The new owners of Superquinn are a mixture of property developers, consultants and corporate financiers.

Mr Bernard McNamara already has a high profile thanks to his building and property development interests.

He and Mr Gerry O'Reilly, another Superquinn investor, are currently developing a site on Merrion Road, on the southside of Dublin. The project is currently the biggest under way in the capital.

He also built the recently opened private hospital in Galway which is run by Dr James Sheahan's Blackrock Partners, the business behind the Blackrock Clinic, one of the best known private hospitals in Dublin. His main vehicle is Michael McNamara and Company, but his various interests are held through a myriad of limited and unlimited companies, a practice common in the construction sector.

Superquinn's new executive chairman, Mr Simon Burke, is originally from Dublin, but has spent a large part of his working life in Britain.

In 1987 he joined the Virgin Group and took over its retail arm two years later. WH Smith took a stake in the business soon afterwards, and in 1994 he merged Virgin Retail with WH Smith's music chain, Our Price. The combined group tripled profits two years later.

In 1999 he joined toy retailer Hamleys and sold it to private investors four years later. Since then he has worked on private equity deals in retailing and last year led a £950 million bid for WH Smith. This failed when he could not find a solution to its large pension deficit.

Mr Simon Cantrell is a Dublin-based corporate financier, working mainly with private interests. He previously worked with Alan Maguire and Partners, where he advised on taking packaging company Adare private. Sources describe him as a low-key but very effective operator.

Mr David Courtney and Mr Bernard Doyle are property consultants and principals in the firm Spain Courtney Doyle. They also have a number of commercial property investments in Dublin.

Mr Kieran Ryan is a tax consultant with a practice in Dublin.