Bernard Walsh - Hot Irishman
This company has gone from being about 40pc to 90pc export-based in five years.
ENTREPRENEURS
Eddie O’Connor
Mainstream Renewable Power
Eddie O’Connor, founder and CEO of Mainstream Renewable Power, is a true entrepreneur, driving his current company with gusto following his sale of Airtricity in 2008.
Earning €50m from the sale of Airtricity Holdings in January 2008 and subsequently investing €30m in Mainstream Renewable Power, the renewable energy company he established less than a month later, Eddie O’Connor serves as a textbook example of a successful owner manager as well as a source of inspiration for others.
Currently secretary of the European Wind Energy Association,O’Connor has previously filled the roles of purchasing manager for the ESB and managing director of Bord Na Móna (BNM).
He formed Airtricity in November 1999 with the National Toll Roads, the latter party owning 51pc of the company. “We grew our share price by 54pc per annum. Not just on average, it happened every year,”he says.
In 2007, Airtricity’s North American business unit was sold to Eon for €995m. The remainder of the company was sold to Scottish and Southern Energy.
Grand plan for Europe
Mainstream’s grand plan to help solve Europe’s energy challenge by building the European Offshore Supergrid, which will guarantee energy self-sufficiency and carbon-free electricity for Europe in the face of China’s voracious demand. In January of this year, Mainstream and its partner Siemens Project Ventures were awarded the rights to develop and build 4,000MW of wind farms off the Yorkshire coast by 2020.
“Sufficient resources exist out at sea to supply the whole of northern Europe with electricity,” O’Connor says. In the meantime, the company is developing a range of renewable energy plants across Europe, North America, South America and South Africa.
Despite his impressive CV, O’Connor’s easy manner and captivating conversation put paid to any preconceptions of his being a power-hungry tycoon. “Almost anybody can be a successful owner manager,” he says, modestly. “Being in the right place at the right time seems to account for most of the wealth that’s around now.” He has seen introverts and extravagant extroverts alike lead companies and “be quite entrepreneurial. People in the energy business all strike me as being made from the same conservative and static mould”.
Attributes of a winning entrepreneur
As to what kind of attributes a winning entrepreneur must have, O’Connor feels qualified to simply describe his own as a possible guide: “It’s a mixture of personality type and a slight ability to crunch numbers and look at trends. I am future-orientated; I move on to the next task with great facility. As a vector of personality, I’d be very intuitive, in that I see things early.” Indeed, he spotted the need for wind energy in BNM back in 1989.
Acting on this foresight to build Ireland’s first wind farm for BNM, in 1992, was O’Connor’s first step on the road to effect global change. “When I see something I am never satisfied with the way it is now — I try to change it. There’s a big role in the energy industry for change agents, and I am one of these.”
An early, locally based example of this drive for change was in his turning around of a debt-crippled BNM in 1987. “It was in really bad shape, with sales of IR£100m, debt of IR£200m and losses of IR£17.5m a year. I won’t call it a mismanaged entity because I found no evidence of management in it.”
His ground-breaking move upon taking up the reins as managing director was the introduction of the Employee Enterprise Scheme, which variablised the cost of production. This meant employees were paid not by the hour but by tonne of quality product. Other innovations he implemented included the division of the company into customer-focused units and convincing the Government of the day to forgive the company’s huge debt, which was like a “mountain of snow on top of you”.
“There’s nothing wrong with failing”
In the same breath O’Connor is quick to admit his fair share of failures: he failed to persuade BNM about the importance of wind energy, while in Airtricity, he never won any contracts from the Government and admits to not moving quickly enough to buy out the company.
“There’s nothing wrong with failing, because you can’t control everything. A well-structured failure is the most perfect learning opportunity.” In true entrepreneurial style, he sees the Airtricity sale as a good thing: “It was no harm to sell it, as Mainstream is just a continuation of it, except much better!”
Inspiration
He maintains that his style of management has remained the same over the years. “Fundamentally, I believe in delegation and strong performance management. You pay people to be aligned with your goals, and you manage thoroughly and pay by results. We press our people to be imaginative, open, conscientious and agreeable. Give people the targets and the vision, then get out of their faces and let them get on with it. And they love it.”
The business leaders, past and present, that have gained his admiration include Steve Jobs, who he describes as “staggeringly brilliant”, Bill Gates, Michael Smurfit, Denis Brosnan of Kerry Foods, Tom Roche of CRH and the late Tony Ryan.
As for the source of his own physical and mental energy, O’Connor firmly believes in not missing a night’s sleep, and taking time out to play golf and read. “I suppose when you look back at it I do seem to have had a rather energetic time of it, but it’s probably genetic.”
If the example of his father, Robert — who conducted the first farm survey in Ireland for the Central Statistics Office and worked for the Economic Social Research Unit right up to his death at the age of 80 — serves as any indication, we’ll be seeing a lot more innovation from O’Connor. “I’ll keep going as long as I have a useful function.”
