Peter Casey (businessman)

Early and personal life

Born Peter Joseph Casey at Derry in Ireland, he was the third of nine children (five boys and four girls). His mother Patsy Casey was deputy headmistress at Nazareth House Primary School and his father Leo was the bursar at local grammar school St Columb's College. Casey attended both schools before studying business administration politics and economics at Aston University in Birmingham. He lives in Atlanta with his second wife, Helen and their five children and divides his time between there, his family home in Derry and their home in Greencastle, Donegal.

Business career

Casey joined Rank Xerox UK as a sales representative in 1979 and went on to win a national award for sales in his first year. He moved to Sydney, Australia in 1981, and was ranked in the top 5% of sales executives nationally. He became the youngest district manager in Rank Xerox and won Three Oceans Cup as top Sales Manager in Asia. In 1983, Casey joined Oce Reprographics as state manager for New South Wales. He then rejoined Rank Xerox in 1984 as a branch manager in Sydney before making the decision to set up his first company, The Trinity Group, in 1985. The Trinity Group, a search and IT contracting firm based in Sydney, was one of five firms awarded the NSW Government tender to supply temporary staff to the New South Wales Government, the largest contract ever awarded in staffing at the time. Casey sold this business in 1992, and moved back to Ireland for six months before setting out for Atlanta, Georgia where he founded Network Resources which later became Claddagh Resources in 1996. Claddagh Resources place high-level executives across the globe for many Fortune 500 companies including Coca-Cola, SAP, Tata Consultancy Services, Oracle, IBM, and Ernst & Young. In 2000 the company established its European headquarters in Donegal which has recently expanded operations to a new Dublin office. Irish America Magazine named him as one of 2007's leading Irish American businessmen.

Television

Ireland's version of the business-related TV programme Dragons' Den selected Casey to appear as an investor for the show's fifth and sixth series. Over the course of the series he made several investments.

Politics

In January 2015, Casey said he would consider running as a TD candidate at the next general election, though he expressed uncertainty about which constituency he might choose. When pressed to name a constituency he thought he might select Donegal, where he had recently purchased a home, or somewhere in Dublin, where he intended to set his latest business. "Realistically I'm going to be spending a lot of time in Dublin", Casey said at the time.

Casey gave his opinion on the Fine Gael/Labour Party coalition to The Irish Times. "In fairness to the current Government I think they have performed fairly well", he said. "Some things they have done badly but overall I'd probably give them a B [grade]."

Publications

Casey wrote a book about the history of the Tata Group. The World's Greatest Company, as he called it, was published in 2014.

He has also published articles in newspapers and other news publications. Writing for the Irish Independent newspaper, Casey requested voting rights for Irish emigrants. He argued in the Sunday Independent that Ireland has the chance to be at the centre of an online education revolution by embracing massive open online courses (MOOCs). Writing on TheJournal.ie, Casey sounded a cautionary note on Bitcoin after the collapse of virtual currency exchange Mt. Gox. Writing in the Sunday Independent, he told how credit ratings agencies made Ireland's financial crisis "explode" and suggested how it might be stopped from happening again.