When Terence Brannigan bought a family-owned cleaning services business in his native Northern Ireland, the response of locals took him a little by surprise. He half expected he might be seen as some sort of carpet bagger, the successful expatriate returning home with the violence now over to cherry-pick the province’s best business assets. “Instead the attitude was ’welcome back, what took you so long’. It couldn’t have been better,” he says.

That acquisition of Maybin in 2006 was not just another example of the Northern Ireland brain drain in reverse. The deal was unusual also in that Mr Brannigan was also bringing with him a full strength management team.