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IRELAND CHAMBER OF COMMERCE TO OPEN LOCAL OFFICE
Published on October 2, 2002
Author: CHET BRIDGER - News Business Reporter
© The Buffalo News Inc.
Dry clean the green blazers, break out the Celtic music and fry up a batch of good wings. The Irish are coming to town.
More than 20 business people from the Dublin Chamber of Commerce will be in Buffalo Sunday and Monday on its first ever trade mission into upstate New York. The visit will mark the official opening of a Buffalo office of the Ireland Chamber of Commerce USA. Buffalo suddenly has a blossoming business relationship with the Emerald Isle. M&T Bank and Allied Irish Banks announced a major strategic partnership last week. Ireland's leading bank is taking a 22.5 percent ownership stake in the Buffalo bank and four seats on M&T's board of directors. M&T will take over AIB's American subsidiary, Allfirst Financial of Baltimore, meaning the Irish bank's home base in the states is shifting from Baltimore to Buffalo. The trade mission this weekend was arranged by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, and the Atlantic Corridor, a federally funded office established in Buffalo two years ago to promote business and academic relationships between upstate New York and Ireland. "The Dublin Chamber usually goes only to Boston, Chicago and New York City," Clinton said. "They know virtually nothing about Buffalo and we intend to show them the beauty and the strengths of Western New York. I just want people to go back to Ireland knowing a little about what we have to offer in Buffalo and Western New York." She believes Buffalo became a much more common name in Ireland last week after M&T and Allied Irish Banks announced their deal. In an unrelated bit of bank industry news, HSBC Bank USA's incoming top executive here is also from Ireland. The London-based banking company recently appointed Brendan McDonagh to relocate to Buffalo as senior executive vice president. Clinton led a New York trade mission to Ireland in March, which included representatives from Corning, Verizon, Lockheed Martin, Syracuse University and the University at Buffalo. Ireland has had one of Europe's fastest growing economies during the last decade, propelled by information technology and biotechnology. New York's exports to Ireland grew by 80 percent between 1997 and 2000. Atlantic Corridor, which has an annual budget of about $250,000, has already helped establish academic ties between New York and Irish institutions. The University at Buffalo and Columbia University have formed a partnership to conduct biopharmaceutical research with Dublin City University and the Athlone Institute of Technology in Ireland. The new partnership, called Biopharma Ireland, could work in cooperation with the Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics which UB is building at the corner of Virginia and Ellicott streets. "If you look at a country like Ireland, which had a real national development strategy, part of it was using the power of their universities. . . .There are some real commonalities here which I think we can learn from and build on," Clinton said. The Dublin chamber's visit includes tours of both the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and the UB Center for Computational Research in Amherst, home of the university supercomputer. Business partnerships have been a little harder to develop. For example, IMMCO Diagnostics, an Amherst company that makes auto-immunological test kits for diagnosing lupus and other diseases, investigated some potential research partnerships in Ireland. The company has not struck any deals. "It does take more time on the business side because they've got to make sure it's going to be a profitable relationship for both sides. Academia is more research oriented and they can focus more on the long term benefits," said Deborah B. O'Shea, president and CEO of Atlantic Corridor. The Irish trade mission includes several small to mid-size technology companies, such as E Manage IT, a software company looking for a potential partner to distribute its products in the U.S. and Canadian markets. "We're trying to make sure there's managed networking going on and we're trying to get some deal flow going," O'Shea said. The Atlantic Corridor office in Buffalo is part of a broader initiative to create ties between Ireland and the North American economy. The other partners in the initiative are the Niagara Economic and Tourism Corporation, headquartered in Thorold, Ontario, the Atlantic Corridor-Northern Ireland, headquartered in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and the Regeneration Company Limited, headquartered in County Offaly, Republic of Ireland. Atlantic Corridor, headquartered on Delaware Ave. in Buffalo, will also serve as the Eastern Great Lakes chapter office of the Ireland Chamber of Commerce USA. "Ireland has such a dynamic economy and there's a tremendous amount of U.S. investment there already. They're a springboard into the European Union economy and we'd like them to consider us as a springboard into the NAFTA economy," O'Shea said. e-mail: cbridger@buffnews.comSEN. Hillary Rodham Clinton
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