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The company is owned by Isreali investment company, Yazam, which paid IEP33 million for First Tuesday last July. However Yazam has found itself in financial difficulties and is unlikely to finance any further meetings. First Tuesday has an estimated 100,000 members worldwide.
The Irish branch is currently waiting to hear back from the central base in London on whether the company will be sold.
"We are just sitting tight at the moment, although either way, it will not make a difference to us as we own the license to the Irish branch. We are continuing on, business as usual," Jacquie Garvey, spokesperson for First Tuesday in Ireland, told ElectricNews.Net.
She does not believe that the company will be forced to change its name if it changes hands, although that remains to be seen.
First Tuesday has been up and running in Ireland since September 1999. It was originally run on a voluntary basis and the organisers in Ireland did not have to pay money to get the franchise, Garvey said. The networking club currently has approximately 6,000 people on its mailing list and an average of 450 people attend the monthly meetings.
The company is sponsored by 12 different organisations, including Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Etel, Shannon Development and Modus Media. There was no meeting held in January, although Garvey explained that this was for no reason other than that people were unsettled after the Christmas period.
A particular coup for First Tuesday in Ireland has been its establishment of the Wireless Wednesday event, which is an off-shoot of First Tuesday. On Wednesday this forum, which was first set up in Ireland in collaboration with Ericsson, is due to be launched as a global event in 20 cities worldwide.
"We have 700 people on our Wireless Wednesday mailing list and it's growing all the time. From our point of view we've led the way with it and we're very happy," Garvey said.
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