Profile Eddie Hobbs: This entertaining financial expert shows that it's possible to keep your feet in both camps and yet come out on the winning side, writes John McManus
Micheál Martin and his colleagues in Government have good reason to feel aggrieved over Eddie Hobbs. Three months ago the Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment appointed his fellow Corkman to the board of the National Consumer Agency, a long overdue initiative to give consumers a say in government policy.
Despite being a signed-up member of what the Government likes to see as a genuine attempt to combat the sort of profiteering that's inevitable in a fast-growing economy, Hobbs has spent the past three weeks tormenting the Government about its failures in this department via his role as front man of RTÉ's Rip Off Republic series.
The programmes, which cast Hobbs in the role of televangelist for consumer rights, have been a massive success, with last week's episode attracting more than three-quarters of a million viewers.
The final episode goes out on Monday, and one suspects that if the Government has anything to do with it, it will be the final final episode. The series has tapped a rich seam of public resentment over the rising prices and deteriorating public services that appear to have accompanied the past 10 years of spectacular economic growth.
But Martin really should not be surprised at Hobbs nibbling the hand that feeds. If one thing characterises the 42-year-old father-of-four's journey from insurance salesman to media celebrity it's the desire and ability to have his feet in both camps and come out on the winning side.
He first came to prominence in the early 1990s when he was working as an investment adviser. He became a vocal critic of endowment mortgages, a type of mortgage that was popular in the booming equity markets of the late 1980s but quickly proved disastrous when the stock markets reversed.
The problems with the products were widely reported in the UK, but Hobbs was the first to really draw attention to the issue in Ireland. The associated publicity was the making of the fast-talking and acerbic Hobbs. Even then he appeared to have little problem reconciling the business of earning his living selling financial services products with publicly running down some of the major players in the industry in which he had worked since leaving school at 16.
One of the major beneficiaries of the publicity was Hobbs's employer at the time, Tony Taylor's Taylor Asset Management, which he joined in 1991 from insurance company, Eagle Star, where he had worked his way up to marketing director.
Hobbs was a director of Taylor Asset Management when it went spectacularly bust in 1996 with some millions of pounds of clients' funds missing. Although Hobbs claims he had left the business some time before that, he was still a director and had a 24 per cent stake when Taylor absconded and the group collapsed.
Some nine years on, the Taylor liquidation remains unresolved, and the issue of whether Hobbs bears responsibility for the events - and should be restricted from acting as a company director - has not been settled. The liquidators of the company still have to decide whether or not Hobbs has a case to answer in relation to his duties as a director. If he does, then Hobbs will have to explain to the High Court why he should not be restricted.
Meanwhile, Taylor - who was convicted of fraud in 2001 and served a jail term - protests his own innocence and makes serious and unproved allegations about his former colleague.
Hobbs, for his part, characterises himself as the whistle-blower who helped bring a stop to Taylor's activities by informing the authorities. He also claims credit for Taylor being brought to justice by employing private investigators to track him down to his bolt-hole in England.
The Taylor affair did Hobbs considerable damage, not withstanding his role in bringing him to justice, and the fact remains that he was a director of a group that collapsed with millions of pounds of clients' money unaccounted for.
Hobbs's return to the public eye really came by way of his involvement with the Consumers Association of Ireland, a somewhat anemic and underfunded version of the powerful UK consumer lobby group, the Consumers Association.
Hobbs had been the CAI spokesman on financial matters since 1993, when he was asked to join on foot of his endowment mortgage campaign. Despite the association's articles precluding directors of companies involved in marketing goods and services from being members of its council, Hobbs was admitted to the ruling body.
His apparent inability to see any conflicts between these two roles meant that he prospered in both. While some in the CAI were less than happy about Hobbs double-jobbing, they could see that the articulate and financially literate Corkman was a media godsend.
At the same time, the connection lent credibility and publicity to his new venture, Financial Development and Marketing (FDM), which has about 150 corporate clients.
The symbiotic relationship has continued ever since, despite the fundamental conflict of interest at its heart. Few raised any objection when in 2001 Hobbs devised the CAI's vetting scheme for the Special Savings Incentive Accounts.
This was despite the fact that by that stage Hobbs had become an adviser to many financial services groups - including the Quinn Group and Friends First - who were planning to launch these products.
In many ways the controversy surrounding Rip Off Republic represents the apogee of Hobbs's career-long tactic of having a foot in both camps where possible.
Apart from the obvious difficulties in reconciling his role as member of the National Consumer Agency with the role of tormentor-in-chief of Government Ministers, there is another - and in some ways far more interesting conflict that Hobbs has side-stepped.
It is remarkable that a television series devoted to exposing profiteering in the Irish economy is not scheduled to devote at least one episode to the financial services industry. It is not as though there is no shortage of material. The Competition Authority is nearing the end of two mammoth investigations into the banking and insurance industries.
Its reports are very critical of the way banks treat both small business and more importantly the men and women in the street that form the constituency that Rip Off Republic has so successfully targeted.
The authority has also produced a report that is highly critical of the insurance industry and in particular some of the practices adopted by brokers and intermediaries.
But perhaps the biggest target of all is Allied Irish Bank and the other retail banks. Over the past 18 months the industry has been rocked by scandalous allegations about overcharging, profiteering and possible tax evasion.
None of this appears to have been deemed suitable material by Hobbs for his knockabout style of television.
The explanation may lie in the activities that Hobbs squeezes in between his television career and the tireless work on behalf of the consumer at the Consumers Association of Ireland.
Hobbs is an 18 per cent shareholder in a company called 3Q Solutions, which provides consultancy to banks and other financial services businesses.
Its clients include a life assurance and pensions company, a building society, a financial adviser and a mortgage broker association.
3Q solutions "builds visionary wealth management products" that enable its clients "to maintain and increase financial services revenue from their high net worth and affluent customer base".
According to its website, 3Q has taken its clients "on a journey which allows them to maximise their capacity and increase existing share of wallet".
Could the wallets in question be those of the punters sitting in the studio audience of Rip Off Republic laughing as Hobbs takes pot shots at politicians and other soft targets?
The interesting question that they might care to ask themselves is: who is Hobbs laughing at?
The Hobbs File
Who is he? The front man of RTÉ's summer hit, Rip Off Republic
Why is he in the news? The series - which concludes on Monday - has discommoded Government politicians from the Taoiseach down
Most appealing characteristic Attempts to hold the powers-that-be to account
Least appealing characteristic Appears to have a blind spot when it comes to conflicts of interest
Most likely to say You paid how much?
Least likely to say When I was working for Tony Taylor...