Dermot Desmond, the then managing director and founder of NCB, writing in July 1987 said:
‘Neither futures nor options are currently available in Irish capital markets but, if Ireland is to play its full role in the global markets of the future, it is essential that these new financial instruments be developed and used by market participants’.
Since then, the use of futures and options has become standardised in the Irish market, with the most recent figures from the Central Bank show that as of March 2004, total options bought in the Irish market totalled €198.6 billion, total options sold totalled €327.4 billion, while total futures bought were in the region of €56.2 billion, and total futures sold totalled €45.5 billion. Moreover, a futures exchange, FINEX, opened in 1994.
Peter E. Lynch writing in July 1996 said:
‘I long ago learned that work is mostly grind, not glory. It isn’t that you work hard and late one night, but that you are prepared to do it year after year.’
At the time Lynch was group finance director of Adare Printing plc. His hard work paid off and he was appointed chief financial officer of eircom in January 2001, playing a key role in the company’s €2.5 billion debt restructuring in 2003, and subsequent re-flotation in 2004.
Bill Murray, the Isle of Man’s island’s officer in charge of commercial development, writing in September 1987 said:
‘Setting up a financial centre in Dublin is like Bradford setting up as a financial centre. Bradford in its case would be better sticking to woollens; Dublin would be better building on its own resources, which do not particularly include financial services’.
Latest employment statistics from the Finance Dublin Yearbook 2004 show that numbers employed in the sector now exceeds 16,000. In addtion, the total tax yield from the centre was in the region of €620 million for 2003. |
