Electricity makes the world go round for the managing director of ESB International (ESBI), Mr Michael Hayden, whose company generates almost as much megawatt power abroad annually as the parent company does at home.

ESBI has built up an impressive portfolio over the past 10 years. The company employs [N O]employees 950 and has just secured its biggest contract to date - an £80 million deal to operate the power supply to a Malaysian industrial park. The deal involves "a power demand in excess of Cork".

The construction and operational programme will run over nine years, involving 100 Irish and Malaysian personnel.

An admirer of former Taoiseach Sean Lemass, Mr Hayden, began his ESB career in the 1950s on the Rural Electrification Programme, developing a useful expertise for working in the fledgling economies of under-developed countries.

ESBI has carried out work in 70 countries, is currently involved in 35 of them and has nine overseas offices.

"Since 1990 the turnover of the business has gone up by a factor of five. We have operational contracts to operate over 3,000 megawatts of power plant overseas. The current peak load in Ireland is under 3,500," he says.

Established by statute in 1988, ESBI began by continuing on the consultancy work established by the parent company, but its latest corporate strategy is moving into telecommunications and industrial park management, and increasing its equity share in the projects in which it is involved.

In its strategic alliance with British Telecom - in which the two companies are aiming to become number two in the Irish telecommunications sector - Mr Hayden says that ESBI is not "taking a slice" of business from Telecom Eireann. Rather, through the involvement of an indigenous company, it is "more likely to keep the added-value work in the economy".

"By definition there are going to be new players. The question for us is, `Are we going to be one of the new players?' I think there is a very strong case for companies like this to be involved."

He says the ESBI has to take account of deregulation and increased competition in the market. "I am absolutely convinced that if the ESB is to be a successful organisation in that future, that international success is going to be vital for that . . . The market is changing, particularly in the electricity business at a very high rate of knots. If you do not get a new strategy, ideally every five years, then you will start to go backwards."

Mr Hayden is thoughtful and measured in his responses, looking away to formulate his thoughts, and turning back to articulate them. He describes his managerial style as one of leading by example.

"I think example always influences you more . . . People watch what you do, they do not necessarily listen to what you say."

He has worked on the overseas staff since 1983. He is unwilling to reveal his age, but after joining the ESB 43 years ago, he is due to retire next March. "I intend to have a more leisurely lifestyle. The pace of this business is hectic." He is son of a civil servant and is married to the daughter of one - Anne Moynihan whose father, Maurice, is a former secretary to the Department of the Taoiseach. They have four children, two of whom have followed in his engineering footsteps.

He draws on the ideal of public service in his own life and says that the experience of seeing the dismal economy of the 1950s left him with a lasting ambition.

"There was no optimism in the country. It left a very deep impression on me and a determination to create something, to create opportunity, to create jobs."

As well as in Malaysia, ESBI also operates plants in Georgia, in the US, Abu Dabi, and Ghana, and has investments in British and Pakistani plants.

Last week's signing of a contract to be the transmission administrator of the grid in Alberta, Canada, has placed the company in that country's energy centre.

"That grid is a 6,000 megawatt grid, whereas Ireland is a 4,000 megawatt grid," he says. The company is expected to contribute about 5 per cent of ESB's profits for 1998, but Mr Hayden believes ESBI is now poised truly to come into its own. Over the past 20 years, consultancy contracts have been the perfect marketing tool for introducing ESBI expertise.

"My personal view on this is that within seven years, which is a kind of strategic cycle, I think the subsidiary company activities will be contributing at least 25 per cent of total profit of ESB."

New opportunities are arising in eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics where there are consultancy contracts with ESBI. "It might be another five years before they become attractive investment options."

Much of his career has been aimed at changing mindsets and "trying to do things differently".

"It is probably something in me. It can be very annoying when you have a lot of conviction about change and you are not able to sell it."

That is his one note of regret, accepting the status quo at certain times in the past. "In terms of my career I was not as enterprising as I might have been. There is a bit of hindsight in this."

He says one example of this is staying in the Middle East for too long in the early 1980s "when the signs were there that the bubble was set to burst". The tendency to stick with the status quo is a very powerful instinct.

"Generally speaking, any time there are some departures proposed or significant change proposed, you can take it that 90 per cent of the population will not be too enthusiastic, or might even be opposed to it."