Dermot Gleeson must be hoping that his role as non-executive chairman of Travelport, the airline and hotel reservations group, which is planning a £1.8 billion London stock market listing, proves less contentious than his previous corporate berth.
Mr Gleeson held the same role for six years at Allied Irish Banks (AIB), during which time the share price of Ireland’s biggest lender collapsed and it was forced to accept a €3.5 billion government bailout. He was one of the three top AIB directors who stepped down last year as part of a wholesale boardroom clearout and, as a member of Dublin’s financial elite, found himself the target of investor ire — having an egg thrown at him by a disgruntled investor at the bank’s extraordinary general meeting in May.
During his tenure, AIB rapidly increased lending to the overheating Irish building sector, which accounted for more than a third of its domestic loan book when the credit crunch hit.
AIB was also slow to respond to the financial crisis — continuing to return cash to shareholders at a time when rivals were conserving capital and standing out as one of the last banks to concede that it would need to raise additional equity, finally admitting that it would require state support in April last year.
Mr Gleeson, now 61, was formerly best known for a glittering legal career. He was called to the Irish bar in 1970 and nine years later became the country’s youngest senior counsel, at the age of 30. He served as a senior government adviser and between 1994 and 1997 was attorney-general of Ireland under the coalition government of John Bruton, the Taoiseach.
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Travelport, which runs the Galileo booking system for travel agents, airlines and hotels, plans to raise £1.2 billion to pay down debts taken on by Blackstone, the American private equity group that led the company’s buyout in 2006. The intended flotation will be watched keenly by other groups with private equity backers that are also planning to float. If successful, Travelport will be the biggest company to list on the London Stock Exchange for nearly two years. In its most recent quarter, the company reported earnings of $93 million (£57 milion) on sales of $570 million.
Mr Gleeson studied law and economics at University College Dublin and is married with four children. He has previously served as a non-executive director of Independent News & Media, the newspaper publisher.