{"id":177523,"date":"2025-11-13T00:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T00:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/177523\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T00:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T00:13:11","slug":"irish-business-grandee-gary-mcgann-on-working-with-michael-smurfit-the-fall-of-anglo-irish-and-the-current-state-of-the-irish-economy-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/177523\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish business grandee Gary McGann on working with Michael Smurfit, the fall of Anglo Irish and the current state of the Irish economy \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">This week on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/podcasts\/inside-business\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/podcasts\/inside-business\/\">Inside Business<\/a> host Ciar\u00e1n Hancock is joined in studio by Gary McGann, a grandee of Irish business whose many roles included being chief executive of drinks group Gilbeys, Aer Lingus and packaging group Smurfit. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">Born and raised in Dublin, Gary actually began his career in the civil service, with the Comptroller &amp; Auditor General. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">He studied at night to become an accountant and later moved into the private sector, rising up the ranks and moving around to eventually become CEO of Smurfit in 2002.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">He has also had a busy career as a non-executive director, including roles with Anglo Irish Bank at the time of its collapse, and with bakery goods group Arytza, at a challenging time for that business. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">We covered a lot of ground in this interview. You\u2019ll hear Gary talk about his childhood, his time in school and a couple of false starts in university. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">We also take a deep dive into his business careers, the highs and the lows. And he gives Ciar\u00e1n his perspective on the current state of the Irish economy, and what we could be doing better. Along with some tips for young business leaders starting out in their careers. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">Produced by John Casey with JJ Vernon on sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week on Inside Business host Ciar\u00e1n Hancock is joined in studio by Gary McGann, a grandee of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[2442,63144,68382,79,18,100658,19,17,100659,100660],"class_list":{"0":"post-177523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-aer-lingus","9":"tag-anglo-irish-bank","10":"tag-aryzta","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-gary-mcgann","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-michael-smurfit","17":"tag-smurfit-kappa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115539502967296934","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}