Overheard gets all its best investment ideas from ads on political podcasts. Only this week did we realise that this might not be the best idea.
Greenman Open, a fund that buys buildings that Lidls and Aldis operate out of in Germany, this week blocked withdrawals for up to 18 months, buying itself “a chance to breathe” amid efforts by investors to get their cash back right now.
“The idea is simple: however the economy fluctuates, people still need to buy food,” went one sales pitch, accurately diagnosing a trend of widespread hunger across society at breakfast, lunch and dinner time (and sometimes in between if interesting-looking Polish biscuits are available).
Many potential investors would have learned of the opportunity on a podcast called Path to Power, hosted by Matt Cooper and Ivan Yates.
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Path to Power came to the attention of the wider public in the autumn after it emerged that Yates had worked on it as he provided media training to Fianna Fáil contender Jim Gavin, simultaneously one of the most successful Gaelic football managers and least successful presidential candidates of all time.
Yates departed the podcast, and a number of investors unrelatedly departed the heavily Irish-funded Greenman, with a spike in requests in the third quarter of the year, as Ian Curran reported for this paper. Seeking stability, the fund’s chief executive Johnnie Wilkinson (not that one) kicked to touch.
Anyone who bought in after hearing the pitch on last Saturday’s Path to Power episode about Micheál Martin’s world travelling ways would have had a maximum of five days to admire their decision before finding out that it could be 18 months before any redemption is possible.
Still, as Yates said during his ad reads over the summer: “All investments carry risk, values can go up or down, and past performance isn’t a reliable guide to future returns.” Cooper echoed that on a recent episode. That message applies, whether it’s Jim Gavin or German supermarkets.
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Iron Mike in the wee North – fancy that
Mike Tyson and Belfast are both known for their boxing bona fides, so it came as something of a surprise to learn that the Baddest Man on the Planet was in the neat little town this week – not for boxing reasons but on pigeon business.
Tyson was visiting long-time friend Kevin McKinney and his family in north Belfast, local media reported. Word spread, understandably, when he was spotted in public on the Cliftonville Road, and crowds gathered to snap photos and, endearingly, to sprint after his car like the children of Zaire before the Rumble in the Jungle.
McKinney is a pigeon world champion in a niche corner of the pursuit called “Roller Fly”, which involves the passerines doing somersaults, rolls and other acrobatic endeavours. At Overheard, we will hop on any sporting bandwagon at the merest sniff of success, so we’re big fans.
Tyson, meanwhile, is on the record as a pigeon-lover. A 2011 article he wrote for The New York Times opens with the line: “It’s no secret that I love pigeons,” going on to outline that pigeons got him into boxing by prompting him to fight a bully who killed one of his birds.
As recently as March of this year, he told People magazine that he has “maybe a thousand pigeons” across a number of lofts. “Boxing is over and pigeons are still here,” he said.
This column has previously covered the travails of the North’s feathery foragers in the wake of Brexit. Perhaps Iron Mike can help officials find the focus to arrive at a solution.
Dell boys and girls
A merry Christmas is in store for American children as billionaire couple Michael and Susan Dell pledge $250 (€214) a head for investment accounts benefiting 25 million individual kids.
The goal is suitably capitalist: to give a stake in the economy and a feel for investment to the masses. The funds, launched at the White House, are called “Trump accounts”, because that’s how you get things done in Washington these days, but the $6.5 billion is coming from Dell’s computer fortune rather than the Fed’s Fort Knox gold reserves.
Michael Dell is well known in certain parts of Ireland, first for setting up a large manufacturing facility in Raheen, Limerick in 1991, bringing thousands of jobs and an economic bounce to the area, and then for closing it again in 2009 in a move declared the “Blackest Day” by the Limerick Leader newspaper at the time.
He told local Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea – dispatched to suggest not closing the factory during one of Ireland’s periodic economic collapses – that “it wasn’t personal, it was just business”. This sort of acumen seems to have served him well, as he remains the world’s 11th richest man.
Hence what might be the single biggest act of privately funded philanthropy in history, though the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, who have also routed billions worth of good business through Ireland in their time, are also launching money at various social ills in less direct ways.
“What we hope is that every child sees a future worth saving for,” Dell said. “You think about the compounding effect of a programme like this in 10, 20, 30 years on millions of children. That’s what gets us excited.”
Prudent Paschal has piled Ireland’s tax cut of Big Tech’s eye-watering profits up in a rainy-day fund for the country. Will Sensible Simon – as Harris dubbed himself on the Six One this week – consider giving it to the kids after taking over as Minister for Finance?
Burnishing Norsemen’s credentials
The Vikings get a bad rap. After a period of youthful indiscretion spent learning the black market trade in chalices, they settled down to founding most of Ireland’s cities and inaugurated the tradition of defending Leinster from the overlordship of self-appointed Munster kings, a ritual which has evolved from warfare to rugby over time.
A job opening therefore caught our eye: the National Museum of Ireland is seeking an assistant keeper grade II for its antiquities division – which is to say, a boffin – specialising in Viking-age Dublin.
Notwithstanding Wood Quay And All That, Dublin is a Viking city at its core, and various excavations over the years have thrown up treasures that are perhaps less shiny than the torcs but just as fascinating in the right light. The whalebone “ironing board” found in Kilmainham is a personal favourite.
Our Norse antecedents deserve better PR. We hope the new assistant keeper can give it to them.
