Declan King has joined financial planning firm Metis Ireland, as chief investment officer (CIO). Metis currently manages an asset portfolio valued at €450m. Declan joins from Davy Select Ireland, where he was head of investments for the past four years, having joined Davy in 2015 as a senior investment analyst. He began his financial consultancy career in New York with First Derivatives in 2011, returning to Ireland in 2014 to join Deloitte, before moving to Davy. From Tramore, Co Waterford, he holds a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UCC. He also holds Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and CAIA (Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA).

Daniela Illuminati has been appointed as senior director for European trust and safety operations with Telus Digital Experience, managing customer experience teams across Europe from Dublin for a key client. Telus – with offices in Cork, Dublin and Ballina – is a customer experience service provider for global brands. Daniela previously ran operations for Telus Digital in Dublin, leading regional and global teams. She has also worked for almost 10 years in Google Ireland, supporting the AdWords Services and Sales organisations, and in Facebook Ireland, leading the EMEA intellectual property operations team. A big focus for Daniela is wellbeing alongside ongoing investment in onsite support services in all locations.

Richard Kelly has been appointed as a partner with financial services firm Ogier’s banking and finance team in Ireland. A structured finance and capital markets expert, ranked by both IFLR1000 and Legal 500, Richard advises clients on debt capital markets transactions, specialising in structured finance, CLO, ABS and other securitisation products, as well as prime brokerage services (including derivatives, repos, securities lending and crypto trading). He also advises on regulatory issues in the trading of financial instruments and digital assets. He is president of the EU and International Affairs Committee of the Law Society of Ireland and regularly chairs working groups of the Irish Debt Securities Association.

Charley Stoney, the current CEO of the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI), has been announced as CEO of the European Association of Communications Agencies, representative group for the commercial communications industry in Europe. Based in Brussels, EACA brings together more than 2,800 agencies from 30 countries representing over 80,000 employees. As CEO, Stoney will oversee the association’s strategy to promote the economic and societal contribution of the communications industry. She has served on the EACA board since 2022. Stoney has been CEO of IAPI since 2018. She will take up the new position in January and will continue to lead IAPI until then. 

Chris Cashen, the former managing partner with Mindshare, has been appointed as group head of strategy at GroupM Ireland. He will take responsibility for strategy and leadership across all the agency brands; Mindshare, Wavemaker, EssenceMediacom and Invention. He joined Mindshare in 2019, having previously senior roles with Javelin, Dentsu and AFA O’Meara/McConnells. Chris is also the current vice president of the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI). Meanwhile, GroupM has also appointed Zoe Chandler from Wavemaker into the GroupM strategy team as strategy manager. Zoe has worked with Wavemaker for four years and was recently accepted into IAPI and Marketing Society’s STEPS mentoring program.