Alan Doherty doesn't give much away. Installed last October as head of AIB Corporate Finance, he is optimistic about the prospects for deal-making for his first full year in office. But when it comes to specifics, he won't go there.
If Doherty sees potential for business in the healthcare, waste, builders' merchants and property sectors, it's a fair bet too that renewed moves to float Aer Lingus will feature at the top of his agenda for 2006.
With UBS, his part of AIB is joint Government adviser on the strategic options for the national airline. It is known that considerable efforts are underway to resolve the company's massive pension deficit, but Doherty says only that he is glad to have the contract. Whether Bertie Ahern is prepared to trigger the process when the time comes is another matter entirely and not one that Doherty will discuss.
Still, he is positive about business conditions generally, noting that the combination of good economic growth with low borrowing costs and reasonable inflation offers the potential for deals. "I've seen good markets and poor markets," he says. "You see the good and the bad."
With Irish mergers and acquisitions worth some €11 billion last year, it's clearly a good time to be in corporate finance. Still, Doherty notes that the Irish deal scene can be "lumpy" as particularly large transactions can distort that top-line figures.
The AIB corporate finance share of the action last year included its role as in-house adviser to AIB Group in the €1.3 billion joint venture between its Ark Life unit and Aviva's Hibernian Life & Pensions.
Prominent too was its part as adviser to the family of Senator Feargal Quinn in the €415 million sale of Superquinn to Select Retail Holdings. Doherty won't discuss the specifics of the transaction, but he acknowledges the importance of the transfer of Superquinn's sizeable property portfolio.
"When you say property was an element of the Superquinn deal, it was an element in relation to structuring the deal and making it altogether an attractive deal . . . But it was allied to a very strong business and a very strong brand."
The property factor is not confined to Superquinn, he says.
"Property isn't the be-all and end-all but it's a facilitator to particular transactions. But you would look at two kinds of EBITDA multiples - deals that might be difficult to get away with an appropriate structure can actually now be accommodated."
At its most basic level, the Superquinn deal was nothing more than the sale, on a very large scale, of a family business. Doherty sees more of this ahead, particularly in industries that are consolidating.
In particular, he mentions the builders' merchant sector. Doherty has form here as a member of the team that advised Grafton on its €353 million acquisition of Heiton's early last year. Months later, AIB was adviser to Roscommon builders' merchant Garvey's when it was bought out by Grafton. "On the smaller company side, we have focused on certain particular areas where we think there is potential for consolidation," he says.
"We need to know our clients very well and what they want, so what is a good fit for them and also we know the particular industry that they operate in. So, working at all levels - for large corporates or small corporates - we need as a basic requirement a decent understanding of their businesses and what they're trying to achieve. It's only by knowing their particular objectives that we can actually reach a solution."
From Ballina in Co Mayo, Doherty trained as an accountant with Arthur Andersen before joining the corporate finance arm of Goodbody Stockbrokers, another part of AIB. He has been with AIB Corporate Finance since 1994. He saw accounting as a way into business after a commerce degree in University College Galway.
"A lot of that BComm class would have done accountancy. There were a lot of guys who decided to do accountancy with a view to wanting to have a career in business, but really probably not making the decision as to what exactly they wanted to do until they had a bit of exposure to the business world."
While the overcharging scandals at AIB bought unwelcome publicity in spades, Doherty maintains it is "absolutely" the case that those difficulties are behind it. "We went through a very tough time, but I think AIB actually dealt with the issues it had very firmly and very well."
Doherty rose through the ranks in AIB during the Michael Buckley era, but his future is likely to be determined by the bank's new chief executive, Eugene Sheehy.
He says Sheehy has a "very strong relationship" with all the main parts of AIB. "He brings significant experience and definitely has his own style. I've no doubt he'll be extremely successful in his role."
Even if the top seat in AIB Corporate Finance has often been a staging post on the route to the very top tier in the bank, Doherty is not a man to talk about his own ambitions for the future. "My focus is on the present," he says.
