New chair at Farmer Business Developments

In recent years, Padraig had taken on the chair of Grass10, the campaign to increase grass production on Irish farms through improved grass-management practices. Elsewhere, he had successfully taken Farmer Business Developments Plc into the leisure and hotels business. The initial acquisition of several hotels and leisure resorts from the FBD insurance group, is seen as an extremely positive strategy with more assets added and keen management delivering impressive returns to farmer shareholders. Ultimately, with the death of Padraig, a new chairman had to be appointed. Pat Murphy, a member of the Farmer Business Developments board, was elected to the chair last month. Pat is currently a vice chair of Tirlán and a member of the Glanbia Plc board of directors. He previously served on the board of IFAC, the farm accounts cooperative. Interestingly, he is a former vice president of Macra, having served in the role under the presidency of Padraig Walshe. The connections go further back to their schooldays at St Kieran’s. It is expected that the current strategy of ongoing investment in Farmer Business Developments’ Spanish golf resorts, as well as expansion of its Irish hotel assets, will continue. After selling off part of a valuable Berlin landbank adjacent to the new Berlin airport, and releasing funds to shareholders last year, the remaining Berlin land value is reckoned to have increased substantially over the past year, as the area continues to attract international investment, including a new Tesla car-manufacturing plant. As the largest shareholder in FBD Insurance, Farmer Business Developments is financially robust with the insurance company’s share price increasing by over 50 per cent in the last 12 months, adding huge value to its 26 per cent shareholding in the group.