The Druids Glen three
GARY McGANN
GARY McGANN is chief executive of Smurfit Kappa, Ireland’s ninth biggest public company. This is a role he has held since 2002 when he succeeded Michael Smurfit.
However, it is his association with Anglo Irish Bank that has probably garnered him more column inches than anything else in his 43-year career.
McGann served on the Anglo board for seven years before resigning in January 2009 when the bank was nationalised. He chaired Anglo’s audit committee when the controversial directors’ loans took place. McGann and Seán FitzPatrick are regarded as good friends.
He stepped down as chairman of the Dublin Airport Authority in 2009 after a nudge from Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey. His association with Anglo had made it too difficult for him to remain with the State company. In 1998, McGann stepped down as chief executive of Aer Lingus to join Smurfit. He had intended to allow for an orderly handover but minister for public enterprise Mary O’Rourke told him to clear his desk immediately. A former president of employers’ group Ibec, he is chairman of insurer Aon’s Irish operation, and a non-executive director of United Drug. He is on the board of the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, Blackrock. In 2009, he earned €2.23 million.
FINTAN DRURY
AS A former RTÉ broadcaster and PR executive, Fintan Drury will understand only too well why the media has picked over his relationship with Brian Cowen and Seán FitzPatrick in such great detail. Not that this would make it any more palatable to him.
Drury and Cowen knew each other while students at UCD, but they only became good friends in the 1990s when Drury was advising the then State-owned Aer Lingus and Cowen was minister for public enterprise.
Born in 1958, Drury grew up in Clonskeagh and was educated at Blackrock College. On graduating from UCD, he got a job with RTÉ as a news reporter, later hosting Morning Ireland.
Drury left in 1988 to work for Bill O’Herlihy’s PR firm before founding Drury Communications. He sold the firm a decade later and has since focused on sports management. He joined the board of Anglo in 2002, when FitzPatrick was its chief executive. In June 2008, he stepped down, following two three-year terms. He is also a former chairman of Paddy Power (he remains a non-executive director) and the RTÉ Authority.
Drury leads Platinum One, a sports management group that pulled off a big publicity coup in 2009 by bringing Real Madrid to Tallaght to play Shamrock Rovers. He is chairman of energy group Mainstream Renewable Power.
ALAN GRAY
BEFORE THIS week, Dubliner Alan Gray was best known for his work as the founder of Dublin economic consultancy Indecon International Economic Consultants.
Gray established Indecon in 1988, quickly winning a consistent flow of business, much of it from the public sector. The company hit the limelight in 2003 when it carried out a study for the Competition Authority on restrictive practices in the professions. Since then, clients have been diverse, including entities such as the Gaelic Players Association, Amnesty International and Tesco Ireland.
On the public side, Gray and his team have worked for many Government departments, with recent work including a study for Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan on the merits of selling television rights to rugby.
Headquartered in Dublin, Indecon operates in London and has offices in Brussels and Cardiff.
Gray (53) was appointed by then minister for finance Brian Cowen as a director of the Central Bank in 2007, with his term ending in September last year. He has considerable experience as a non-executive director, having served in the past on the Irish and European boards of Canada Life.
Before Indecon, Gray worked as chief economic consultant for Europe with Price Waterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) and as chief economic adviser with the Department of Industry and Commerce.