The managing director of Initiative and IPG Mediabrands, Paul Farrell, is to leave the job to take up a new position as marketing director of Davy Stockbrokers. His replacement will be Eamon Fitzpatrick, who has been the advertising sales director of the Irish Times for the past five years.
Farrell, one of the country’s top marketing and advertising professionals, will take up his new role in mid-March, while Fitzpatrick will start with Initiative in early February. It is not known who will replace him in the Irish Times but the recruitment process is already underway and the publisher placed an ad in today’s business supplement.
Farrell has been with Initiative for the past three years. Prior to this he was commercial director of the Irish Times. He is also a former marketing director of O2 Ireland.
With over 550 staff, Davy Stockbrokers is the largest stockbroker in Ireland. Headed up by Tony Garry, it is a private firm owned by senior management and staff and it has been rapidly expanding its business over the past few years including the acquisition of the private client and asset management businesses of the ill-fated Bloxham Stockbrokers in May 2012 and the purchase of Prescient Investment Managers last November. This expansion has continued into 2014 with the acquisition of investment consultancy, iCubed, earlier this month as well as the acquisition of the Belfast-based wealth management firm Square Seven. The firm is also understood to be in the process of buying back a €140m loan currently held by the IBRC after it raised finance from Anglo Irish Bank in 2006 to fund a management buyout from Bank of Ireland.
