Parker Green signs up Ahern

FORMER taoiseach Bertie Ahern has been taken on to add some clout to Northern Ireland-based property development company Parker Green International as it looks to further expand its international presence.

The Newry-based company — behind that town’s Quay’s Shopping Centre and the Fairgreen Shopping Centre in Carlow — has put together an advisory group, comprising a number of influential international figures, to help drive its expansion.

As well as Mr Ahern, the board will include Gregory Tosko of CB Richard Ellis’s New York office; Michael Gibbons, a senior executive with the French bank BNP Paribas and real estate development and urban planning expert Professor Richard Peiser of Harvard University. Two members of the House of Lords are also involved — the British Labour Party’s Alf Dubs, who is an expert on eastern European accession to the EU, and Dennis Rogan, who is leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in the Lords and who has business experience in Africa and Asia.

“With investments and developments throughout western, central and eastern Europe, the US, Britain and Ireland we needed a board that would reflect our global approach more fully.

“This international advisory board lets us do that and it can bring its global expertise to the management table,” said Parker Green’s founder and chairman Gerard O’Hare.

The advisory group’s first meeting is taking place early this week in Malta and involves liaising with the Maltese government over market potential there.

The company’s main continental base is in Slovakia. In Ireland, it has developmental sites in Waterford, while in the US it has a number of retail and residential sites in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.