With the clock ticking down to the inaugural Irish Times Business Awards, in association with KPMG, a panel of judges met this week at Microsoft Ireland's new offices in Sandyford, Co Dublin to choose winners in four categories.
The panel was chaired by Microsoft Ireland managing director Cathriona Hallahan. She was joined by Shaun Murphy, managing partner of KPMG, Margot Slattery, country president for Sodexo Ireland, Mark Ryan, a non-executive director, Martin McVicar, managing director of Combilift, Caroline Keeling, chief executive of Keelings, and Dr John Hegarty, chairman of The Irish Times Trust.
They considered nominees in four categories - Business Person of the Year, Company of the Year, Chief Financial Officer of the Year, and Deal of the Year.
Ms Hallahan said: “There was a wide variety of companies and individuals nominated [across the categories] from a small entrepreneurial start-up beginning to scale ... to the much larger entities who are recognised in the market as leading brands. It was a really fascinating process to go through.”
Business Person of the Year
The Business Person of the Year will be chosen from the monthly award winners since the programme began in May 2017.
These have been Glanbia's Siobhán Talbot, Bernard Byrne of AIB, Michael Stanley of Cairn Homes, Voxpro's Dan and Linda Kiely, Albert Manifold of CRH, Portwest's Harry Hughes, Deirdre Somers of the Irish Stock Exchange, tech entrepreneur Garry Moroney, Carl McCann of Total Produce, Dr Peter FitzGerald of Randox Laboratories, and David and Sandra Whelan of Immersive VR Education.
The Irish Times Business Awards will be held on May 9th in the Mansion House, Dublin, hosted by RTÉ broadcaster Sharon Ní Bheoláin.
