A businessman from Navan, Co Meath, who manages the Irish operations of a mobile phone retailer, Carphone Warehouse, gained shares worth up £10 million yesterday when the company was floated on the stock exchange in London.
Mr Stephen Mackarel (32) said he secured options "on very favourable terms" when he joined the chain from Eircell in June last year. While these were exercisable at yesterday's market launch, he declined to reveal the extent of the paper profit he made on the flotation.
However, the shares made a lacklustre debut as analysts questioned the valuation of the company and small investors shunned the flotation.
The stock ended the day just 1 1/2p sterling above its 200p issue price despite starting its first day of trade at a premium of 25p. The company - Britain's largest phone retailer - priced its shares towards the top end of a proposed range of 170-220p at the start of the day.
Mr Mackarel said he no immediate plans to sell his shares.
Warehouse, which has some 900 outlets in 14 European states, has 33 stores north and south of the Border. It currently employs 208 people in Ireland. The company was working on a share option plan for each worker which would be finalised in the next few weeks, Mr Mackarel said.
The flotation valued Warehouse at £1.64 billion sterling ($2.47 billion) and raised £185 million to continue its expansion into Europe and further develop its mobile services.
While Credit Suisse First Boston's management of the issue was a success by the measure of its 8.5 times oversubscription, its intention to price the stock so that investors made a profit had largely failed by the end of the day.
Despite efforts to deter first-day profit taking by persuading retail investors not to sell for three months, there were signs that many institutional investors were "flipping" the stock, or selling it on once purchased to make an immediate gain.
More than 150 million shares changed hands, 18 per cent of the issued stock.
"There's obviously been a lot of flipping by institutions," said Mr Nick Bubb, a retail analyst at SG Securities in London, adding that Credit Suisse was soaking up the offloaded shares.
"The valuation is still pretty demanding," he said. "It's not yet proven that the progress in Europe will go to plan, and that the market won't pause as it does in every other consumer electronics market."
The number of applications from private investors - 11,500 - was low for one of Britain's biggest flotations this year. Internet bank Egg Plc received more than 85,000 retail applications for its flotation a month ago.
