Early career
Hobbs worked for Eagle star from 1979 to 1991 and left his position as Marketing Manager to set up a fee-based financial planning company TIPS. In 1995 Hobbs was made a non-executive director in the financial services firm Taylor Asset Management, which went bust when its founder Tony Taylor fled to the UK, following the theft of clients' funds in 1996 uncovered by an investigation led by Hobbs after he left the Taylor Group. Hobbs himself was never implicated in any wrongdoing and in 2007 he was exonerated by the Irish High Court and praised by the presiding judge for showing "efficiency and determination and for not standing idly" when he pursued Taylor's activities from 1995 to 1996. In 1993 he published "Endowment Mortgages The Hometruth" credited with crashing homeloan endowment sales accounting for 50% of mortgage sales in Ireland. In 1996 he submitted a complaint to The Competition Authority alleging that the Government supported Irish Insurance Federation Remuneration Agreement was offensive to competition law since 1991,had engendered a culture of consensus decision making, restricted competition and prevented costs and commission disclosure to consumers. The complaint was upheld in 1998 forcing the Government to introduce statutory commission and charges disclosure. The Life industry was forced to reissue its product range to comply with the Insurance Act 2000. Hobbs acted in a voluntery capacity as a director and Finance spokesperson for The Consumers association of Ireland from 1993 to 2006
Television career
He presented the
RTÉ-Organisations:* Raidió Teilifís Éireann , the public broadcasting service of the Republic of Ireland* Réseau de transport d'électricité, the French Transmission System Operator -Computing:* Real Time Enterprise...
show
Rip-Off RepublicRip-Off Republic was an RTÉ television show highlighting the cost of living and working in Ireland. It was presented by Eddie Hobbs and was broadcast on Mondays at 21:30 on RTÉ One during late August and early September 2005....
in 2005, a show preoccupied with artificially high development land prices, the perceived high personal taxes, corporate margins and cartels/monopolies in
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
. Prior to this, Hobbs presented the television show
Show Me the Money, where he helped various people, from farmers to hairdressers, to improve their finances. He has also presented a three-part programme,
30 Things to do with your SSIA, in which he gives a humorous list of ideas for spending the money held in a Special Savings Incentive Account. In
Show Me the Money he repeatedly advised since 2004 that
property prices in IrelandThe property bubble in Ireland built up from 2000 to 2006, as with many other western European countries, with a combination of increased speculative construction and rapidly rising prices....
are only going one way - down - and strongly advised against residential investment property purchase in Ireland. In 2007 property prices started to reverse. An outspoken
populistPopulism is a political discourse that juxtaposes "the people" with "the elites." Populism may comprise an ideology urging social and political system changes and/or a rhetorical style deployed by members of political or social movements...
critic of the vested interests in Ireland, especially the producer groups who "control the country", Hobbs has often repeated that "There's one game in town: development." He speaks out against
Jumbo mortgagesIn the United States, a jumbo mortgage is a mortgage with a loan amount above the industry-standard definition of conventional conforming loan limits. This standard is set by the two largest secondary market lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...
and picks apart the arguments presented by the vested interests who wish to maintain the status quo, including public sector unions whom he describes as Ireland's strongest cartel.
During the run up to the 2007 Irish general election, Eddie and his colleague
Matt CooperMatt Cooper is an Irish journalist and Radio presenter. He is a former editor of the Sunday Tribune, appointed in September 1996, as well as a former business editor of the Irish Independent...
presented a political programme called Polls Apart on
IrishIreland is a country in north-western Europe. The modern sovereign state occupies about five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was partitioned on 3 May 1921. It is a parliamentary democracy and a republic...
TV station
TV3TV3 is a free-to-air television channel in Ireland, and was the country's first commercial broadcaster. It launched on September 20, 1998.TV3 is operated by the TV3 Group which also consists of 3e and tv3.ie. The main studios of TV3 are located in Ballymount, Dublin. The channel broadcasts 24 hours...
, in which they interview the main
Irish Political Parties' leaders about what they intend to do after the election, if they were to be deemed elected into
governmentA government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations.....
.
Other Career Information
In 2004 he released Short Hands Long Pockets his first book as a fund raiser for The Jack & Jill Children's Foundation for whom he acts as patron. His second book LOOT! was published in 2006. Each book was a best seller.In March 2009, Eddie Hobbs released his third book, Debt Busters by
Currach Press. Debt Busters is Eddie's timely response to the recession. In the book he explains clearly and practically how to manage your spending and the money you owe - even if you feel overwhelmed by your level of indebtedness - and come out the other side in leaner and fitter financial shape.
Topics covered include:
• the big economic shift: how Ireland and the world went from easy credit to credit crunch
• how to manage your money and your debts through the recession
• how to take on the banking system with an insider's skill when you're in distressed debt and unable to meet repayments
• how the Irish legal system deals with distressed debt
• the best tactics for coping practically and psychologically with the stress caused by unemployment and reduced financial circumstances
• money-saving tips to beat the recession
• where you can go for help
It has been reported that the printing of the 9 September 2005 issue of the Irish current affairs magazine
VillageVillage is an Irish current affairs magazine founded by Vincent Browne. It was launched in October 2004 and was published weekly. In January 2007, it was announced that Village Magazine would be published monthly. On August 29, 2008, it was announced it would cease publication...
was halted after communication with Eddie Hobbs concerning an article on him. The magazine issue was pulped and a revised edition issued by its editor Vincent Browne. In 2007 Village Magazine closed its doors for good.
Since 2007 he has acted a editorial director of monthly magazine You & Your Money owned and published by Ashville Publications and is Ireland's largest selling finance magazine. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Star Ireland's largest selling red top.
Awards/Posts Held
Eddie Hobbs was awarded Honorary Patronage of
TCD'sTrinity College Dublin , corporately designated as the Provost, Fellows and Scholars of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", and is the only constituent college of...
University Philosophical Society in November 2005.
He was appointed by the Irish Government as a Director of the National Consumer Agency in 2007 having served on its interim board since 2005 and resigned in 2009.
External links