Crain's Manchester Business

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Crain's 40 under 40

Ciaran McGivern, 39

Director

Bank of Ireland

Greatest professional achievement: Growing the bank’s property loan book from £100m to £1bn in just over three years.

Current business goal: To extend Bank of Ireland’s recent success in property into healthcare, hotels and the mid-corporate sections of the market.

McGivern has blazed something of a trail in Manchester since his arrival in 2004. He spent five years training at KPMG in his native city of Belfast and moved to the bank in 1997 as an assistant manager in its corporate banking business.

His progression through the ranks was rapid — he gained his first promotion within a year and was asked to move to Manchester to help grow its stagnant North West operations in 2004.

The bank gave him a five-year target to grow its loan book to £1bn — by year three it had grown to £1.25bn and its fee income has increased from £2m to £27m.

This has largely been done by forging relationships with some of the major players in the region’s property sector, including Property Alliance’s David Russell, Vermont Developments’ Mark Connor and Maghull Developments’ Mike Hanlon.

His goal is to continue this progression by increasing the size of the loan book to £1.5bn and not, as previously reported by Crain’s, £5bn. “Who do you think I am?” he asked. “Superman?”