Cassidy's structured, banking and fund management background with IBI and Guinness and Mahon private bank complementing Mulholland's entrepreneurial, pension-planning business.

There was also the comfort that comes with familiarity:

"We'd been working together for our respective clients for over 20 years by then, " recalls Cassidy.

Critically, however, the timing was right.

"Up until 1999, all the focus was on pre-retirement planning, " says Mulholland. "But the legislation that year that allowed people to manage their own retirement funds changed the whole ball game for financial advisors. Now we are seeing a greater emphasis on post-retirement and active management."

For Cassidy and Mulholland, the opportunity was clear. They approached Custom House Capital, a company then focused on IFSC activities, with a view to operating under its licence. By 2000 the twosome had re-oriented CHC as a provider of wealth management services with a strong pension speciality . . . and Cassidy and Mulholland had taken over the company.

Now with 600 million in client assets under management, property has very much been the backbone of the investment strategy. "People who had in the past put their money in traditional homes such as the stockbrokers and life companies were looking for something different, " says Cassidy. "They wanted more involvement, more active management. And Irish people love bricks and mortar."

The trend towards more actively involved, demanding clients is clear. "People are becoming more demanding, more focused on getting their money working for them, " says Cassidy. "They want to see activity and they want to see return. They aren't happy anymore with a passive approach, sticking money into a fund and letting it drift."

This essence of the company's success, according to Cassidy, is to facilitate these people by bringing together syndicates of like-minded individuals to acquire highly attractive commercial office, retail and retail warehousing structures based on gearing.

While the wealth generated by this type of product has been "huge", Cassidy acknowledges that the landscape, particularly around property valuations in Ireland, is changing, and Custom House Capital is increasingly focused in the continental European market. In Europe, the company is looking both to get its clients exposure to rapidly developing markets while spreading clients' risk. The latter is assuming an ever greater importance with the objective of the company's portfolio management approach to balance real estate exposure with concentrated portfolios of a select group of liquid stocks and shares.

However, it is in the field of pensions where Custom House Capital can most dramatically translate its approach to best effect and Mulholland is not slow to evangelise on pension benefits as well as counsel against serious levels of personal underfunding for retirement.

"We're looking at a situation where a majority of people, especially women, are going to live beyond 90.You might say that people can always work another few years . . . up to 70 or whatever . . . but the fact is many people won't have a choice, " he says.

Mulholland says that people need to look for a factor of 20 times earnings for their retirement fund but, while this means building a large fund, recent pensions legislation allows highly effective structures that achieve superior tax-efficient returns. This is something hugely attractive to CHC's typical client, the selfmade professional or businessman. "A pension really is the most effective way to extract wealth from a successful business to the benefit of the individual, " says Mulholland.

The company trawls all aspects of relevant legislation to come up with innovative, attractive propositions. One of CHC's recent offerings, a Qualifying Investment Fund investing in European commercial property, is typical.

The QIF is a special regulatorapproved type of fund that allows high net worth individuals to invest on a geared basis, in this case in prime European commercial property, and avail of exceptional tax advantages.

Even the regularly criticised and less-than-popular PRSA, the Personal Retirement Savings Account, introduced by the Government as the expected panacea for the nation's pensions underfunding problem, has its uses. For those clients who have accumulated a number of disparate and unplanned pension investments over the years, CHC is recommending pooling the funds under the PRSA wrapper to avail of the structure's benefits and bring some scale for more discerning investment.

"It's a well known fact that most people are underfunded when it comes to pension planning" says Mulholland.

"Even though the 2006 Govt Budget introduced a cap of 5m ( in 2006 terms) on pension funds, most people will be well short of this figure when it comes to retirement" If you're a doctor, solicitor or if you've been running a successful business and you're drawing a salary of, let's say 300,000 or 400,000 and you're hoping to maintain your lifestyle during retirement then you need to target this 5 million figure aggressively.

The company's appetite for superior properties extends to its own headquarters, an impressive Georgian house on Merrion Square, Dublin, but contrasts somewhat with the down-toearth demeanour of its principals. For Cassidy, Custom House Capital is "private but personable" and, crucially, both founding partners make the time to interact personally with clients. The challenge for the company, Cassidy acknowledges, is to propagate the expertise of the founders through the ranks but the company has no ambition to grow so big that it loses its personal service ethos.

"With the big private banks or brokers, typically the best guys get promoted and then they immediately stop dealing with the clients, " says Cassidy. "Here you're going to get access to the expertise and experience . . .

the people with grey hair and no hair."