That Great Business Show

E15 That Great Business Show


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E15. This is a business story like no other. Conor McEnroy headed to the City of London in the wake of his failed oil & gas newsletter. He was offered three jobs and thought he was cock of the walk - until he found out that his fellow interns were on double his salary. Lesson learnt.

A chance phone call by Conor to an old contact in the oil business saw his Swiss employers earning a massive £2m fee for raising funds for the oil company. Conor was on his way - a way that brought him to Italy, and then to Latin America where he was to fix broken oil companies initially, and then broken banks - a scalpel is a scalpel no matter what the business, after all. Not everyone appreciated his presence. There was a bomb at his hotel. There was the kidnapping - Conor describes what goes through your mind when your on a country road with a gun pointed at your back. And there were the minders, armed to the teeth, who would join Conor for his walks on the beach.

Some time later he got a phone call from an old pal who offered to sell him an ailing Paraguayan bank. Eventually Conor did buy it, and has built it from tenth spot to the fourth spot in bank size.

Ireland's honorary consul in Paraguay (that's another job he has) doesn't hold back on what he would do with the Irish banks and their boards were he in charge (You're fired!), he explains why he wouldn't allow banks to sell of their bad loans and he says that young Irish people should take a serious look at the opportunities that Paraguay offers them. He got rugby legend and co-host Jamie Heaslip so excited with the prospects about buying a coffee plantation that they exchanged phone numbers before he left. Who knows, will we see a Blend #8 coffee on our shelves soon?

Listen. It's not like any other business story, because at That Great Business Show we do business differently.


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That Great Business ShowBy Conall Ó'Móráin