Downsizing Vodafone set to dial back on office space

Vodafone is weighing up a move from its headquarters in Leopardstown in south Dublin, writes Linda Daly.
The telecoms giant has gone to the market in recent weeks with a requirement of between 4,500 sq m and 6,500 sq m. Such an office size could accommodate 500 to 700 people.
It would be considerably smaller than the company’s current base at Central Park, which is about 24,500 sq m.
JLL has been instructed to scope out options, according to the property website Green Street News, which said Vodafone was examining city-centre and suburban offices.
The move follows a similar instruction that Vodafone UK gave its property agents, as it seeks 9,290 sq m in London.
Vodafone has had its Irish headquarters in Leopardstown since 2001. It was the first tenant at the Treasury Holdings-built Central Park.
Shortly after Green Reit took full control of Central Park in 2015 in a €155 million deal, the company, led by Stephen Vernon and Pat Gunne, renegotiated a lease with Vodafone and managed to convince the telecoms giant to remove its lease break option in 2018.
It was reported at the time that Vodafone agreed to pay an annual rent of €7.5 million with one year rent free.
The lease is due to expire in 2026, so a property search is timely. Vodafone declined to comment last Friday.
In a report on the Dublin office market, released by JLL last month, it was reported that take-up in the office market jumped by more than 126 per cent in the second quarter of this year, compared with the same period in 2023. The Collison brothers’ Stripe and the tech firms Okta and SAP all took up space. Apple signed a two and a half year sublease at No 5 Hanover Quay as it searches for a more permanent Dublin base.
AIB is backing a former senior executive of the quoted food group Aryzta in the buyout of Golden Bake, a maker of pastry products, writes Brian Carey.
Documents filed in the Companies Office indicate that the bank has advanced more than €10.6 million to Fortfield Ventures Holdings to acquire shares held by the Golden Bake founder Brian Manning and repay loans he advanced to the company.
Fortfield Ventures is controlled by Robin Jones, former chief financial officer of Aryzta USA.
Jones joined Golden Bake in 2016 as managing director and has led an expansion of the company.
Manning, a member of a well-known family of Dublin bakers, founded Golden Bake in 1987. The company produces frozen pastry products, including ham and cheese jambons and sausage rolls.
It supplies retailers with products for in-store bakeries and also has a bake-at-home range, which sells under the Golden Bake brand.
Another of its lines is American-style cookies, recently winning a €6 million annual contract to supply Lidl Ireland, which will also mean the company exports products to Italy and the Czech Republic.
Under Jones’s stewardship, the company significantly increased its manufacturing footprint with an extensive redevelopment of its premise at the Malahide Road industrial park in Coolock.
The company employs close to 100 staff.
It’s not easy to hold on to a good woman — in banking, writes Jon Ihle.
The news that Nicola O’Brien, PTSB chief financial officer and executive director, was leaving her role after just two years came as a blow to the bank, especially to chief executive Eamonn Crowley.
Crowley had groomed O’Brien for the role after recruiting her to the bank in 2017. O’Brien worked closely alongside Crowley when he was serving as chief financial officer. Commentators were quick to attribute the departure, said to be to the UK neo-bank Monzo, to the cap on bankers’ pay, which limits executives at PTSB to remuneration of €500,000 — below the industry standard.
Indeed, the average pay for key management at Monzo is £820,000 a year (€973,000), well north of the €482,559 in total compensation O’Brien received at PTSB. Moreover, Monzo dishes out much of the rewards in share compensation — surely a pecuniary enticement ahead of a planned stock market listing in the next year.
O’Brien’s status as a rare woman in a top operational role at a listed bank, with 20 years’ operational experience to boot, must have made her attractive in a marketplace for talent where the gender balance is still skewed heavily in favour of men.
Women make up about a third of each executive team at the three Irish banks, and O’Brien was the only board member. The Central Bank of Ireland reported this year that promotion of women to senior roles in finance had stalled at just above 30 per cent, making it harder to close stubborn pay gaps that are among the widest for any sector in the economy. Yet O’Brien proved the concept behind gender parity: once elevated, her talents were clearly in demand.