The first Channel Clusters Finance seminar took place on Wednesday 17th February in the Maldron Hotel in Athlone.  This was the first joint meeting involving the 10 companies in the 2 clusters on the programme and the participants will meet again when they jointly exhibit on the IEA stand at the Food and Drink Expo in the NEC in Birmingham on March 21st to 24th 2010.

Noel Delaney and Sasha Kerins from Grant Thornton gave a presentation to the participants on how to manage their businesses in a downturn. They advised them on themes including why cash is king; how to get closer to your bank and getting smarter on tax.  Niall Haughey from Blue FX Markets spoke to these company owners on how to manage currency risk and gave his view on where he saw the GBP going vis a vis the Euro over the coming year. Pascal Walsh from CMO Cashflow Fulfillment and Paul Farrar from Affinity Insurance spoke on the subjects of credit risk management and export credit insurance.

This group session of the Channel Clusters participants will be followed by further group sessions in the coming months.