Martin Tormey was one of those kids who knew what he wanted to be before hitting his teens.
Whether it was his cattle trading background, love of cards as a child, or his secondary school business teacher bringing the paper in going through share prices with the class, he cannot say.
But by the time he was 13, Tormey had set his sights on becoming a stockbroker.
Despite topping his class pursuing a masters in finance degree at University College Dublin (UCD), he almost blew it when he got his chance in 1996 to get into Goodbody Stockbrokers.
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“I had an interview on a Monday morning for a job in equity research – after I had been home to Cavan for the weekend of my 21st birthday with my twin brother,” Tormey recalls. “There were seven people interviewing me. It was a bit of a car crash.”
The nail in the coffin for most in the room was when he declared he didn’t really want the job, but actually had set his heart on being a trader.
He was surprised to get a call a week later from the head of the firm’s bonds desk to offer him a job. “He said he was in a minority of one at the table but that he liked my honesty.”
The now Goodbody lifer would end up being appointed chief executive three years ago, as AIB completed its €138 million purchase of a firm founded 150 years ago by Robert Goodbody of the storied Irish Quaker textiles-to-tobacco family.
At the time the AIB deal was cemented, stocks and bonds internationally were soaring on the back of stimulus from central banks and governments during the Covid-19 pandemic. But, even then, the Irish market wasn’t able to commit fully at the global euphoria that saw a record level of initial public offerings (IPOs) raise more than €550 billion. That year, only two companies floated in Dublin – renewable energy storage developer Corre Energy and medical technology business HealthBeacon – raising a combined €37 million. HealthBeacon has since been taken over in a rescue deal, while Corre Energy has its own challenges.
The situation has only worsened, with no subsequent IPOs and three of Ireland’s largest companies, CRH, Flutter Entertainment and Smurfit Westrock, quitting Euronext Dublin, as the exchange is now known, and moving their primary listings to Wall Street. Trading commissions across the two remaining Dublin institutional stockbrokers – compared to six in business when Tormey started his career – have slumped as a result, triggering job cuts in the capital markets units of both Goodbody and Davy.
The global supply of tradable shares has been shrinking steadily in recent decades (and commission rates, to boot), amid the rise of private equity – targeting deals to take companies private and even prevent others going down the IPO route in the first place – and share buyback programmes.
The Irish market has suffered more than most – with the number of companies on the Iseq having fallen by half, to 26, since the financial crash. The trend has also been driven by an international shift from active stock picking to passive investment – where funds track stock market benchmarks – and virtual disappearance in recent decades of a coterie of Irish pensions and investment groups that typically acted as cornerstone investors in IPOs in the 1980s and 1990s, by taking large chunks of the new shares on offer.
But why should anyone other than brokers care if the Irish stock market disappeared?
“Once an Irish company is acquired by an overseas private equity firm or even another company, the decision-making also goes. It’s so important to keep Irish companies Irish for as long as possible, as they create employment here as they grow,” says Tormey, adding that Irish-listed companies and their advisers play a huge rule in promoting the country globally.
A Grant Thornton report last year estimated companies listed on the Irish exchange contributed €12.4 billion to the domestic economy in 2022. Dublin-listed companies employed about 47,000 people across the State, directly generating €6.7 billion in wages, said the report, commissioned by Euronext and local brokers. A further 40,000 jobs are indirectly supported by such companies.
“I think the role the exchange plays in the economy has been lost on people,” says Tormey. “It may be our fault as well for not emphasising the connection.”
Still, Tormey welcomes how the Irish market got a nod from Minister for Finance Jack Chambers as he unveiled Budget 2025 earlier this month. From next year, companies going through IPOs will be able to receive tax relief of up to €1 million on related expenses. The Minister added that his department will also introduce a stamp duty exemption – subject to State aid considerations – in the coming year on the trading of shares in Irish SMEs. But that will be for the next Government.
It’s no game changer. “But it’s a start – and at least an acknowledgment that there is a problem,” says Tormey.
The so-called Irish Equity Market Forum, comprised of officials from Euronext Dublin, stockbroking, corporate law and accountancy firms, petitioned the Government before the budget to back the establishment of a €400 million cornerstone fund to invest in IPOs, as well as a tax-exempt scheme for individuals to invest as much as €40,000 for five years directly or indirectly into companies listed in Europe. Neither has been heeded, for now.
[ ‘Real’ Iseq 20 market value is more than double official list’s €100bnOpens in new window ]
But Tormey says there is a natural group in Dublin that could replace the cornerstone institutions of times past: the plethora of family offices that have sprung up around Fitzwilliam Square and Merrion Square in the past decade, mainly on the back of wealth created from company sales.
“We held three dinners the week before last for people in the family office space. We had about 30 families in total. We reckon there was about €5 billion of wealth among those families – most of whom you’ve probably never heard of,” he says. “Now, of course, a lot of that wealth is tied up in their businesses or elsewhere. But that is the kind of capital base that, if organised right, should be the next wave of investors over the next 20-30 years.”
In 2021, when Ireland had two IPOs, Norway, a country with a similar population and a strong family office base, had 68. “If we had just two or three new companies IPOing per year with real ambitions to grow, that’s all that’s needed,” he said. “Actually, for the first time in a long time, I’m feeling a little more confident.”
He says there are “more conversations happening” with companies weighing the possibility of floating than this time last year.
The 1890s brought a wave of bicycle company listings in Dublin, the 1980s saw a number of food companies go public, while property-related companies and trusts were all the rage a decade ago. “The housing crisis would be much worse now if Cairn and Glenveagh didn’t raise public equity,” says Tormey.
Tormey, the son of a smallholding Cavan farmer and cattle trader, is, unusually, a refreshingly open sort – who talks a mile a minute – for someone who has managed to navigate the tricky corporate ladder in one organisation over 28 years.
After cutting his teeth on the Goodbody bond desk, trading international debt for Irish institutions, Tormey joined the equities trading team before taking charge of institutional stock dealing in 2001, succeeding Bruce Ashmore as he left to set up a hedge fund.
He would meet his future wife, Rose Flynn, when she was working in research in wealth management in Goodbody and would attend the trading desk’s 7.30am morning meetings on occasion.
[ Goodbody Stockbrokers on track for full-year profit after loss narrowed in 2023Opens in new window ]
He took a year-long sabbatical in early 2006 (the longest of three career breaks he has taken), the year they got married.
“I ended up going to live with a Nomadic tribe in a village for four months in the Turkana desert, between the very north of Kenya and South Sudan,” he says.
He would teach English and maths in a school that nomadic girls would attend for a few years before usually being married off young, and help Spanish missionary priests – some of whom were former engineers – with dams they’d built to trap water when downpours came once every 12 to 18 months.
Rose met him in Nairobi that August and had good reason to fear for her wedding photos two months later, as the already naturally thin Tormey had lost 10kg while in the desert and was in the low 70kgs. The pair would spend months travelling through Central and South America and down as far as Antarctica after marrying.
He returned to his trading desk at the start of March 2007, as a four-year global equites bull run was beginning to run out of steam. The Dublin’s Iseq All-Share index had briefly touched 10,000 days earlier – turbocharged by bank stocks. Few were prepared for the financial crisis that would follow.
“Don’t bring me back,” he says, shuddering when the conversation turns to the market carnage of 2008.
Tormey recalls going to Roy Barrett, the long-time managing director of Goodbody, around the time AIB originally sold Goodbody to Kerry-based financial services group Fexco in 2011 (as the bank was forced to sell off a number of assets following its State bailout) saying he only had a few years left in him as a trader.
The Bank of China deal was a very interesting one ... But, in retrospect, it would have been tricky – let’s be honest about it. I think where we’ve ended up is the right home for Goodbody
“At one stage, I thought I was going to quit, but I knew in the back of my mind Roy wasn’t going to let me leave,” he says.
Barrett appointed him as director of strategic business development in late 2014 – part of the job entailing building the company’s asset management business, as younger rival Davy – set up almost a century ago to tap into an emerging Catholic middle class – stole a march snapping up older names around town as they waved the white flag.
Davy mopped up the asset management arm of Bloxham in May 2012 when the country’s then oldest broker cratered under the weight of an accounting scandal – having agreed months earlier to buy the firm’s private clients business. A raft of subsequent Davy purchases included what was once AIB Investment Managers, the Irish arm of UK asset manager Sarasin and Danske Bank’s wealth unit in Northern Ireland.
“I think it’s fair to say we lost our way a little bit a number of years ago,” he concedes. “But I think there is a big opportunity now, particularly on the wealth side, as part of a very supportive group.”
Goodbody has had its distractions over the past six years, having been the subject of two abortive takeovers by Chinese buyers, before AIB made its move. An agreement struck in 2018 for a Chinese consortium, led by ZhongZe Culture Investment, to take over the firm fell through months later when the sellers – Fexco and Goodbody management – became concerned about changes to the composition of the acquiring group.
A subsequent transaction with Bank of China fell through in mid-2020, amid uncertainty caused by the pandemic. “The Bank of China deal was a very interesting one. It’s the fourth-biggest bank in the world, very sophisticated, and has a very long-term mindset,” says Tormey. “But, in retrospect, it would have been tricky – let’s be honest about it. I think where we’ve ended up is the right home for Goodbody.”
Goodbody’s asset management business currently has €2.5 billion under management, including an AIB equity capital business that was moved across last year. Adding in wealth management assets under management bring the total to about €15.5 billion, says the chief executive.
Goodbody, which moved its headquarters from Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, to New Ireland’s former base on Dawson Street, about 50m from Davy’s door, has 414 employees. It’s up by a third from when AIB acquired the business, even as the investment banking part has shrunk.
Last autumn, the company acquired control of Clearstream Solutions, an environmental, social and governance consultancy that currently has a staff of about 20, but Tormey easily sees doubling.
Tormey says Goodbody is on track to post a full-year profit in 2024 for the first time in three years. Staff, too, can look forward to the first bonus being paid out since it last posted a profit in 2021, he confirms.
“The business is shaped structurally now in a way that it doesn’t need the more volatile areas to make it profitable,” he says. In recent years, income on equities held on Goodbody’s own books, for example, had played a large role in overall performance. “It’s creating a much more sustainable future.”
CV
Name: Martin Tormey
Job: Chief executive of Goodbody Stockbrokers
Lives: Dublin 4
Family: Married to Rose, with three children
Hobbies: Running and reading
Something that might surprise: He’s the head of an under-14s girls GAA football team at Clanna Gael Fontenoy in Ringsend
Something you might expect: “I’m a very curious person. I love talking to people.”
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