Before launching that business, she was the Irish editor of the Sunday Times newspaper for five years, and broke the story of Irish Life’s merger with Irish Permanent in 1998, the largest in Irish corporate history, generously sharing a byline on the scoop with colleagues.
The daughter of Norrie and Frank McHugh, she was born in Nicosia in Cyprus, as her father was a diplomat and moved his family of five around the Middle East. She got her secondary school education in Loreto on the Green, where her classmates included the late Keelin Shanley and the journalist Nicola Byrne, who remained life-long friends.
After graduating from University College Dublin, she worked as a journalist for Reuters, the Economist and Bloomberg, where…