close-up
An audience with
A former stockbroker and investment banker and a working mum of three who runs a business in London, Mrs Moneypenny “outsources” her children to various educational establishments and has “several academic degrees of varying uselessness” as she puts it. Those who read her Financial TimesWeekend column will know she also holds a pilot licence and “has a passion for shooting birds”. So the surrounds of Hayfield Manor seemed like an apt location for her visit to Cork inNovember to speak to Irish executives at an event organised by Aviva. We speak as she is about to leave London for Cork. “I’m
very much looking forward to it,” she tells me. “I’m sure it will be better than my last trip to Co Galway where I nearly froze to death in some bed and breakfast because the FT wanted me to go and stalk fallow deer! “I can’t begin to tell you – it was out of a brochure
FinancialTimesreaders will be familiar withMrsMoneypenny’s popular Saturday columns. As she prepared for a trip to Cork, she spoke to Ann O’Dea about leading her own business through the UK recession
called ‘Hidden Ireland’ or something, which are these bed and breakfasts, basically posh people’s houses that they don’t advertise. Of course, because they are large and draughty, these posh old Irish houses, they’re also bloody freezing – but I believe I’m staying somewhere altogether more comfortable tonight.” Mrs Moneypenny has a firm ‘glass half full philoso-
phy’, despite facing some not inconsiderable challenges in her own business in recent times, and she was plan- ning to share plenty of anecdotes as well as lessons learnt when she addressed her Irish audience. She runs her home like her business, and has
famously renamed her three sons the “cost centres”. “We run individual cost centres in the house and I have to say the working-capital requirements for a house with three children are tough!” she tells me. “When we went through a restructuring in my office
two years ago during this recession, we also went through a restructuring at home – my children had to come out of their very expensive schools.” When we speak, the UK is abuzz with talk of cost-
cutting too. “Yes, that’s right, we had a big, very unpleasant government thing called the Comprehensive Spending Review here a few weeks ago,” she says. “Everyone’s up in arms about it here, you can imag-
ine, although it’s not like France,” she adds. “I think the English are all far too lazy to take to the streets!” She
54 Irish Director Winter 2010
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