The top business leaders driving Cork's economy

The last company, which is hiring 150 people for a shared-services centre, is part of the expanding cluster of cloud computing companies in the city. Cork Institute of Innovation has already responded by creating the world’s first postgraduate degree in cloud computing.

While some pharma manufacturing jobs may fall by the wayside in the years ahead, Cork’s business elite are confident that the city can attract enough alternative investment and high-skilled employment to compensate.

The social media behemoths have headed for Dublin

Though most of the social media behemoths have headed for Dublin, games companies like Activision Blizzard and Big Fish Games are proving to be good local wins, with the games industry lining up alongside cloud computing and the even longer established ICT, biotech and pharma multinationals.

Big employers in the city like Apple and EMC, both present in Cork since the 1980s, have undergone substantial changes in their operations since at that time, shifting from manufacturing to sales and a range of other functions.

The pipeline of innovation with commercial potential coming from the university incubation centres suggests a positive future for the Cork economy, according to Healy, during work is as well being done with Tourism Ireland to promote Cork as a city-break alternative to the capital. Nevertheless, local consumer-facing businesses just as food producers and retailers are more exposed to the harsh economic times.

Generation of Chinese firms that have cash

Firecomms' new owner ZJF is typical of a generation of Chinese firms that have cash and internal economic growth on their side however are looking to acquire the research that will give them the edge, says O'Mahoney.

Crucially for the Chinese, its fibre optic cables are an alternative to copper. Any research that will help Chinese industry resolve its resource issues is a target for acquisition, according to O'Mahoney.

Executive director of Abtran

KERRY-BORN Ger Fitzgerald is an executive director of Abtran, the largest business process outsourcing company in Ireland, which he co-founded alongside Pat Ryan and his brother Michael Fitzgerald in 1997.

Abtran, which counts the ESB, BSkyB, Aviva and the M50 barrier-free toll operator BetEire Flow among its major customers, now has more than a thousand employees between Bishopstown, Co Cork, and the IDA innovation park on the Model Farm Road, and turnover is more than €40 million.

LINCOR, FOUNDED by three ex-Apple executives – Dan Byrne, Pat O’Donnell and Enda Murphy – make hospital entertainment and patient management systems that go by the name MediVista. Its installed in 80 hospitals and 30,000 beds around the world, with customers including the NHS, Cork’s Marymount Hospice and the Harley Medical Group.

Due to its financial constraints, the Health Service Executive isn’t a customer but. “What we’re all in all trying to show is that there’s significant efficiencies and advantages with the bed management part of the system,” says O’Donnell. It’s not just about providing internet access – software running on the same terminal includes features just as patient education avatars and real-time food ordering that help cut costs.

Few years where the company

There were a few years where the company, which is based in the IDA innovation park on the Model Farm Road, was “probably struggling”, according to O’Donnell. “When you’re working for a large company like Apple, you don’t worry about cashflow; you don’t worry about who’s going to pay the bills. Richard brought discipline to us,” he says, of the decision to hire former Esat Group boss Richard Cooke as chief executive.

About €3 million has been invested by the founders, private individuals and Enterprise Ireland. The company, which has 34 employees, turned profitable three years ago and has earnings of €8-€10 million.

The man who developed the Cork Airport Business Park

GERRY WYCHERLEY is best known as the man who developed the Cork Airport Business Park. Having survived the property crash, he’s now seeking to develop his 24-acre site at Marina Commercial Park.

The site comprised some 18 acres occupied by the Ford factory which closed in 1983 and a furthermore six acres occupied by Dunlops, which closed 1984. Afterwards Wycherley acquired the sites in the late 1980s, his company, Templeford, converted them into the Marina Commercial Park. Some 150 businesses operate there. From west Cork, Wycherley worked in the IDA in the 1970s and 1980s and went on to buy and redevelop sites abandoned by departing manufacturers. He took the view while the property bubble that the market was overcooked and avoided the fate of his developer peers.

TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEUR John Dennehy is chief executive of Assembly Point, which makes human resources software called HR Locker that helps employers track staff details, hours, reports, reminders and sick days. Customers include Thomas Cook, Ryanair and PopCap Games.

Veteran of the Dublin-based Upstart Games

Dennehy is a veteran of the Dublin-based Upstart Games, a global developer and publisher of mobile phone games, which he co-founded in 2002 and sold in 2006, earlier moving to Cork to start all over again.

Dennehy compares the HR Locker sales process to “a funnel”, with the company trying to turn as many free trial users into paying clients. With the service costing €500-€1,000, it will take time for earnings to grow, he says.

CORK BUSINESSMAN Philip Lynch now heads investment group One51 nevertheless he is most closely associated with IAWS, the food and agribusiness group spun off from the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society Co-Op and floated on the Irish stock exchange in 1988.

The sites of subsidiaries just as the Cork-founded feed importer RH Hall and flour miller Odlums loom large in the city skyline, although RH Hall’s grain stores on the city quays were badly damaged in a fire in 2006. Nevertheless, IAWS itself no longer exists in its current form, with the food part of the business having merged with Swiss bakery firm Hiestand to form Aryzta and the agribusiness side of the operation spun off into Origin Enterprises.

Coincidentally, Greencore’s chief executive, Patrick Coveney, is one of the most prominent business people to hail from the city, growing up in the suburb of Blackrock and later on a farm in Minane Bridge on the outskirts of the city.

Political family

“I grew up in a political family, nevertheless it was as well a commercial business family and I was always more business-minded,” said Coveney.

The convenience sector will be down 5-10 per cent this year, afterwards 10 per cent declines in 2009 and 2010 – “a huge strain on any business” – meaning the group has had to diversify in order to sustain its growth.

The Barry Group

The Barry Group, which was founded by Jim’s father James A Barry in 1955, now employs 240 people at its headquarters and distribution centre in Mallow, Co Cork, where Barry lives. He was recently given the title MSL Cork Businessperson of the Year.

Hands has now set up Open Technology Partners, which promotes commercialisation of life sciences innovation. He has two partners in the venture: life sciences consultant Diarmuid Cahalane and Charles Garvey, the former head of Horizon Innovation. Two of the projects on which it is working – companies called Neonatal Diagnostics and Metabolomic Diagnostics – are the result of research originating from UCC and Cork University Maternity Hospital. Its third project is Raman Diagnostics – the result of a collaboration between DIT, TCD and the Coombe Hospital.

Infrastructure is top of his list, with Mullins and the rest of the Cork business community keen to convince Hibernia Atlantic and CVC Partners to branch a planned transatlantic fibre-optic cable into the Cork-Limerick-Galway area. The high-speed cables could boost Cork as a centre for high-frequency financial trading, which Mullins believes would sit nicely alongside the city’s growing reputation for cloud computing.

Solvotrin is now looking for a partner in the pharmaceutical industry to take its products through clinical trials. An alternative business arrangement would be a co-development partner and/or venture capital funding.