€2.3m boost for Global Shares
Global Shares, which is valued at around €7m, said the money will be used to fund developments over the next few years and was provided by aninvestment group led by new non-executive director Richard Hayes, founder and former chief executive of IFG Group.
Mr Hayes said: “I am excited to participate in the growth of Global Shares and by leveraging my background and experience in building up IFG, will be able to assist Global Shares greatly to grow as a leader in the stock plan administration world.”
The funding was raised by way of an issue of preference shares convertible into ordinary share capital on sale or flotation.
The company has so far attracted 35 clients such as Yahoo, eBay, Philips, Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline, Reed Elsevier and CEVA Logistics.
Global Shares founder and chief executive Maoiliosa O’Culachain said: “This investment is another significant milestone in the development of Global Shares as a world class company.”
Global Shares has offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Phoenix, London and Shanghai, with the main administration centre located in Clonakilty.
They employ 22 people worldwide, with 16 in Clonakilty.
They hope that by the end of the year they will have generated a turnover of €2.28m.
The company was set up Mr O’Culachain almost two years ago to administer employee share schemes for companies around the world.
The idea came to him when he was working at Eircom in the late 1990s. He was employed to help set up the Employee Share Ownership Plan for Eircom when it was preparing for privatisation.
When this job finished in 2004, he came up with the idea of setting up an Irish-based company providing consultancy services on a global scale.
He said Global Shares is one of the few companies to offer the service on a global level — as many competitors will not manage employee share schemes for companies outside Britain or the US.
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