David McWilliams’ media firm profits increase to €609k

The media firm owned by one of Ireland’s best known economists, David McWilliams last year increased its accumulated profits to €609,778.

A chronicler of Ireland’s boom and bust, McWilliams is a regular voice on TV and radio and new figures for his Iconic Media Ltd show that it marginally increased its accumulated profits from €603,352 to €609,778 in the 12 months to the end of Mar 31 2013.

The figures show that the firm’s financial assets totalled €1.21m at the end of its financial year.

The slight increase in profit last year follows a higher jump in accumulated profits in fiscal 2012, where profits rose by €211,031.

This followed profits at the firm jumping by €15,580 in the 12 months to the end of Mar 2011 when accumulated profits increased from €376,741 to €392,321.

The 2013 figures show that the firm owed €61,924 in corporation tax at the end of last March.

Mr McWilliams generates income from his writing, including regular columns in two national newspapers, and speaking engagements around the world where he counts Google, Eriksson and Sony among his clients.

Mr McWilliams also runs an economic course, ‘Economics Without Boundaries’ and has been involved in the Dalkey Book festival and Kilkenomics.

Iconic Media Ltd was incorporated in 1999 and Mr McWilliams’ wife, Sian Smyth, also serves as a director on the firm.

A graduate of Trinity College and a former employee at the Central Bank where he worked as an economist, Mr McWilliams first came to public notice with his repeated warnings on national media over the country’s growing housing bubble.

His first book, The Pope’s Children explored his concerns and was the bestselling non-fiction book in Ireland in 2006, giving us the terms ‘Breakfast Roll Man’ and ‘Trackerville’.

The Dubliner followed up the success of The Pope’s Children with The Generation Game in 2007, and Follow The Money completing the trilogy in 2009.

Mr McWilliams’s latest work, The Good Room was published in 2012.

Mr McWilliams has also presented a number of TV series about the country’s economic challenges while he also wrote and presented a documentary Addicted to Money for ABC Australia which aired in four continents.

Mr McWilliams could not be reached for comment yesterday.