Given the dearth of young business executives running multi-million-euro family empires the boss of Stafford Holdings shouldn’t have much difficulty developing a media profile.
The fact that this 29-year-old with jock-ish good looks is also genuinely personable is enough to make your average embittered hack want to hate him.
Far from being a dilettante with a skill for spending the family cash on fast living, Stafford is serious about a business with which not too many people are familiar.
Apart from being the No 2 solid fuel supplier in Leinster (behind Bord na Mona) Stafford Holdings has a thriving wholesale and retail oil delivery business.
It also owns the Glenview hotel in Wicklow, having divested the famous Actons hotel in Kinsale as part of a restructuring process. In addition, it boasts a portfolio of commercial property that covers more than 100 acres spread across the eastern seaboard, much of it in strategic locations.
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Last week’s acquisition of Clarke Oil for €10m brings Stafford additional turnover of almost €40m and a host of strong local brands including Clarke Oil, Clarke Fuels and Wicklow Corn.
It also moves Stafford Holdings closer towards its declared objective of achieving the No 1 position in the sale and distribution of oil products to the domestic, commercial and agribusiness sectors.
According to Stafford, the business — owned by his parents and six siblings — will achieve earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation this year of between €16m and €18m on sales of more than €230m.
The company’s first public deal was the €27m acquisition of Clashfern Holdings, a privately owned oil firm with distribution and retail businesses marketed through the Campus brand.
A deal was first mooted in 2000 but took until late last year to be completed. Stafford took the reins from his father Victor shortly afterwards.
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The eldest of the siblings, Stafford admits to having had his eye on the job for a while. “I was always bothering my dad about how many tons of coal had been delivered and what a particular ship was doing.”
Like many a successful family business, the Staffords considered putting one’s name in the newspapers was, well, a little vulgar. As the money flowed through — in good times and bad — from the family’s interests in fuel, shipping and property, there seemed to be no need for a media “profile”.
“When we did that deal (Clashfern) we said to ourselves, ‘This is going to come with some publicity so let’s make the most of it and try and manage it’,” said Stafford. “If you want to be involved in acquisitions then you need to be known.”
Now, with the Clashfern and Clarke deals under his belt, Stafford’s mobile number is on the speed dial of all of Dublin’s corporate finance houses. “The phone hasn’t stopped,” he said.
After the standard bourgeois boot camp of Clongowes Wood College and a University College Dublin B Comm, Stafford took himself off to London where he worked for three years as a strategy monkey with Accenture. “I needed to be seen getting out from under the family wing,” he said.
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The long-standing Wexford family has, in the way of much modern family wealth, gravitated towards the capital.
“Our business is based along the east coast and meetings with people, bankers or advisers tend to happen in Dublin. I grew up in Wexford but I was at college in Dublin so most of my friends are from there.”
The company still tries to hold its board meetings in Wexford where Stafford — innocent of the squire-ish vocabulary — says the family “retain a house”.
His fun side shines through his Accenture-inspired business spiel when he adds that the board meetings are usually held on a Friday, “so we can spend the weekend in Rosslare.”
With a debt-free balance sheet, the firm is on the look-out for more action. Stafford says that a €100m acquisition wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for a company that was, until three years ago, an unlimited entity.
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He is also assessing the options for all that property. “We could flog it now but that means somebody else makes a margin, or we’ll look at developing part of it. ”
That little comment will, no doubt, add to the amount of incoming calls fielded by Stafford in the coming months.
Unusually for a valuable family business, the Stafford empire appears to have avoided — or pre-empted — the bitter internecine feuding that has caused public grief to the Dunnes and countless others.
“Dad sat down about 15 years ago and sussed it out,” said Stafford. “Two cousins owned about 20% each of the business but around eight years ago it was restructured and they got a mix of land, businesses and cash.”
Mark’s brother Roddy sits on the various family boards representing the interests of the other sibling shareholders.
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If the warmth apparent between Stafford and his father (who still keeps an office in their slightly run-down, old-school D4 headquarters), is anything to go by, this family is more like the Waltons than the Comans.