A NEW BEGINNING — MARGARET SWEENEY, CEO OF POSTBANK

WORDS: ENDA LEAHY

It’s a few years since Margaret Sweeney first hit the national headlines for the spectacular payout she received when leaving Aer Rianta, but she’s hoping her recent appointment — as Chief Executive of Ireland’s newest bank Postbank — will see her business acumen reach into Irish communities in a somewhat less sensational manner.

If her attitude is anything to go by she’ll make short work of it. Even journalists, more used to asking the questions than receiving them, are being grilled to see if we too will be opening an account at our local post office, and she’s only had the service running for a month!
Sweeney first made waves after ending up in the middle of a national controversy about remuneration of executives in state-owned companies. When she walked out of Aer Rianta in 2004, after serving less than a year in the CEO’s seat, she was awarded over €800,000.

She had served seven years at the Aer Rianta as Company Secretary, Deputy Chief Executive and acting Chief Executive, yet the Department of Transport refused to clarify her future in the Dublin Airport Authority, one of the three bodies being set up from the dissolution of Aer Rianta, and after months of dispute over the matter she left. An inter-departmental wrangle over her severance package found its way into the newspapers, and was compounded by revelations weeks later that her predecessor had handed out Cartier watches worth €18,000 apiece to some of Sweeney’s colleagues.

Asked to comment about the affair these days, the 46 year old laughs it off and says she has better things to be thinking about. “Ah no,” she says, “I’ve moved on, that was nearly three years ago. I have plenty to be getting on with setting up a new bank.”
Sweeney, from the remote fishing village of Kilcar in Donegal, her “favourite place in the world”, has stayed well under the media radar since, running her own financial and business consultancy firm in Dublin, until now that is.

Following her recent appointment, it emerged that her consultancy firm had been hired last year to finalise the year-long €13.8m research and negotiations which led to the joint venture between An Post and Fortis. She was appointed to head the new company soon afterwards.

Read more about Margaret Sweeney in the June | July 2007 issue of WMB, subscribe now.