Blog / Australia

In case you didn’t know, Alan Joyce is the CEO of Qantas, Australia’s national airline. Last Saturday he took the unprecedented action of grounding the entire Qantas fleet. It left passengers, the Australian Government, Qantas workers and the unions completely stunned. It was a case of “What did he just say? Did I hear that correctly? Is he insane?” A mere 8 minutes from the announcement, at around 5pm Saturday, every plane was stopped on the tarmac. Every single plane. Even those that had boarded were told to “get off, you won’t be flying today.”

Why take such drastic action you may ask? Qantas had already sustained months of industrial action that has been causing flight cancellations and passenger inconvenience not to mention a 68m loss of revenue. The unions had told him...

As I write this, my Rugby World Cup 2011 clock is showing 10 days, 3 hours, 13 minutes and 27 seconds until the start of this year’s tournament! The wait is nearly over and I have to say I am more than a little excited. Nothing could build my excitement more than the great win by the Wallabies over the All Blacks last weekend to break the drought on Tri Nations Championships. It was a cracking game and gave an insight into what we can expect from the greatest sporting event on earth (in my opinion anyway)! The pressure building on the New Zealand team given their past “choking” episodes makes this the most anticipated RWC ever. Will it be too much for them? Well the Wallabies showed that if you’re willing to bash them up, then they’re certainly beatable.

With tens of thousands...

I was having lunch with John Eales at Singleton Rugby Club the other day (okay, so were about 600 other people) and apart from telling some great stories about his time playing rugby for Australia, he talked about how the support from senior players and coaching staff he received early on helped him to achieve his goals. Two Rugby World Cups!!

Support and encouragement is just as important for any start-up business and CurrencyFair is no exception. Ireland is a great place to start a business; there is such a wealth of knowledge from seasoned entrepreneurs happy to share their experience as well as government-backed programmes dedicated to driving new growth and re-focusing Ireland’s plans for the future. We work closely with Enterprise Ireland here in Dublin and as we begin to...