Mulcahy clearly feeling bullish with Glenveagh IPO
FINANCE Minister Paschal Donohoe did his best to stimulate home building in the Budget, but the markets are still betting on demand outstripping supply. Last week Glenveagh Properties made its debut on the stock market, making it the first Irish homebuilder to float in two years. It carries a valuation of €700m.
One of its founding directors, John Mulcahy, is one the country’s longest serving property experts. Dubbed ‘Mother’ Mulcahy for his ability to nurse a deal, he claims to be one of the very few people to have called the property crash.
The Dublin man joined Jones Lang Wootton in the early 1970s, going on to become the managing director and then chairman of Jones Lang LaSalle. During the crash, his expertise was called upon by Nama, where he devised ‘a template for valuing the development loans’.
In 2009, he told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance that it had been a bear for the previous four years. “We sold down our pension fund property assets, which was not a popular course of action at the time. One’s speaking-engagement requests become very limited when one is a bear in the market.”
This raised a few eyebrows at the time as he continued to be upbeat in 2006 and 2007 in several interviews.
With Glenveagh now listed we can only assume the bear has become a bull.