Leadership

Anne O’Dwyer, managing director of Duff & Phelps Ireland, shares her thoughts on leadership, gender quotas and a changed business environment. Could you tell us a bit about your career path and what your role involves now? Having studied accounting and finance in DCU, I joined a mid-tier accountancy firm, OSK, where I trained to become a chartered accountant. I stayed with OSK for a number of years after I qualified and progressed to management level before moving to join the audit team at RSM Farrell Grant Sparks as a senior manager in 2007. At the end of 2008 I was promoted to director within the audit team. However, shortly…

Around eight years ago a division within Irish Life in Dublin decided to embrace Six Sigma and this has turned out to be a key driver of innovation. Developed by Motorola in 1986, Six Sigma is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement with the aim of creating people in the organisation who are experts in its methods to various levels from ‘yellow belt’ up to ‘black belt’. Director of innovation in the corporate business division at Irish Life Paul O’Neill explained that 40 of the 300 people in the division are focused on information technology and transforming the business – in other words innovation. “We look for…

After two years as a non-executive director in a regulated entity, and a 25-year career in financial services, Tony McPoland offers a user’s guide. Reputation is key. Your reputation is critical and you should not join any board where you do not think the proper controls, processes and procedures are in place. Do your due diligence before you join a board to make sure you share the same culture. Use networks to keep informed. The major accounting, consulting and law firms (as well as the IoD) all have non-executive director networks and hold regular seminars on current regulatory, reporting and legal topics of concern to non-executive directors. These represent an…

AdRoll has announced the opening of its London office and the appointment of Michael Bertaut as managing director of EMEA strategic sales. Bertaut, Google’s former country manager for Italy and ex-head of new business sales in Latin America, will be responsible for building out a London-based strategic sales organisation, focusing on bringing AdRoll’s cross-device, cross-platform, transparent digital advertising solutions to sophisticated larger brands and agencies across EMEA
 . AdRoll’s launch in London comes as the latest IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark reveals that online advertising grew 11.9pc to a market value of €27.3bn in 2013. London is AdRoll’s second office opening in Europe following its launch in Dublin last year. Over…

In the first of a regular series, UCD’s Prof Niamh Brennan explains what the term corporate governance means. The word governance comes from a Latin word – gubernare – which means to steer. Cicero wrote, “he that governs sits quietly at the stern and scarce is seen to stir.” Thus my colleague, Dr. Collette Kirwan, has conceptualized the board as being the navigator of the company. In his The Wealth of Nations of 1776, Adam Smith noted that directors of companies are managers of other people’s rather than their own money. He pointed to the risk that they wouldn’t watch over other people’s money with the same anxious vigilance as…

National Health Innovation Hub to Support New Companies A national health innovation hub with the potential to support hundreds of new companies will be established in 2014, the Government has announced in publishing the 10th Action Plan for Jobs Quarterly Progress Report. Access to the Health System for Irish Healthcare Innovators It said the new National Health Innovation Hub would be “a win-win for businesses, the health system – and most importantly, for job creation.” In essence, it means that innovative Irish healthcare companies will, for the first time, be able to quickly gain access to the health system to test their products and services, increasing the chances of developing…

Ulster Bank completes ‘One Week in June’ fundraiserKevin Keegan, head of HR at Ulster Bank with Tony Keville and Tomasz Kolodziejskui, marking the close of the bank’s One Week in June campaign Ulster Bank teamed up with eight charities across the Republic of Ireland for an initiative called ‘One Week in June’ to raise funds. Activities ranged from bake-offs to hill walking, relay runs to band battles and Ulster Bank staff all over Ireland got involved. The charities to benefit in the Republic of Ireland were: Barnardos; Concern Worldwide; the Irish Cancer Society; the Irish Heart Foundation; the Irish Hospice Foundation; Rehab; the Simon Communities; and the Society of St…

London City Airport has been awarded the Best Airport in Europe in the 1-5 million passenger category for the third year in a row by Airports Council International (ACI), a worldwide association of airport operators. It received the award in Frankfurt, Germany at the 10th annual ACI Europe Best Airport Awards for its “eagerness to innovate together with its quality of services, active sustainability and active agendas, such as airport tours for young people”. Declan Collier, CEO of London City Airport and former Dublin Airport Authority CEO said the judges recognised a number of areas where it had excelled in reaching and engaging with customers, the local community and employees.…

Amber, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded materials science centre based at Trinity College Dublin, has launched a new summer training course in nanoscience and materials science for primary school teachers. The course, which runs from 7– 11 July, is Department of Education-accredited and will take place in Amber in association with the School of Education, Trinity. It is created to help primary school teachers to teach nano and materials science to fifth and sixth class students and will focus on a number of key areas including nature of science and science teaching pedagogy; developing creative science investigation in the primary classroom; and enquiry-based approaches to science teaching in primary…

Research examining the formation of Irish water; the use of imagery in annual reports and the determinants of SME growth in Ireland are among the inaugural projects to be funded by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Ireland (CPA) Ireland Research Fund.  The CPA Ireland Research Fund was established by the CPA to support scholarly and creative research in the area of accountancy and finance. Researchers from Queens University Belfast, Dublin City University, the University of Limerick and Cork Institute of Technology will each receive funding of up to €2,500 to progress their research. “There are many challenges facing researchers in attracting funding in the area of finance and…