The welcome mat is out in Northern Ireland, especially for American investment dollars, and D. James Gray, senior vice president of the Industrial Development Board of Northern Ireland, directs the entire North American sales effort from Bannockburn.
From his office in the Bannockburn Lake Office Plaza, he issues an open invitation to all U.S. and Canadian corporations to send money.
Gray’s job is to sell Northern Ireland as a good place for American and Canadian businesses to invest, and with a new era of peace in that British-administered province, things are looking, well, green.
Employed by the British government under the United Kingdom secretary of state for Northern Ireland, based in Belfast, Gray has been pitching Northern Ireland investment opportunities to North American corporate prospects since 1986.
The Industrial Development Board opened its U.S. headquarters office in Bannockburn in April 1990, choosing the Scottish-named suburb for its easy access to O’Hare International Airport, and it doesn’t hurt that the corporate neighborhood in suburbia continues to grow.
“Since January 1993,” Gray said, “we’ve attracted half a billion dollars worth of new manufacturing investment, $300 million of which came from the United States.”
Gray’s accent reflects his Londonderry roots, where he was born 42 years ago. Like many Irish, he refers to the city as “Derry.”
“In proportional terms,” Gray continued, explaining the significance of this recent infusion of capital, “it would be like Illinois attracting $4 billion worth of new investment. That’s a pretty good performance for such a small area, with a population of only 1.5 million and especially for one that was perceived so negatively.”
In selling North American firms on the attractions of Northern Ireland, Gray emphasizes the reliable, highly educated, easily trainable work force and the generous financial incentives offered by the government.
“We offer the best financial incentive and tax break package in Europe,” Gray said. “We’ll underwrite up to half of your building costs, meaning we’ll pay for it. We’ll pay for up to half the cost of plant and equipment. We also have tax breaks that allow rapid writeoffs for plant and equipment. And no manufacturing plant in Northern Ireland pays any property tax, so it’s quite an attractive deal.”
Northern Ireland also will partially subsidize training and product development costs. Forty-two American companies have already invested in Northern Ireland, including Ford, United Technologies, Fruit of the Loom and Seagate. DuPont opened a plant in Northern Ireland 37 years ago and has since pumped about $1 billion into the nation’s economy. The Hilton Hotels Corp. is planning to build a 200-room luxury hotel in Belfast.
A company in the process of setting up a plant in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, is ABC Laboratories of Columbia, Mo., a product-service testing laboratory whose president, Jake Halliday, was born in Northern Ireland.
Although Halliday was on the road and unavailable for comment, Nancy Harrison, director of administration and human resources for the company, said Gray and his office have been a charm.
“He’s been really helpful,” she said. “He made a very good presentation on what Ireland has to offer us, and they continue to be very helpful. The integrity is there.”
Investment capital has also come in from other countries, including Japan and South Korea, according to Gray, but it’s just a beginning.
“Overcoming the negative perception of Northern Ireland,” Gray said, “is one of our biggest challenges in persuading North American corporations to invest in the country. That perception does not reflect reality.”
Until recently, Northern Ireland has been afflicted since the late 1960s with what Gray and his countrymen call “the troubles.” To the outside world, “the troubles” is a euphemism for the fierce strife that has festered in Northern Ireland, marked by recurrent Protestant-Catholic violence and the rebirth of the Irish Republican Army, which had been inactive for decades, and its war against British rule. But just weeks ago, Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, declared a unilateral cease-fire, and peace, it seems, has broken out in Northern Ireland.
The peace process apparently has begun with preliminary talks between Britain and Sinn Fein. But optimism has been running high in Northern Ireland for several years, according to Gray, as the political mood has become more relaxed in this smallest of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom (England, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland are the others). It occupies the northeastern quarter of the island of Ireland.
“These last two years have been exciting times for us,” Gray said. “We’ve had 25 years of `the troubles,’ in Northern Ireland, and that doesn’t do much for your image. But since the truce, we’ve had very positive media coverage, and although the reality of doing business there was very much different than the image, the image itself is now changing.
“But I understand how people can form misperceptions and how an erroneous image can form. My wife, Christine, and I moved here eight years ago from Belfast. When we were told we were going to Chicago, our friends thought we were nuts to come here. Chicago, as we’ve been told, is perceived in Europe as a gangster-ridden, shoot-’em-up town, where the Mob calls the shots.
“But,” Gray said, “we’ve stayed eight years, so it can’t be such a bad place,” he said with a laugh. “Very few people in Europe really know what Chicago is like,” Gray went on. “It’s been a wonderful experience for my wife and me personally, socially and, for me, professionlly. It’s an easy place to do business. People are very honest, straight and considerate.”
Gray set up the North American offices of the Industrial Development Board in its present Bannockburn office four years ago. Previously, the organization had office space in the British Consulate in Chicago. There are two other IDB offices, in Los Angeles and in San Jose, Calif.
A crew of 10 other staffers help Gray sell the benefits of Northern Ireland to American and Canadian prospects. They include three other overseas representatives who make pitches to companies, two research assistants who identify corporate prospects and telephone them “cold” to set up appointments for the overseas representatives, the secretarial and administrative support staff, and Pat Cappa, Gray’s personal assistant.
Cappa, of Mt. Prospect, came on staff three years ago as a secretary to Gray and has since graduated to “right arm” status for the busy executive. Now she juggles schedules, handles travel arrangements, helps with correspondence, interacts with other office staffers and by phone with personnel in Belfast, plus an immense variety of other activities.
For example, in early Novemeber she flew to New York to help in the last-minute arrangements for the sixth annual Irish-American Business Awards dinner, jointly sponsored by the Industrial Development Board of Northern Ireland and Irish America magazine. The dinner honors outstanding business executives from the Irish-American community.
“Pat Cappa is more than just a secretary or personal assistant, because she does so much more for me,” Gray said of Cappa, who, by the way, is of Polish lineage.
“I look forward to coming to work every morning,” said Cappa, who got her job through a headhunter. “I worked at AT&T before, and this is entirely different. There’s no bureaucracy here, no office politics; memos don’t have to be signed by five different people. Everyone is very nice and easy to work with. Here you do your job not by the rules, not by the book but by what’s expedient.”
Describing Gray, Cappa said, “He doesn’t push the unpleasant tasks off on me. Maybe he has me return a call that he doesn’t want to be bothered with or do something that has to be smoothed over, but he’s a very easy person to get along with. He has a wonderful sense of humor, which he brings to work every day; even on the worst days when things aren’t going well, that always comes to the surface. He’s away from the office maybe 50 percent of the time, especially now since things started getting better in Northern Ireland. I try to do as much as I can to take some of the pressures off him. We all work together.”
The newest member of that team is overseas representative Neil Robinson, who was born in Belfast in 1966. He lives with his wife and family in Northbrook, having come to the United States only three months ago. Robinson also sells the advantages of investing in Northern Ireland to American corporations.
“Having the boss out here means it’s a small team, and you get the feeling from Day 1 that you’re all in it together,” Robinson said. “You’re given your own territory, your own resources and the ability to manage those. James sets targets and standards, and within that you’re given a lot of freedom to work. It’s also a social friendship, so we see each other outside work more than you would normally with your boss. So it’s comfortable, and James has gone through all the transitions of moving to the States, so he knows what you’re going through, and he’s able to counsel you.”
But Robinson said his move from Northern Ireland to the northern suburbs was not that difficult. “I find Americans much friendlier than I expected,” he said. “Particularly in this area. They’re very hospitable and very kind. And, of course, once you say you’re from Ireland, everybody’s Irish. So you always have friends.”
Perhaps the Gray marriage represents the new spirit of reconciliation and harmony sweeping Northern Ireland. James is a Protestant and Christine, 33 and born in Belfast, is a Catholic. “My wife and I are from either side of the community,” Gray said. “Everybody from both sides of our family came to the wedding. Nobody fought, and everybody is still friendly. That’s more typical of what actually happens. People just get tired of being bogged down in history and get more concerned with looking toward the future. You don’t help your kids much when you spend your time worrying about history.”
The Grays, married in Belfast 10 years ago, have three children: Lucy, 6, Patrick, 3, and Joshua, 2. They live in Wilmette, and all their children were born in Highland Park Hospital. “I’m from a mixed marriage myself,” Christine said. “My father was a Catholic and my mother a Protestant, although I was brought up as a Catholic. But I was constantly in touch with the Protestant side of the family, so it was no big deal for me, as long we were all Christians and went to church. James and I talked about it and decided to bring up the children in the Church of Ireland (Episcopalian).”
James Gray is confident that the Irish Republican Army cease-fire and the spirit of reconciliation it inspired “is the start of a new era for us. As (British) Prime Minister John Major said, it’s an unparalleled opportunity. We have the support and friendship of many Americans, who I think will help move this reconciliation process forward. And for President Clinton to endorse the need for new investment in Northern Ireland is also very significant for us.”
As for the volatile issue of removing British troops from the country, Gray said, “That’s really not for me to say. We try to divorce ourselves from the politics of this thing. Our job is to educate companies about investment opportunities in Northern Ireland, and we do that by just telling it like it is. We have a little rule here. Whenever we get a new investment, we have champagne.”
With Irish mirth and music in his voice, Gray said, “We’ve been having a lot of champagne lately.”
