IF THERE were international awards for playing the “poor mouth”, An Post’s trophy cabinet would be bulging. On Thursday it announced it had secured €107m for its former SDS site beside the Red Cow roundabout on the Naas Road.

For the past two years, An Post senior management played down the value of the site to avoid attracting any unwanted attention from the unions. One report in 2004, from a reputable newspaper, estimated the SDS site to be worth €23m to €27m — which turned out to be €80m less than the price achieved. Hmm. The post office management even went as far as to admonish one cheeky Sunday Times reporter who had the temerity to suggest the site might be worth €70m or more.

An Post has made huge sums of money flogging non-core assets, including Ireland Online, a cellular top-up business, and now the SDS property. It would be one of Ireland’s most successful companies if only it were not so inept at getting envelopes into letterboxes.

There is a genuine case for the exchequer to claim these funds and stop post office management from pouring the money down the drain on projects such as a €100m automated mail-sorting system that requires more staff to operate than manual sorting.

Winning bet

When one door closes, another opens. Michael McDowell, the justice minister, has put the mockers on casino gambling here, but at least one Irish public company looks like benefiting from less tough rules in Britain. Michael Chadwick’s Grafton Group owns a site opposite the Millennium Dome that was shortlisted last week as one of eight possible locations for a “super casino”.

Grafton was close to selling the 3.3-acre site for £15m (€22m) in 2000, but the buyer pulled out. The Irish builders’ merchant has since sought planning permission for the land. With the London Olympics also set for 2012, Chadwick looks set to cash in his chips with a bumper sale.

Bold banking

Brian Goggin’s decision to take on the Irish Bank Officials Association (IBOA) over changes to its pension scheme is a brave one.

Larry Broderick, the IBOA’s general secretary, has proved himself to be one of the most formidable trade-union negotiators in Ireland, extracting generous profit-sharing, bonuses, pay increases and voluntary redundancy terms with all of the main banks in recent years.

Broderick has been dealt a strong hand with Bank of Ireland (BoI) and AIB making more than €25m profit a week, meaning it will be hard to refuse staff pay demands.

BoI’s decision to close its defined benefit pension scheme and force new workers into a new “convoluted” one, that the IBOA says offers fewer benefits, will effectively create a two-tier system within the bank. It’s a high-risk strategy by Goggin. Broderick will go to the wire on this one.

Eircom’s player

With the sale of Eircom apparently done and dusted, the focus has now turned to the make-up of its management team. The new owner, Babcock & Brown, has lined up former BT executive Pierre Danon to become executive chairman.

Chief executive Philip Nolan is widely expected to move on to greener pastures, with his well-known ambition to head a leading FTSE company and it seems Danon has already started the search for his replacement.

Finance director Peter Lynch has the skill and ambition to do the job, but he may not be top of the Frenchman’s list of people to call. Instead, Danon might prefer to appoint somebody from outside the company.

In that context, Eric Tveter, who stepped down as president and chief operating officer of Telewest in Britain following the group’s merger with NTL, was mentioned in dispatches last week.

Tveter helped Babcock pore over Eircom’s books in recent weeks, but is not thought to be in the race.

Whoever gets the nod will have to pass muster with Eircom’s employee share ownership trust, which will be upping its stake in the business to 35%. How ironic it would be if Lynch’s elevation to the top job were to depend on him getting the green light from his staff.

Fair air trades

Irishman John Fingleton hasn’t wasted any time in facing down vested interests since taking over as head of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in Britain last October. He has already fired shots across the bows of Britain’s biggest supermarket chains, pharmacies and even taxi companies, threatening to implement radical changes in their industries.

He has now drawn the wrath of the British Airports Authority with his announcement last week that the OFT planned to investigate the airport industry.

This could lead to a break-up of BAA, which owns Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports among others, and is currently the subject of a bid by Ferrovial of Spain.

BAA’s airports handle about 63% of all airline passengers in Britain.

Fingleton’s move initially caught BAA on the hop, wiping £500m (€730m) off its market value. BAA has since warmed to the idea, with some analysts predicting that a break-up could add 100p a share to the value of the group. This might be nothing more than wishful thinking. Analysts at JP Morgan slammed the move. It argued that a break-up of BAA’s London airports would result in the duplication of cost overheads and lead to a reduction in its ability to innovate. This would be bad news for Ryanair and Aer Lingus.

Judging by the Irish experience, where the formal separation of the state-owned Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports has become bogged down in a number of legal and technical issues, JP Morgan could have a point. Fingleton can expect plenty of flak to be hurled his way as the investigation progresses.