to the Rathmines blogger is that if you're at the stage where you're using pallets to transport the stuff around on, it's a sure sign you may drinking too much.
That apart, I'm unclear what the writer's particular issue with the pallet was; and in the circumstances, it hardly matters. But as it happens, and as readers with long memories will recall, I have discussed the shortcomings of the Irish pallet in these pages before.
As I explained then, I had a summer job as a factory forklift driver many years ago - since when, I have retained a passing interest in pallet quality. And it's not just me, or indeed the Rathmines blogger (even if she is overdoing it with the wine), who is frustrated with the Irish product's inadequacies.
I refer, for example, to a Bord Iascaigh Mhara report - available on the internet - entitled "The Market for Pelagic Fish in Bulgaria". This notes among other things that Bulgarian importers prefer the "standard EUR pallets, which they are more used to handling than the more square Irish pallets". Excuse me for not being surprised.
But that this is no mere Balkan prejudice is confirmed when, further down, the report states plainly that EUR pallets "provide better support for the overhanging sides of [fish] boxes". And to clinch the argument, it quotes "sources" in Bulgaria saying: "five Scottish or Norwegian boxes can be fitted on to a European pallet, compared with just four on Irish pallets".
I rest my case; and I advise the Rathmines blogger to rest her case too.
RETURNING to business jargon, my thanks to Cathal MacCoille of Morning Irelandfor clarifying a phrase used by the Sustainable Development Council in its recommendation this week of a State-wide "road-pricing" system. Interviewing a spokeswoman on Tuesday, Cathal asked her what exactly was meant by the report's suggestion that such a system would "internalise all the externalities".
Apparently, this means road-users would be responsible for all costs associated with driving, including those currently passed off on the environment. Not that you could deduce that from the phrase itself. If you had asked me last week, I would said "internalising the externalities" was something thirsty management consultants did during "liquidity events".
This reminds me of the man from Diageo who was on the radio a while back putting a brave face on falling Guinness sales by saying that the beverage remained an important part of the Irish consumer's "drinks portfolio". As euphemisms for consuming alcohol went, this was a doozy.
At the time, I lamented the effect of unwise investments in the sector - especially on weekend nights in Dublin - as a result of which many speculators divested themselves of their shareholdings all over the city's footpaths.
Now, on top of "drinks portfolio", I propose an exciting new euphemism for throwing up in public. Henceforth, drinkers with upset stomachs will be merely "externalising the internalities". I'm sure the drinks lobby would prefer this expression.
But I wonder if, in return for using it, we could interest them in a footpath-pricing system.