Ireland’s last conglomerate has just been sold for €7bn. Will the country ever create another?

Paul O'Donoghue

ONE OF THE largest companies Ireland has ever produced was finally sold during the week. A group of private equity firms has agreed to pay almost €7 billion for the Dublin-based group, ending a months-long pursuit.

While it generated interest within the business pages of the newspapers, it went almost completely unnoticed without. 

This is somewhat true to form for DCC. We previously referred to the firm as ‘almost entirely unknown to the general public’ when we last discussed its proposed takeover. 

Little on that front has changed in the intervening months, although Irish consumers have likely heard of some of the energy businesses it owns – Flogas and Certa.

But its sale deserves some attention for two reasons. The first is the aforementioned scale – there aren’t many Irish companies which achieve sales with 10 numbers in the price.

The second is the more notable one, and what we will be focusing on today.  – a company made up of smaller units which operate in often completely different, unrelated industries.

In DCC’s case, it had operations in three main areas – healthcare, technology and energy. Although, in a sign of the times, it has recently been selling off any assets which are unrelated to the energy sector.

So the final Irish conglomerate has fallen – why was DCC the last? And will Ireland ever produce another? Let’s take a look.

While never extremely common, conglomerates used to be a semi-regular feature of the Irish corporate landscape.

Alongside DCC, which began its life as a venture capital firm in 1976, Irish conglomerates which have come and gone throughout the years include:

• James Crean: built out of a soap distribution business, the company invested in, among others, print and packaging, frozen meals and engineering and welding. It was once one of the top 10 companies on the Irish stock exchange by value.
• IWP International: set up all the way back in the 1930s, it expanded quickly in the 1980s, operating across cosmetics, toiletries, cleaning products and household goods.
• Fitzwilton plc: essentially functioned as an investment vehicle for the late Tony O’Reilly, considered Ireland’s first billionaire. It bought into varied sectors including textiles, fertiliser manufacturing and supermarkets.
• The Quinn Group: the group helmed by Seán Quinn, Ireland’s richest man at the height of the Celtic Tiger. The business invested in plastics, cement and, perhaps most infamously, insurance.

There were also a few other companies you could make an argument for, although they were more focused on specific sectors: Independent News and Media in the media industry, and IAWS (Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society) in agriculture and food.

One by one, these businesses all ended up sold off, broken up, going bust or getting consolidated. Why?

Conglomerates have fallen out of favour over the last two decades or so for several reasons. But the key one is that investors tend to price conglomerates as less than the sum of their individual parts. 

For example, if a conglomerate runs three companies theoretically €100 million each, a combined conglomerate may only be valued at about €200 million. 

This is what’s referred to as the so-called ‘conglomerate discount’. 

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This often happens because conglomerates are harder for investors to understand and analyse. This leads to a more cautious approach, which in turn lowers the enthusiasm to invest – and the company’s valuation.

Another reason why conglomerates are no longer as popular is that investors worry about the difficulties of managing unrelated businesses. A common view is that it is hard for management to compete with specialist companies which have a narrower focus.

Multiple studies have also shown that conglomerates don’t allocate money as efficiently compared to standalone companies.

Or to put it another way, divisions with weaker investment opportunities might get too much money, while attractive divisions get too little. This is something which multiple researchers have found.

These issues are ones which management or investors often come to realise by themselves. One study which looked at 165 conglomerates found that just 53 (32%) of them were still diversified businesses 15 years later. 

As referenced earlier, this is exactly what happened in the case of DCC. 

Last year, the company sold off its entire healthcare arm, following this up with offloading its tech operations in 2026. Combined from those two sales, the company took in about £1.15 billion (€1.3 billion), while its energy division alone is now being acquired for almost €7 billion. If we go back 15 years or so, we can see there was a much more even split between how important DCC’s divisions were. 

At the time, the energy sector accounted for about half of group operating profits. As of 2026, it is responsible for almost all of the company’s value. 

As DCC has rebuilt itself as an energy business, some of its investors reacted negatively to the private equity takeover, with a significant minority voting against the deal. 

The view from some shareholders is that the consortium is essentially trying to pick up DCC on the cheap while it’s in the middle of its restructuring.

But this back and forth is essentially just further vindication of DCC’s choice to become a wholly energy-focused business.

Plenty of conglomerates which don’t choose a specific sector end up slowly fading away, such as James Crean. The conglomerate was once compared to Dublin-based building firm CRH. In 2001, after years of decline, James Crean was bought for just €12 million. At the same time, CRH was valued at over €10 billion. 

This is all to say that it is very unlikely that Ireland will ever build another DCC. The focus now is on consolidation, as investors prefer to specialise. 

It is possible that down the line, Ireland could produce a big company which could eventually diversify into other sectors. But it is very unlikely to have another firm which will build up its operations through focusing on unrelated sectors, in the same style as the likes of James Crean. 

Old-style conglomerates are likely dead in Ireland for the foreseeable future. DCC was the last to go. While its sale may not have drawn much attention, it marks the end of a well-established way for Irish companies to become a true force on the international stage.