Making the most of the Asian melting pot

WILD GEESE:Michael Shannon, Chief Operating Officer, Andovar Globalization

WHETHER INVESTING in pubs or working in the software localisation business, Michael Shannon has travelled and worked in many of Asia’s biggest tiger economies.

As a result, he is no stranger to financial downturns, having witnessed the bubble bursting in Japan and the Asian financial crisis at close hand.

Originally from Dundrum in Dublin, Shannon moved to Cork when he was 13. When he graduated from what was then Cork Regional Technical College, he joined the Fás overseas graduate programme.

“I could have got a job in Ireland, I had a BSc in computer applications. But I decided to go to Japan – it sounded great, mystical,” says Shannon, who now lives in Bangkok.

He started working for NTT, which at the time was one of the biggest companies in the world with 250,000 employees.

“We stayed in a company dormitory, sharing bathrooms. Bizarre isn’t the word for it,” he recalls.

“At the time, eight of the top 10 banks were Japanese. We were working on financial systems and the plan was we would go and work overseas for NTT. Then the bubble burst after two years there in 1991 and they didn’t know what to do.”

So Shannon left NTT and in 1992 joined US company Berlitz Translation Services.

“I saw economic hardship in Ireland in the early 1980s. My father was building houses then, so I was used to seeing it. I paid my own way through college. When the bubble burst in Japan I was young and idealistic. It didn’t have a huge effect on me because there were still plenty of opportunities in that big, big city. The problem for the Japanese was they didn’t believe it had happened,” he says.

“You have to acknowledge it’s happened. I sense in Ireland that people think things are tough, and a lot of the younger people who didn’t see tough times, maybe it hasn’t struck home with them.”

Shannon has maintained other interests over the years. While at Berlitz he opened Paddy Foley’s in April 1995, the first Irish pub in Tokyo.

“Also the first Irish pint of Guinness flown out by Guinness from Dublin. Now there are over 40 Irish pubs in Tokyo. The pub was designed and fitted out by the Irish Pub Company and at one stage in the early days it sold more pints of Guinness per square metre than any other Irish pub in the world.”

In subsequent years Shannon worked for a number of companies which seemed to be in a permanent state of merging or acquiring.

In the late 1990s he worked for an Irish company, International Translation and Publishing, in Japan before joining Belgian company Mendez Asia. In 2001 Mendez Asia was bought by Bowne Global Solutions, which subsequently bought Berlitz. Then in 2004 Lionbridge bought Bowne Global.

“In 2005, I moved to China and was involved in the establishment of Beijing’s first Irish-owned Irish pub, Paddy O’Shea’s,” he says.

“I noticed a huge change in China between before and after the Olympics and in terms of national pride and how you were treated as a foreigner. It’s grown exponentially, I remember being in Beijing in 2001 and I remember walking out in the street and there were no cars anywhere, but now it’s all sprawl, which has happened so fast. It’s the most capitalist country you’ve been in your whole life, but once you say the right things to the right people things work.”

Shannon now works in the software localisation services industry. “This is obviously very big in Ireland because that’s largely where it started with the big overseas software companies.”

Shannon built a house in Chiangmai in 2008 and moved there between jobs in 2009, ending up with Andovar Globalization, which is owned by Dubliner Conor Bracken.

Shannon has been an active member of the Irish community in Asia over the years. He has been involved in the Ireland Fund of Japan, the Irish Network and the Asian GAA, as well as being a founding member of the Asian County Board.

To those considering moving to Asia, Shannon recommends focusing on the stronger economies in the region and being aware of the scale and diversity of the continent.

“Salaries are highest in Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Japan . . . Japan isn’t the easiest place to go to but still has the best financial rewards,” he says.

“The one thing that holds people back in Ireland is did you go to the right school or whatever, but when you get out of there, there are loads of Irish people everywhere – Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai. It’s like the Irish who went to the US early. Asia has a huge amount to offer. And the weather is good and the people are great.”