COVER STORY
‘I often think the mark of a chief executive is how the business performs after you leave and John O’Reilly left a great business and a great team’
overachievers and I was certainly under-secure when I joined there, because I was surrounded by these incredibly impressive people. I got exposure to some really interesting strategy issues in some very interesting businesses. For a 25-year old kid heading off from Dublin that was fantastic.” Kennedy returned to Dublin in 1998 to head up theM&Afunction
at Greencore. A number of substantial acquisitions in the first cou- ple of years culminated in the purchase of Hazelwood Foods, which was significantly larger than Greencore itself. “Thenmy role changed to sell off the parts that we didn’t want inHazelwood, which was 20 out of the 36 units,” says Kennedy. Along with his current role, he describes this particular period as
one of the most interesting stints of his career so far. “We bought Hazelwood in January 2001 and had a commitment to our banks and to ourselves that byMay 2002 we would have sold or closed all of the non-core businesses in Greencore and in Hazelwood and that we would have an absolute commitment to raising £120m. That was basicallymy job. “In the end we raised £175mand did all the deals we needed to do.
That was a very intense period, a lot of transactions to get through and quite pressured.We had deliberately financed the whole acqui- sition through debt and we knew it was too much debt on a sustain- able basis so we needed to pay it down. It was pressured and at the same time there was some sense of satisfaction when we came through the far end.” Managing to deliver on these commitments earned Kennedy the
role of finance director at Greencore. Two years later, in 2004, he was appointed to the board of Paddy Power as a non-executive director.
Becoming chief executive Being considered for the role of chief executive at the bookmakers just 18 months later came as something of a surprise, he says. “My predecessor had agreed with the board – which I hadn’t known at the time – that when he took the job he’d only take it for three years and then wanted to retire. Paddy Power appointed a firm of recruitment consultants in the UK to run a search. They came back and said one of the shortlist was on the board. “The chairman came to me and said: ‘You’re on the list, what do
you want to do?’ I said I’d like to be a candidate. If you’re interested in mathematics – and I did a postgrad in statistics – and you’re inter- ested in sport and technology, I think this is where you want to be. “It wasn’t a traditional route, but at the same time it was very help-
ful from my perspective because it meant that although I was com- ing into a new role in a new company in a new industry, at the same time I had a fair bit of exposure to the company already, in terms of the board, the senior management and the strategy and direction.”
12 UCD BUSINESS CONNECTIONS Since then, the business has continued to perform strongly across
all of its divisions, he says, something he attributes largely to his predecessor. “I often think the mark of a chief executive is how the business performs after you leave and John O’Reilly left a great busi- ness and a great team. And the business has kept that momentum going. I thought John had left me with some great building blocks, somy job has just been to push it all along. “It’s kind of motherhood and apple pie, but I think having great
people work for you, and just motivating them and pushing them along, is the way to do it.” An important lesson along the way has been the need to delegate responsibility for different aspects of the business. “Surround your- self with great people, motivate them and let them at it and they’ll deliver,” he says. The fact that he gives much of the credit for the company’s success
to the people and teams at Paddy Power is not down to modesty, false or otherwise, says Kennedy. “This year the market estimate is that we’ll have revenues in excess of€4bn. With the best will in the world, I shouldn’t be even thinking about that, trying to work through that. The only way it scales, especially if your activities are spread across multiple geographies, is if you have a team of people who think the same way and are motivated the same way. It has now got more and more to the stage where it’s not even my team; it’s the team below them, or even the team below them.” He referencesWarren Buffett’s reply when he was once asked how
he deals with the fact that he now actually owns many companies outright and is effectively an owner-manager. “He said: ‘It’s very sim- ple. I write a letter to the chief executives every 18 months and tell each of them I want them to treat the company that they’re chief executive of as if it was the only asset their family was allowed own for the next 100 years and they weren’t allowed to sell it.’ “That’s the kind of mentalitywe have here. I don’t necessarily think
he’s the greatest businessman around. But I admire that approach. What we’re trying to do in Paddy Power and the way we think about business is very much long term. What can we do today to maximise the value of this firm in 10 or 20 years’ time.” Outside work, Kennedy’s life revolves around his family – he has five children - and sport, playing and watching, and coaching two of his kids’ rugby teams. “When I’mnot here, I’mwith the family. That’s the gig.” Kennedy may be opinionated and assured when talking about
the business, but he declines an offer to share his views on Ireland’s political and economic situation. “My view is that everybody has a view and the last thing people need is yet another view to add to the 200,000 that have already been publicly expressed,” he laughs. “I prefer to keep my head down within the four walls of Paddy Power.”
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