Tom Byrne is appointed President of the Institute of Directors in Ireland
Date: 17 June 2011Tom Byrne has this week been appointed to the position of President of the Institute of Directors in Ireland (IoD) and will serve a two-year term. He replaces Ann Riordan who has held the position since June 2009.
Tom Byrne, a Chartered Director and Chartered Accountant, was elected to the board of the Institute of Directors in Ireland in June 2010 and subsequently took up the role of Vice-President. Tom brings a wealth of experience to the role; he is on the board of the Irish Takeover Panel and is a non-executive director of a number of both quoted and private companies.
Having held the position of Head of Corporate Finance at Davy Stockbrokers from 1987 to 2001, he subsequently established Abaris Corporate Advisers Limited in 2001. He is also Chairman of Acumen & Trust Limited, a position he has held since 2007. He is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment and holds a B.Comm degree from UCD.
Commenting on his appointment as President, Tom Byrne said: “In the midst of what is a tremendously difficult period in Irish business, I firmly believe that directors have a meaningful and significant leadership role to play in our country’s recovery and so I am honoured to be appointed as President of the Institute of Directors in Ireland.
“Directors can provide that leadership by demonstrating a robust commitment to the highest professional and ethical standards and by fostering a culture of honesty, integrity and transparency within their organisations. If we are to rebuild confidence, then the tone of behaviour must be set from the top.”
New board members
The Institute of Directors in Ireland has also appointed three new members to its board. Myra Garrett, Ita Gibney and Kevin Neary were all formally elected to the board at the Institute’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Dublin this week.
Myra Garrett has held the position of Managing Partner of William Fry, one of Ireland’s leading corporate law firms, since 2008. She has over 20 years experience as a corporate lawyer, advising Irish and international companies and their boards on corporate finance projects, corporate governance and general compliance. She is a director of the Road Safety Authority and a number of private companies.
Ita Gibney is founder and Managing Director of independent PR company, Gibney Communications Ltd, which she established in 1995. She is a former Director of Murray Consultants and Group Director of Corporate Affairs at Greencore Group plc.
She is an Honours graduate (B.A.) of University College Dublin; holds an M.A. (English) from McMaster University, Canada and an MSc (Communications) from Boston University where she attended as Ireland’s John F. Kennedy Scholar.
Kevin Neary, a Chartered Director, is the co-founder and Managing Director of the GameStop Group, originally Gamesworld, which was founded in 1994. In 2003 GameStop Corp, a NYSE quoted company, acquired a 51% share of Gamesworld and Kevin has since led the growth of the business, which now has 60 stores throughout Ireland and England and is the number one video game retailer in Ireland.
He is also an investor and mentor in young entrepreneurial companies. He was an early stage investor in Demonware, sold in 2007 to Activision, the largest video games publisher in the world, and in Jolt Online, which was sold to GameStop in 2009. Kevin holds an M Phil in Entrepreneurship and a degree in Administration and Marketing.
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