Inside Track: John Slattery in a spin from shake-up at GE Aviation (2024)

John Slattery has hit a bit of turbulence following a management reshuffle at GE Aviation, one of the world’s largest suppliers of aircraft engines and part of the vast General Electric conglomerate.

The Clare man was appointed chief executive of GE Aviation almost two years ago, having played a stormer at aircraft maker Embraer. But last week Larry Culp, the overall GE boss, parachuted into the aviation division to take direct control, with Slattery moving to the jump seat in the new role of chief commercial officer.

GE Aviation supplies engines for everything from bog-standard passenger planes to the American air force’s next generation of F-15EX fighter jets.

The rejigging of jobs comes after GE streamlined its business late last year into three divisions: aviation, healthcare and energy.

If he ever calls it a day at GE, Slattery could team up with his big brother Dómhnal, who heads up the Chinese-owned Avolon aircraft leasing giant. That would be quite a twin-
engined machine.

Data supremo talks up digital voice start-up

Tom Morrisroe, who sold his Now Factory data play to IBM for about €110 million, is involved in a Dublin start-up, Area 22, which is developing groundbreaking digital voice technology. Morrisroe and a team headed by Ken Jackson are rolling the dice on consumers’ willingness to engage with brands by talking to them rather than by other means of communication.

The explosion of voice-led services such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant tends to support the thesis. Area 22 wants to provide a “voice first” conversational engagement channel for brands. “Hey, Nike — what kinds of shoes would look cool on me?” That type of stuff.

Morrisroe knows more than most about harvesting and using data. Applying these skills to voice-led brand engagement is a funky concept. Given his lucrative exit at the Now Factory, it’s clear that Morrisroe knows the value of a good thing.

He also dipped his toe into property by providing some of the equity for Johnny Ronan’s Spencer Place Development Company, which has developed a big chunk of Dublin’s north docks.

Combilift duo backing direct provision boss

Combilift’s Martin McVicar is helping to finance the sprawling property portfolio of direct provision magnate Niall Collins. I see McVicar and his partner Robert Moffett have taken a charge over assets in the Remcoll chief executive’s vehicle Fothain, which is sitting on development land assets off the main street in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, and also big blobs of central Dundalk.

While Collins has made a packet from direct provision centres, he’s planning to make a serious dent in the residential property market.

Remcoll has 81 social housing and accommodation projects across the country including the controversial Skellig Star direct provision centre. Social housing is central to Remcoll’s efforts, according to the blurb.

I gather that it’s looking to build more than 2,000 homes, presumably to sell to approved housing bodies. That’s some scale, especially when the listed property firm Cairn Homes turns out about 1,500 new units a year.

Collins has described Remcoll as “a social organisation with a capitalist head”. If he can crack the big societal problem of our time, by bringing more housing on stream, he’ll have made a good contribution.

Meta is giving thumbs-up to more new faces

The high-profile recruitment of Vodafone Ireland boss Anne O’Leary by Meta is a sign of big changes at the $450 billion social media behemoth. I’m told that O’Leary isn’t Meta’s only big-name Irish recruit.

The departure of long-serving Irish boss Gareth Lambe and his replacement by Rick Kelley has seen plenty of new faces at the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. It has headhunted Tony O’Donnell, previously chief technology officer at Prezi.

The Kildare man was at Prezi for only a year at a time when the cloud presentation company — a millennial’s version of PowerPoint — had finished raising more than $72 million from investors.

O’Donnell is coming into Meta as director of engineering, with special responsibility for stuff such as machine learning, security and trust, and integrity. Although pointy-headed, it is a serious job.

Meta’s Irish operations, which will move to Johnny Ronan’s vast complex near the RDS in Dublin next year, will have plenty of shiny new recruits.

Board seat suits Quirke scion

Help is at hand for Richard Quirke’s gambling and property enterprise. He is behind Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium on O’Connell Street in Dublin, plus a swathe of property interests around the country.

He is also the man with a plan for a wonderfully bonkers €480 million casino and hotel complex bang in bustling Two Mile Borris in Co Tipperary.

Recently it emerged that the former garda’s business had suffered a €2.5 million fraud, with €543,758 going walkabout in 2020, €1,017,000 in 2019 and €1,009,000 in 2018. Ouchy.

Quirke’s Lamborghini-driving son Wes is married to Rosanna Davison, the model and former Miss World. Another son, Andy, is best known for developing and starring in the hit RTE comedy series Damo and Ivor.

While Andy had been running a racing pigeon venture, it seems that the call to help out the family has come and he’s just joined the board of the Quirke empire.

Keane is game for grassroots golf

Treemetrics co-founder Enda Keane is getting behind Aidan Power and Peter O’Brien’s TopDog Golfer app. It has ambitious plans to transform the sport by helping clubs to make more money by running competitions without a mountain of hassle — the Strava of golf, you could say.

TopDog Golfer provides the back-office stuff needed to handle competitions by collecting entry fees upfront, displaying a live leaderboard, totting up results and divvying winnings instantly through digital debit cards.

O’Brien is in the forestry business through his Glenmore operations, which would have brought him into contact with Treemetrics and Keane. Treemetrics has developed the kit that squooshes satellite imagery with mobile data to help forest owners map, value and manage their trees.

Keane has raised dough from the state, engineering tycoon Ernie Fisher and serial tech investor Pa Nolan to turn it into a thing.

•Former banker Brian Murphy, who joined the National Treasury Management Agency to advise the state on managing its money, has just teamed up with private equity giant Fortress, becoming a non-executive director of Fortress Commercial Finance.

From 2009 to 2017 he was chief executive of the National Development Finance Agency, which advised the NTMA and the state on big-ticket investment. I believe Murphy is also a director of John Conroy’s Redesdale food and wellness investment firm.