LEADERS IN BUSINESS
Brian Dolaghan Executive Director of Business and Sector Development at Invest NI
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obody can have missed the plethora of investment announcements from Invest Northern Ireland over the last few months. For the 2013/2014 financial year it promoted 10,800 jobs and managed to match that figure in the first six months of this year. Many of the companies behind those jobs are new inward investors and it’s great to see new multi-national names arriving to the streets of Northern Ireland. But a large percentage are also from indigenous or overseas companies which already have bases here who have reinvested, sometimes for the second time, sometimes for the third time. Names like PwC, Citi and Allen & Overy have also been making probably the biggest headline investments but they aren’t new names, having already firmly established bases here to service their global businesses. They’ve proven to their boards that investment in Northern Ireland works and have successfully pitched for additional work and additional investment.
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They don’t do it alone, however, but in tandem with Invest NI and a dedicated team who are well versed in the additional features and benefits the region has to offer and the partnerships which can make Northern Ireland a place to expand further. The man heading up that team is Brian Dolaghan, an Executive Director at the agency, with special responsibility for current overseas and indigenous investors. That covers up to 1,500 companies, businesses which Brian’s department needs to know inside out.
one which blazed a trail for a number of other companies who followed suit. Brian said Citi’s example proved what was possible to the likes of Herbert Smith Freehills and Allen & Overy, two legal giants which have firmly established themselves here, the latter recently expanding its operation further. “Whenever you have a name like Citi making it work here it holds a lot of credence to your offering to other companies,” he said. “It happens quite a lot. A company comes here to do one thing there is the talent here to allow it expand into another area.”
“We are partnership focused,” he said. “We try to work alongside a business to understand how it works, to find out what challenges it faces and to see if we can help meet those challenges.” “Once the company arrives here we wrap our arms around them and help them grow as best we can.” Take Citi, a global bank which initially set up an IT support services division here. It realised there is a wealth of legal talent in Northern Ireland and soon reinvested, setting up a legal services department,
In fact, 70% of all businesses which set up base in Northern Ireland reinvest, some more than once. “It’s the people and the skillset which invariably makes it work for companies, not to mention the support mechanisms which we are a part of.” Brian is well qualified to meet those challenges. Schooled at Inst and Queen’s University Belfast, he is a qualified chartered accountant who started his career at Price Waterhouse where he stayed for six years