Willie McCarter
Sunday February 25 2007
WILLIE McCarter is best known for his 12 years at the helm of the International Fund for Ireland and for his spell at Fruit of the Loom in Donegal. But on St Patrick's Day he will return to the scene of his original, but different, business venture.
Back in 1969, Willie headed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a masters degree. There he met a young man called John Teeling and the duo researched marketing Irish whiskey in the United States. Most of their study consisted of giving free hot whiskey to graduates in a bar called The Plough and the Stars. The idea of Cooley Distillery was born.
Next month, the duo head back to the 'Plough' in the US to relaunch Cooley, where McCarter is an executive director and Teeling is the boss.
Today, McCarter concentrates on strategic partnerships for Cooley. He has encouraged it to produce the 'Michael Collins' brand which is selling a bomb.
Willie combines his job in Cooley with a board seat on the cold storage company Norish, run by Ted O'Neill. Norish is quoted on both the IEX and the AIM.
Quite conventional work, compared to McCarter's travails at Fruit of the Loom, the once high-flying Donegal company that produced 12 million T-shirts before its collapse and departure from Ireland. At one stage, it was the largest manufacturer in the country, but ended up as one of the few IDA failures.
McCarter was boss of the Donegal company for 10 years until 1997, but in parallel was running the International Fund for Ireland, which made total cross-border investments of €2.2bn into 5,500 projects.
He is particularly proud of the IFI's investments in successful companies such as BCO Technologies, which flourished after the fund's support. Today he lives in Donegal and Dublin. He has three children.
