In Co Kerry in the late 1950s, the career choice for a teenager like Mr Denis Kelleher, son of a shoemaker from near Rathmoore, came down to the bank, the priesthood, or be a creamery manager. Finding none of these prospects "very alluring", he headed for New York, arriving on January 26th, 1958. The next day he obtained a job as messenger boy with Merrill Lynch. It was the first step in a spectacular Irish immigrant financial success story. Today, Mr Kelleher (62) is chief executive of Wall Street Access, a money-management company engaged, as he puts it, "in buying and selling securities for wealthy individuals who trade a lot".
In 1999 the average customer account balance was more than $175,000 (€196,000), one of the highest in the business. The firm's value was reliably estimated at $1.5 billion a year ago. Mr Kelleher is listed in Greatest Irish Americans of the 20th Century by Patricia Harty (Oaktree Press). He underwrote organisations helping undocumented Irish immigrants and was involved behind the scenes in the Northern Ireland peace process. Explaining his motivation, he quotes Sir Walter Scott: "Breaths there the man with soul so dead,/ Who never to himself hath said,/ This is my own, my native land?"
"Part of being Irish is being passionate about where you come from," he says. This week, Mr Kelleher chaired the annual New York fundraising dinner of the American Ireland Fund, which is expected to raise $1.7 million for projects in the Republic. In an interview in his downtown office he attributes his success to "dreaming big, learning constantly, working hard and having fun". Mr Kelleher spent seven years in Merrill Lynch before helping form the Sequoia money-management firm with Mr Bill Ruane and Mr Rick Cunniff. He went out on his own in 1981 to found Wall Street Access. Describing himself as a compassionate but demanding boss, he insists on probity over everything from his 200 staff.
"People have to be very bright, have a lot of energy, be focused team players and above all, above all, above all, have a high level of integrity," he says. It was no use having a "very bright, energetic, focused crook". He pushes staff to get additional qualifications to deal with complicated options transactions. "If they don't come up to a [certain] level, we say they are better off somewhere else." The Nasdaq bubble was "just la la land, totally ridiculous". Only a very few dotcoms would survive, he predicted, just as there were only three car-makers in the US, where once there were 2,000.
He is scathing about those who blame Mr Alan Greenspan for the economic slowdown. "How did he get stupid all of a sudden? In the last 20 years he got a handle on inflation. People forget that it might be a problem. He hasn't forgotten. He has done it just about right."
The Fed chairman's critics belong to the generation of "I want what I want now", but that is not the way life works. The dotcom crash "will bring a lot of these young yuppies down to size who never experienced a bad day in their lives since they left their mothers' wombs". Kelleher is upbeat about the economy. "It is taking a short breather and will soon start to grow again because technology is going to come to bear on the old economy, which will make it more productive and efficient, and it will go on and grow bigger." It is like a super-tanker that might go a little bit off course but not dramatically so. Mr Kelleher lives on Staten Island with his wife, Carol. He lists his dislikes as "phoney politicians and bad food". On being very rich he says: "Making money is great if you do good things with it, that's the way I view it." Most of his wealth will eventually go to charities and foundations. He is still the sort of person, he says, who comes to work saying "thank God it's Monday" rather than "thank God it's Friday" and, "incidentally, I am going to retire five or ten years after I am dead".
