Sean Mulryan’s Ballymore Properties has appointed David Brophy as chief operating officer for the company worldwide.

Brophy joins from the private equity company Smurfit Kappa Group, formerly the Smurfit Group, where he worked for the last 13 years. He was involved in setting up and running the in-house banking operations for the group worldwide. For the last seven years he was group director of tax and corporate finance. He is also a non-executive director at Irish Nationwide Building Society.

Mulryan, chairman and chief executive at Ballymore, said the company was growing rapidly globally and the position of chief operating officer was needed to drive further expansion.

Ballymore was founded 25 years ago and has offices in Dublin, London, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, France and Hungary. It has more than 50 projects in various stages of development worldwide.