"Leadership is about relating to people. If you don’t have that, they won’t follow you"
John Mullins, Executive Chairman of Amarenco, says that, for him, leadership is about bringing people with you and always being excited by new challenges.
DELOITTE LEADERSHIP SERIES: JOHN MULLINS, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, AMARENCO
When John Mullins takes in the panoramic view of Cork’s rooftops from Deloitte’s fifth-floor boardroom, it offers a trip back in time to the places where his earliest entrepreneurial spirits were nurtured.
“My mother is from the southside, and my father is from the heart of the northside on Blarney Street. Anyone who’s familiar with Cork will be aware of what a difficult coalition that would have been,” he laughs.
Born the eldest of five boys, John casts his gaze across the River Lee to the iconic North Monastery — ‘the Mon’ — and memories of where it all began.
“It was sport all the way there — football, hurling, basketball — and a lot of good old-fashioned cop on.”
Going to UCC in 1985 to study electrical engineering, he broke new family ground: “Nobody in the family had gone to university up to that point, and it was a massive deal for me given I was only 17 going through those imposing gates — add to that having known only boys at the Mon, here I was amongst six young women in the same class on the same course.”
Strange though it might have been at first, academia came easy for the ambitious North-sider, getting first-class honours four years in a row and Graduate of the Year 1989. In an era marked by mass emigration, his first job offer from the ESB was grasped with both hands.
“My mother thought I’d hit the jackpot, almost as good as the Civil Service, a secure pensionable job for life. Well, it didn't really work out quite as she hoped.”
For a young man of 21 who was already looking to distant horizons, the ESB was a springboard to a bigger picture.
“Within six months I was a control manager on the National Grid, and two years later took a sabbatical back to UCC to do a Masters in Engineering. Ironically, my final year project was around solar panels — the same product that over time would bring me to where I am today with Amarenco.”
Needing to stretch himself further, John opted to do an MBA in Corporate Finance in 1995 at the Smurfit Business School.
“In terms of progression, you needed something extra with engineering to get through general management.”
Another string to the Mullins bow was politics — a career tributary that might easily have led him to Leinster House had things turned out differently.
“I was 24 and national president of Young Fine Gael and decided to run for convention for the North Central constituency in Cork. As it turned out, I narrowly lost to the man who is currently the TD there. It was a time when I had thoughts of representing the city.”
Wanting to extend his CV and “to take my career elsewhere”, John moved to London for a position with Coopers & Lybrand as a management consultant for three years.
In one of those bizarre life moments, he had just passed through Paddington station on his way to Railtrack HQ shortly before the disastrous crash happened on October 5th, 1999, when two trains collided head-on, killing 31 and injuring 220.
“I had come in that morning on the very same rail line where the crash happened and was just in the office when mayhem broke loose. It was a terrible, unreal experience.”
Always seeking new challenges, he then took the job of European Investment Director at ESB International. “That led to me working the company’s largest investment overseas — the Amorebieta power plant at Bilbao in Spain — a huge project and a tremendous work experience.”
With a combination of ambition and drive to test himself on ever-higher peaks, the next Mullins career move was to the NTR biofuels division, Bioverda, producing bio-diesel from rapeseed and processing liquid farm waste to generate electricity and produce environmentally safe fertiliser.
“It was a very formative and busy time — renewables, wind energy and commuting to Chicago to set up an ethanol business.”
Then in 2007, John received one of those life-changing phone calls: “I was in Pittsburg and took a call asking if I’d be interested in interviewing for the Bord Gais CEO job. At 39 and being the Corkman that I was, I said I’d give it ‘a garry’ — and I did.”
And he got the job. “My presentation to the board was a five-year plan converting the company into a dual fuel and renewables supplier, and that is exactly what we did.”
A distinct leadership style marked this key phase of the Mullin career path: “What was most important was bringing people along — so much of leadership is about relating to people. If you don’t have that, they won’t follow you.”
Honor echoed this sentiment and the importance of nurturing and developing people — “at Deloitte, our key assets are our brand and our people and without one the other will disappear very quickly”.
Taking on the ESB at their own game, he initiated ‘The Big Switch’ — a ground-breaking advertising campaign fronted by Lucy Kennedy. Huge billboards displaying only the solitary image of a light switch bombarded every highway and gable end — getting the public talking like few campaigns before or since.
“Within four months we had 500,000 new customers — an incredible figure well beyond our plans. The key was giving consumers, which were in this instance in the majority women, a double-digit discount, which has now become the norm for switching. Right from the start there were two things I was certain about — the business appealing to Mná na hEireann and staying off the Joe Duffy Show.”
The result was transforming what was previously a masculine engineering brand into a feminine retail one. “Perfect planning prevents poor performance, but it will only happen when you put in the hard yards.”
While his five years at Bord Gais established John Mullins as a visionary businessman in tune with changing consumer tastes, the entrepreneur in him still quested to scale higher peaks and tackle new challenges.
Over a 10-year period, he managed to wear a number of additional hats, including President Cork Chamber of Commerce, Chairman Irish Ports Association, Port of Cork Chairman of the Board and Tyndall National Institute board member.
“I have a simple, personal view — life is not a dress rehearsal, so I have stuffed as much into my career as possible, that’s the way it’s been all through my life.”
At 52, John Mullins continues to scale new entrepreneurial heights, currently as Executive Chairman of Amarenco Solar, a company established in 2013 to structure, finance and asset manage large-scale solar PV plants across Europe.
The company has built up an annual turnover nearing €100 million and the company is currently active in 15 countries worldwide.
When Honor asks what drives him now, Mullins responds: “I love the game, it’s like poker, and get great fun out of it. Entrepreneurs will put everything they have into whatever they’re doing and are prepared to take the risk. And if you fail, life will still go on.”
Regarding the city of his birth from the Deloitte top floor, his eyes rest once again upon the North Monastery and the youthful lessons learned there that still sustain his spirit and drive.
“Whatever I’ve done, much of it is down to the emotional intelligence that ‘the Mon’ gave me, the ability to understand what the people on the other side want and then try to move them in that direction.”
For they who said no to Joe Duffy, life is a game with many plays still to run.
