Infrastructure support services group Siteserv has announced it has been selected, through its subsidiary Sierra Communications, as the preferred bidder for Bord Gáis Home Energy’s ‘Provision of Appliance Servicing, Boiler Installation and Related Services’ contract. Both parties will now enter into a period of contractual negotiations and a further announcement is expected to be made in the first quarter of 2010. The contract has an estimated value of €50m over the three-year term and has a potential to extend to a further two years, Siteserv said. Siteserv is a holding company for businesses including RoanKabin, Sierra Support Services, Holgate Infrastructure & Motorway Services and Rentafence.

John Teeling remains one of Ireland’s foremost entrepreneurs, with business interests that range from Cooley Distillery to African diamond mines. He spoke to Irish Director magazine about a lifetime in business. Given John Teeling’s portfolio of interests, which includes Cooley, Ireland’s only independent whiskey distillery, diamond-mining companies in Botswana and Guinea, oil exploration operations in Iraq and South America and a gold exploration business in Iran, it’s no great surprise when he reveals that he has always been interested in high-risk, high-potential ventures. It is interesting, however, to note that Teeling made his initial money from speculating on the stock exchange, which he says “was my first love and my best skill,…

Henry Mintzberg is widely recognised as one of the world’s leading management thinkers. As he publishes his latest unfussily titled book Managing, he speaks to Irish Director magazine. Described by Tom Peters no less as “perhaps the world’s premier management thinker”, we were delighted to catch up with Henry Mintzberg (pictured) on the occasion of the release of his latest book, which is rather unpretentiously entitled Managing. Well known for his forthright and often irreverent take on all things management, Mintzberg is quick to dismiss the current trend to separate ‘leadership’ from ‘management’. “You can’t separate those two,” he tells me. “Nobody wants to have a manager who is not…

With the global recession driving the demand for and price of airline fares downwards, there was surprising news from Germany today as the government there has forced Dubai’s Emirates airline to increase the price it is charging for business-class tickets on flights leaving Germany for non-EU destinations. The Financial Times reports Emirates as saying that the “imminent threat of significant fines” meant it had to increase the price of business-class fares on flights originating from Germany, with some routes seeing prices increase by as much as 20pc. Emirates described the charges as “anti-consumer” and “commercially nonsensical”, claiming the charges are not being levied on other airlines flying out of Germany and saying…