Computer guru helping Siteserv get with the program under a new name

The name change takes place next month, capping a reorganisation of the group that wipes out a mishmash of sub-brands. After the overhaul, Actavo will have three divisions: industrial services, networks, and structural.

The first two pull in about three-quarters of the company’s revenues, forecast to be €400m this year, from activities as diverse as maintaining mammoth oil refineries to installing set-top boxes for Sky and Virgin Media. The €100m balance will come from the structural division, which hires and sells products related to industrial services, including Roankabin buildings.

Actavo was chosen for its “active” connotations, signifying the group’s ambitions to grow and move forward, said Corkery. He wanted to rebrand sooner but needed to have the restructuring in place.

There may also have been a certain bloody-mindedness about sticking with Siteserv as issues about the sale — which involved the taxpayer-owned IBRC writing off €110m in debt — were reheated in the Dail earlier this year. “If we had done it sooner, the perception would have been we were walking away from Siteserv,” said Corkery. “ I don’t do that.”

He resented the idea the company was somehow tainted, and particularly how that might reflect on the nearly 4,700 staff and subcontractors who work for him. Earlier this year, he wrote to the ceann comhairle and national newspaper editors strongly making the point that any taxpayer losses were the result of over-borrowing by Siteserv’s previous owners.

“It was a distraction and an annoyance.” He pauses. “We don’t want to come across as if we’re the victims.”

The controversy has “moved on” since the government set up a commission of investigation into IBRC transactions that involved chunky debt write-offs, including the Siteserv sale. Corkery “totally” welcomes the commission, though no one has yet been in touch with him about it. “It is the proper forum for any issues, rather than on the airwaves or newspapers.”

The storm over water meters has abated somewhat too.

“Irish Water will never define us,” he said. “We’re certainly not dependent on it.”

Siteserv revenues are rising about 30% a year and three-quarters of its business will come from outside Ireland this year. A map of its activities shows 100 locations, spanning Ireland, Britain, the Caribbean and, most recently, Kazakhstan. The company targets a net profit margin of 7% a year, which would add up to €28m profit this year. At that level, Corkery can surely understand the feeling O’Brien got the business on the cheap.

“We have tried to do our best with the assets we bought,” he said. “We had a broader vision for the business than perhaps others might have had.”

The son of a bus driver from Cork city, Corkery has plenty of experience of big visions. After a degree in economics and maths at University College Cork, he went into an undergrad programme at Apple’s Cork facility.

It was the very start of the 1980s and Steve Jobs’s company was working hard on its Macintosh computer. He remembers telling his parents the company was making 300 computers a day in Cork.

“They said, ‘You’d wonder where they all go.’ When I was in Dell years later, we were making 45,000 computers a day in Limerick.”

Corkery remembers Jobs visiting Cork “like a pop star” in the early years. After Jobs was squeezed out of Apple in 1985, he interviewed Corkery for a job at his follow-up venture, Next. How did that go? “It was all right. I got the job.”

Corkery stuck with Apple, however, and spent several years in California. His final role was operations director for the Pacific region, as well as Canada and Latin America.

He left Apple in 1993, joining a former boss who had left for AST Computers, based in Irvine, California. As global head of operations, Corkery was heavily involved in setting up a plant in Limerick for AST, which had a high-profile sponsorship of Aston Villa football club in the mid-1990s.

In 1996, a relatively unknown Korean company called Samsung bought AST. Corkery resigned not long after, a comedy experience that took an hour through a translator. “In Korean companies, you don’t resign. It’s just not done.”

By then quite well-known in the tech sector, Corkery fielded a job offer from Michael Dell, but was more intrigued by an approach from a head-hunter working for O’Brien. The businessman was looking for a chief operations officer for Esat Telecom, a challenger to Telecom Eireann which he was floating on the Nasdaq.

“I didn’t know anything about Denis but I met him for dinner in Boston and agreed to come on board,” said Corkery. He joined Esat in late 1997 and stayed until early 2000, when Esat was acquired by BT for $2.5bn (€2.2bn).

He met Michael Dell again and this time accepted his job offer. Dell was buoyed by demand for computers, fed partly by output from its massive factory in Limerick, Corkery’s home town.

As vice president of global supply operations, he was responsible for the production of 14m-15m computers globally every quarter. “It was an extraordinary period from 2000 to 2006, when we became No 1 [computer maker] in the world,” said Corkery.

He remembers being at a Dell leaders conference, for the top 50 executives in the company, in 2005. The company was the world’s biggest PC maker and featured on the cover of Fortune magazine as the most admired company in the world. Corkery turned to the executive beside him and said: “We’re completely screwed now.”

It was prescient. Dell was hit by a US regulatory inquiry into how it accounted for revenue, then blind-sided by the shift away from PCs to tablet computers and smartphones, as well as the rise of China.

“Your finest hour is your weakest hour,” he said. “When you’re the market leader, competing is so much more difficult. There are guys pulling at you all the time.”

Michael Dell, who had stepped down as chief executive in 2004, came back to the role in 2007, and led a shift away from PCs into software, enterprise solutions and data storage. In 2009, Corkery was handed the task of closing the Limerick factory with the loss of 1,900 jobs. He stayed with Dell until 2013, when Michael Dell took the company private in a $25bn deal. “I would have had to sign up for a few more years, but I wanted to do something different, something mad and fun,” said Corkery.

After an approach from O’Brien, he joined Siteserv in July 2013 as chairman and chief executive. He also has a shareholding in the business.

He spent two years getting to grips with the sprawling business, while also batting away its various controversies. The company has landed big deals with telecoms and power companies, and expanded in industrial services.

Holgate, a fencing and crash barrier business bought by Siteserv for €19m in 2006, has been wound down. “It didn’t translate into an international business,” said Corkery.

A new ports maintenance deal with engineering group Babcock International is worth £150m (€204m) over five years, though he has ambitions to extend it to at least a decade. A joint venture to service oil projects in Kazakhstan is worth €20m a year, with potential to grow to €50m.

The shareholders have invested about €50m in the business since its acquisition, including capital investment, a big increase in employment and support for staff training and development. A €3m IT investment has synchronised computer systems across the group for the first time, and the payroll systems have been reduced from 24 to one.

The O’Brien ownership has brought deals with O’Brien’s Digicel, including installing a fibre optic network in St Lucia. Digicel contracts have contributed revenues of about €60m to date, though Corkery, a Digicel director, said O’Brien didn’t do Siteserv any favours.

“You’ve got to be joking,” he said. “You still have to do the job. Like in any family relationship, people don’t hold back in their criticisms and demands.”

He expects to complete a “transformative” acquisition in the UK telecoms sector by the end of the year, helping to push revenues towards a 2020 target of €1bn and possibly a stock market listing. “If we keep growing at this level, we will need investment and an IPO could be an enabler.”

He has learnt from his two former employers Jobs and Dell to aim big and keep moving. “In the technology sector, you learn how quickly things become obsolete. You can never rest on your laurels.”

The life of Sean Corkery

Age: 57

Home: Annacotty, Limerick and Dublin

Family: Married with three adult daughters, aged 33, 31 and 18

Education: Degree in economics and maths from University College Cork

Favourite book: I’ve just read the Elon Musk biography — Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future — it’s a very good book on transformation.

Favourite film: The last good movie I saw was The Wolf of Wall Street, pictured.

WORKING DAY

I’m based in Dublin during the week and I’m usually in the office for 8am. I’m into technology but I’m a big believer in coming to work and meeting people physically. I have a lot of meetings with people from the various divisions, and I’d do a bit of M&A stuff. I’m a big email guy — it allows you to construct your thoughts properly and you can include a lot of people in your thought process. I might leave the office at 6pm, go to the gym, and log on to the computer at home. I’d be out of the office two or three days a week with customers or staff. I travel to the UK most weeks and I’m in the Caribbean once a month. I was in Barbados last week.

DOWNTIME

I like to stay fit so I go to the gym. I cycle at the weekends and do spinning classes during the week. I love spending time with my two grandkids. Adults drive me mad; give me kids any day.