Founded in 1981, Fexco is Ireland’s most successful multinational financial and business solutions provider, operating in 29 countries and processing over €3bn in transactions annually. Yet, at heart, it is a family-owned business, proudly headquartered in Killorglin, Co Kerry, that values on curiosity, wellness and community impact.

After almost 20 years working in the traditional banking sector, Anna Savage joined Fexco as Group CFO and immediately noticed the differences in the structures and culture that a family-owned business can bring. Anna was able to understand exactly why the company was set up, what the vision for the company is, and therefore what drives all of the decision making. That has empowered Anna to “make value added decisions for the company, but yet kept the ethos and the values that they see strong in place.”

In this episode of The EY Podcast: CEO Outlook Series, Anna Savage, Group CFO of Fexco, joins host Jonathon Healy to talk about leading the finance function of one of Ireland’s most iconic family businesses, innovating for the future while securing the present, and making a positive impact on the local community.

They also discuss:

· The Fexco story and its evolution from a local foreign exchange service to a global financial services player.

· How strategic and carefully-nurtured partnerships have helped Fexco to scale internationally

· Fexco’s investment into AI and how it is leading to the creation of new types of roles

· The critical importance of cybersecurity and Fexco’s ‘three-pronged approach’ to achieving it

· The company’s target is to double, not just the value of the company over five years, but also its impact to the local community

· What Anna has learned about work-life balance, resilience and dealing with the unexpected

From the age of sixteen, Anne McCormack knew that she wanted to be a CEO. Having played golf at a high level throughout her childhood, Anne became concerned about the numbers of her peers that were leaving the sport, and realised that the only way to effect change was to hold a leadership position within the sport’s representative organisation. This realisation was the first step in Anne’s long and successful career in sports administration and leadership.

After several years working at a high level in golf administration, including the role of COO of Golf Ireland, Anne was appointed CEO of Hockey Ireland in 2023. With a strong belief in the power of sport and the positive impact that she can have in this role, Anne’s vision for hockey includes raising its visibility and profile, increasing diversity and inclusion among the player base, and expanding the sport’s revenue streams.

In this episode of The EY Podcast: CEO Outlook Series, Anne McCormack, CEO of Hockey Ireland, joins host Richard Curran to talk about her belief in the positive power of sport, her vision for the future of hockey, and why hard work trumps natural talent.

They also discuss:

· The importance of learning from and collaborating with other sports organisations, such as the GAA

· The power of role models for increasing female participation in sport

· What hitting bad golf shots has taught Anne about being an effective leader

· Why understanding people’s fear is key to getting them to buy in to your vision

· The entrepreneurs and leaders that Anne most admires

It was a complaint about the quality of a mobile phone that ultimately set Barry Napier on the path to becoming one of Ireland’s most successful technology entrepreneurs. The owner of the company to which Barry complained liked him, and offered him a job, and so began a lucrative career within the technology industry. But it was in 2011, when Barry discovered Cubic Telecom, that everything changed, and after a twelve-year, rollercoaster journey at the helm of the company, Barry has just sold a majority stake in the business to Softbank, valuing it at over $1 billion.

Cubic Telecom connects cars, tractors, motorbikes and trucks to online services, using 90 mobile network operator deals in over 190 countries around the world – “we can touch a car in Brazil from Dublin and we can fix problems.” The company connects over 480,000 cars every month and its technology is currently in around 10% of all cars globally. Yet Barry has ambitions to grow that to 40% on the back of Softbank’s investment.

In this episode of The EY Podcast: CEO Outlook series, Barry Napier of Cubic Telecom shares the incredible story of how a small Irish company became a major player in a global ecosystem, securing a majority-stake investment from the world’s largest tech-focused investment fund. In conversation with Richard Curran, Napier reveals the personal sacrifices he made while building the company, what he has learned along the way, and what comes next... “it's only 51%. So there's still a bit of the story to go. So keep an eye out. I think it'll be a bit of fun.”

They also discuss:

· Barry’s colourful career before Cubic, including the story of buying the Irish operations of an international company, BrightPoint, building its turnover to €155m, and then selling the assets to DCC.

· Meeting Elon Musk and partnering up with Tesla.

· The “really hard” process of going out to raise significant investment for Cubic Telecom and what he learned from the experience.

· How Covid caused revenues to collapse by 80% overnight – but also how the company avoided making any staff redundant and also creating an innovative new revenue model.

· The first thing he bought himself just after earning a reported 100m.

· Convincing Qualcomm, the biggest chip manufacturer in the world, to invest in Cubic in 2011.

· How early investors made 32 times their initial investment, more than they would have earned by investing in Apple.

It was the culture of Microsoft that first attracted Anne Sheehan to the company – “It's not about who's the cleverest person in the room. It's about who can be curious, who can learn, who can be creative”. Having spent over 20 years in the technology and telecom sectors working with companies like IBM and Vodafone, Anne has always chosen roles based on the “scale, breadth and depth” of the work to be done and the potential impact she could make for the company and its customers. So, when the opportunity came up to work with a leader in tech that was on an exciting AI journey and whose values aligned with hers, Anne “didn’t blink” and accepted the role of General Manager, Microsoft Ireland.

Microsoft has a significant presence in Ireland. With over 4000 employees from 97 different nationalities working in roles spanning sales, finance, HR and engineering, the company is, as Anne describes it, like a “mini Seattle” in Dublin. AI is at the core of many of the company’s current products and initiatives and Anne is very optimistic about the positive impact that this technology is going to have and the challenges it will help to tackle. And as Microsoft works to develop AI-driven products, it is also putting into place the necessary frameworks around privacy, security, safety, transparency, and accountability.

In this episode of the EY Podcast: CEO Outlook Series Anne Sheehan, General Manager of Microsoft Ireland speaks with host Richard Curran about the importance of curiosity, the opportunities that AI can bring and why she's never overthought her career. They also discuss:

· Anne’s professional experience with IBM and Vodafone and what she learned from the roles and culture.

· Why she believes that Irish people are adept at helping to change companies for the better

· Responsible AI and how Microsoft is working to ensure guardrails are in place

· Anne’s views on the role AI will play in the Irish education system and why we need to prepare now

Anne’s business mantra, and what she would like colleagues to say about her when she finishes her current role.

Ten minutes into the first job interview, Wendy Chang Smith knew that Glanbia was the right fit for her. As someone for whom company culture, values and learning experiences are paramount, Wendy was bowled over by the “wisdom and experience” of the two colleagues on the panel and felt like she had known them for years – “ I was sold, I was ready to join this company.”

But the idea of taking on the role of CFO of Glanbia Performance Nutrition was also very compelling from a business perspective. The company’s main brand, Optimum Nutrition, has been around for over 35 years, is sold in more than 90 countries, and recently became Glanbia’s first billion-dollar brand. Yet despite being the world’s number one sports nutrition brand, its growth potential in major markets like the US is very significant, and this was a challenge that excited Wendy.

In this episode of The EY Podcast: CFO Outlook Podcast, Wendy Chang Smith, CFO of Glanbia Performance Nutrition, joins Jonathan Healy to talk about working in some of the world’s biggest multinationals, her vision for the future of sports nutrition, and why company culture is so important to her.

They also discuss:

· The three qualities of a highly effective business strategy

· Why she believes that risk-taking is important for generating additional value for the company

· Wendy’s role as global sponsor for the Glanbia Women’s ERG and why Diversity and Inclusion is so important to her

· Glanbia’s investment globally in Research & Development

· Wendy’s time working in with major multinationals including Amazon, Johnson and Johnson, Procter and Gamble, and Kellogg’s.

· Adapting to Irish weather and culture, and why an encounter with a dead jellyfish made Wendy and her family realise that moving to Ireland was the right decision !

On Mairead McCaul’s first day in nursing college, her tutor said something that has always stayed with her: “when you're caring for a patient, you’re in a privileged position and you should always treat them as if they were your mother or your father or your brother or sister or your child”. Mairead carried these words with her throughout her time in nursing and midwifery, working in sales in the laboratory diagnostics sector, and into the position she holds today as MD, Human Health, of one of Ireland’s leading healthcare companies.

MSD has been in Ireland for over 50-years and the company employs over 3000 colleagues across five different sites around Ireland. Mairead joined the company in 2007 and, having worked in various roles across the company, was promoted into her current role as well as that of Head of MSD Ireland’s Country Leadership Team in 2020. She credits her progression largely to having “managers and a leadership team in MSD that saw something in me that I might not necessarily have seen in myself and really encouraged me to continue to progress.”

In this episode of The EY Podcast: CEO Outlook Series, Mairead McCaul, MD of MSD Ireland Human Heath & Country Leader shares the story of her remarkable journey through the healthcare industry in Ireland. In conversation with host Richard Curran, she talks about growing up on a farm in rural Ireland, her various roles in the healthcare sector, and her vision for the future of patient care.

They also discuss:

· The huge significance and impact of the pharma industry in Ireland.

· Personalised medicine – what it is and its role in the future of healthcare.

· Mairead’s leadership style and why she like to always challenge the status quo.

· Why some medicines manufactured in Ireland are not available to Irish patients, and Mairead’s work on increasing their availability and affordability.

· The advice she would give to other business leaders just starting out in the role.

Carol Phelan has always loved numbers. Growing up on a farm, she understood how the numbers she was learning in school related to the business of the farm and how it scaled. Accountancy was one of her Leaving Cert subjects, but, for Carol, “accountancy was a set of tools that I wanted to work in Business rather than accountancy as the end in and of itself.”

Carol spent the first six years of her career as a consultant , auditing and advising client companies. However this work increasingly led her to “be the person” and become fully involved in the running of a business: “I was walking away from it at the point they were about to go and live and breathe the consequences of their decision, whether it was a new investment or whatever that might be”.

And so began Carol’s career on the frontlines of business, leading to her current role as CFO of Dalata Hotel Group, which operates Ireland’s largest hotel brands, Clayton and Maldron, and is now rapidly growing its presence across the UK and Europe.

In this episode of The EY CFO Outlook podcast, Carol Phelan, CFO of Dalata Hotel Group chats with Jonathon Healy about her love of business, people and company culture, and her role in helping to grow Dalata Group revenues to a record €500m last year. They also discuss:

- Dalata’s successful decentralised model, where the teams in the group’s hotels are empowered to run them as if they are their own, presenting their strategy at a group level annually.

- How Dalata and its leadership and teams navigated the challenges of Covid-19 and related lockdowns.

- Dalata’s success in achieving 50/50 gender parity across its board and executive team.

- Why financial success all starts with hiring the right people, treating them fairly, and building a great company culture.

- Dalata’s rapid expansion across the UK and Europe.

Growing up on a small farm in Tipperary taught Leo Clancy a lot about entrepreneurship. From an early age he understood how to assess the business’s performance in any given year, how to make a profit on tight margins, and, crucially, he learned to “dig in and get the work done that needs to be done and make things happen”.

Today, Clancy leads an organisation that supports companies all over Ireland to start, grow, innovate and win export sales in global markets. Enterprise Ireland client companies employ almost 220,000 people and are responsible for €32 billion in exports, compared with €8bn in 1998. Clancy credits this success primarily to the businesses that have built the export base, but also to his colleagues in Enterprise Ireland that have helped them to scale internationally for over 25-years.

“The most important thing for me in my role is that we
serve our clients well and that we keep our eye on the economic prize that
results from that, which is jobs and economic investment and impact here in
Ireland.”

In this episode of The EY Podcast, CEO Outlook Series, Leo
Clancy of Enterprise Ireland joins host Richard Curran to talk about his love
of entrepreneurship, problem-solving, and leadership and how all three combine
to support his mission to help Irish companies to become global leaders in
their field. They also discuss:

· Clancy’s background in Electronic Engineering and how it
led to a love of problem solving.

· The many factors that make Ireland so attractive to
multinational companies, including language, talent, and stability.

· Enterprise Ireland’s role in encouraging greater levels of entrepreneurship
among women and those in their 20s.

· Why he was a ‘reluctant leader’ and how straight-talking
and honesty have ‘liberated’ him.

· Clancy’s vision for advancing the cause of industry in
Ireland and creating a stronger Irish enterprise base as a result.