Billionaire Wilbur Ross and Bank of Ireland was the subject of an address by Prof Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, dean of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, to the prestigious Yale School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut on Tuesday.

Over 100 academics, students and business leaders heard Prof Ó hÓgartaigh outline how Ross has become a business case study for how the brave can do really well in the euro crisis. "Mr Ross comments that banks are proxies for an economy and that Bank of Ireland in particular is a proxy for the Irish economy," Prof Ó hÓgartaigh told Yale's 'Business + Society; Leadership in an Increasingly Complex World' conference. "This insight works both ways in that the success of Bank of Ireland became a proxy for the Irish recovery," Prof Ó hÓgartaigh added. "The investment led by Mr Ross was hailed in Ireland – by the Government – as a signal of recovery."

The UCD professor, who is a former Fulbright scholar, was in good company to tell the Irish recovery story. Among the other speakers at the conference were Jeffrey E Garten, former US Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade; former Deputy Secretary of the US Treasury; Paul A Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; and Robert B Zoellick, former president of the World Bank Group.