Last week he struck a 285m deal that, combined with the Shell petrol stations acquired last year for 200m, makes Ionbacked Topaz one of Ireland's largest private companies. But the week didn't start positively.

10.30am Sunday At the end of his Sunday morning walk in Malahide after a long week of negotiating with a London-based team from Merrill Lynch, which represented Statoil, north County Dublin native Devine stopped into his local Esso garage to pick up the Sunday papers.

When he opened them up at home he got a shock.

'Petrogas in Statoil grab, ' read the headline.

"We thought the deal had gone to someone else." Final bids had been submitted on Friday, and he and Ion partner Neil O'Leary were expecting to hear that Monday.

"Who knows where it came from?" Devine says, admitting that paranoia started to creep in. "Certainly if it was true, we thought, maybe Merrills hasn't been as attentive the last couple of days because they've been talking to someone else."

10.45am Sunday "I rang Neil straight away. He had a similar reaction: surprise, given the amount of work that went into it, and that we thought we were the obvious buyer."

Devine thought they would be able to do a deal quickly, having Anglo Irish Bank as a backer for the deal and HOK working with them on figuring out the development potential of the properties involved. It certainly could have been true, he thought.

"These things happen in deals. There's no exclusivity. There are always other guys out there. No two bidders are the same. They could have had some aspect to their deal the Norwegians found attractive."

1pm Sunday Devine, who began his career as an accountant in Ernst & Young before getting into the cut-throat world of corporate finance, drives a Honda, albeit of recent vintage. He drove south into Dublin, racing to his desk at Ion's offices, overlooking the Grand Canal between Baggot Street and Leeson Street.

He and O'Leary had set up Ion in 2000.

"The timing wasn't the best. We were conceived in the tech boom and born in the tech bust." But the pair had steadily grown their operation, deal by deal, opening a London office in 2004. Now their biggest deal to date seemed scuppered.

He and O'Leary decided to ring Merrill Lynch and find out if they'd lost. "We wanted to determine where we stood. We did expect to hear from Merrills." But Statoil's representatives were playing their cards close to the vest.

That evening Devine returned home, where his two teenage sons were preparing for their final exams in the Junior and Leaving Cert last week.

8am Monday Arriving at the office after a commute on the Dart spent scanning the newspapers for more hints, Devine got a call then from Merrill Lynch asking for a meeting that morning.

10.30am Monday to 2am Tuesday The team from Merrill Lynch operated out of the offices of William Fry solicitors, which happen to be in the same building as Ion. And there might be others bumping into them on the stairs.

"We still weren't sure about the outcome.

We knew they could very easily be negotiating with Petrogas and other bidders in other conference rooms in the same office at the same time."

Thus began a 48-hour marathon negotiating session, broken only by a quick trip home that night and a further push through Tuesday night.

8am Tuesday to 3.30am Wednesday Negotiations continued through the night. By late Tuesday Devine suspected they were close to a deal, but he couldn't be sure. "It's very hard when you're in the trenches to know you're the preferred bidder."

9.30am Wednesday Contracts were finally signed, followed by a photocall on a Statoil garage forecourt.

3.30pm Wednesday Devine arrived at UCD's Smurfit business school where he'd long been scheduled to deliver a guest lecture on 'Exits and Valuations' _ that is, on closing transactions like the one he'd just done.

"The case study they were using was the Shell deal" he'd done the year before. While most of the 40-odd students hadn't yet heard about Devine's latest deal, they pounced with questions when they heard the news.

"They're a clever bunch. They got it quickly."