Salesman with a toothpaste smile hopes to charm City

It's not often a chief executive battles in the television advert breaks for a place in the hearts of a nation such as the Irish. But Maurice Pratt, who heads C&C – the snacks and drinks group preparing to float on the London and Dublin stock exchanges – is one such corporate boss.

During a stint as the public face of the Irish food group Quinnsworth, the grey-haired, blue-eyed Mr Pratt became a household name. Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, Mr Pratt charmed housewives from Dublin to Cork with his toothpaste smile, "adding a human dimension and personality" to Quinnsworth.

"These things matter in Ireland," he said, taking me into his confidence with all the stereotypical charm of the Irish. "The retail businesses we competed with were all personality driven, so I took on that mantle. Even being a brand myself at one point, although that's not the way I like to think of it."

Cantrell & Cochrane, as C&C has been known for the past 150 years, is an even bigger name across the Irish Sea, and Mr Pratt arrived as chief executive in January to steer the group through a flotation.

Now that C&C has formally started the countdown to its stock market debut, launching its prospectus, Ireland's housewives and househusbands have two weeks to decide whether to subscribe to the share offer.

Proof of Mr Pratt's knack of associating himself with his work came on his flight to London last week. "Four passengers approached me on the plane where I was sitting and said 'have you got the forms printed yet'. That's the truth!"

He was in London to market C&C's shares to City investors. The flotation coincides with one of the stock market's most torrid times in recent history, and the company has been forced to offer the shares at a discount to what analysts had been expecting.

But Mr Pratt thinks the defensive qualities of food and drink will make C&C a tasty investment. Tucked away in the group's store cupboard are Irish favourites such as Ballygowan mineral water, Bulmers cider, Tayto potato crisps and Club Orange soda.

C&C needs to re-work the magic it conjured up to achieve the unachievable of persuading people to forget that cider was the first drink to give them a hangover. Mr Pratt says: "Cider is our powerhouse brand. It's the market that we revolutionised most dramatically. We've made cider mainstream."

The trick, apparently, was lowering the alcohol content to match that of beer, making Bulmers more, not less expensive, and investing behind the brand to make the industry "respectable and responsible". Consequently, Bulmers (sold outside Ireland as Magners) is more expensive than bottled beers such as Budweiser and has leapt from a 2.5 per cent share of the long drinks market to 12.5 per cent in under a decade. "The position cider is in today in the UK is where it was in Ireland 10 years ago and the brand positioning has been transformed."

June has proved to be a busy month for the 46-year-old Mr Pratt. Not only did he have to juggle institutional investor meetings, press briefings and running C&C with watching Ireland's footballers on their Korean odyssey, he also took up the presidency of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation – Ireland's answer to the CBI.

Admitting that the timing of the IBEC post could have been better, Mr Pratt said he jumped at the invitation. It was made before he got the call from Tony O'Brien, C&C's chairman, last autumn.

"You never get to choose about the timing of these things. When I accepted the IBEC role I was in my previous job. It was an honour to be asked. It's not something you turn down."

As head of the IBEC, Mr Pratt's main focus will be on the role Ireland plays in Europe – both in terms of welcoming new European Union entrants and hoping Britain signs up to the euro. "The other step change for us looking forward is what Britain will do. The point at which it enters is key. We export about 35 per cent to the UK. We import probably 50 per cent of what we sell in food from the UK. So the currency movement and management is very important to Ireland. If Britain is in the euro it would help provide absolute certainty and stability going forward."

While he intends to "focus more on the IBEC after the flotation than before it", the post cements Mr Pratt's status among Ireland's executive elite. It also opens useful doors in the Irish government – he manages to drop into our conversation that just the night before he had been dining with the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern.

In a sense Mr Pratt was destined to run a company such as C&C. His own "brand" status meant he could fully appreciate that "C&C's DNA is brands. That's what we are as a business, we're unashamedly a brand house." He describes his background as "principally in the retail business", developing new brands and marketing them. His time at Quinnsworth, formerly part of Associated British Foods, where he worked for nearly 20 years, took him into the clutch of one of Britain's greatest retailers, the £16bn supermarket giant Tesco, which bought ABF's Irish retail arm in 1997 – just as it was preparing for a stock market listing.

He was, he says, content at Tesco, in his status as managing director of its Irish business. But last autumn he was offered the C&C job. He recalls how "somebody very senior in Tesco said to me, 'you know people at your level don't leave Tesco, so this must be a pretty powerful opportunity'." That is his way of underlining what a great proposition he considers C&C. "Probably, to be truthful, there wouldn't have been more than four or five companies that I would have left Tesco for."

Of Ireland's dramatic defeat to Spain, I can only imagine the anguish in the Pratt household. From a commercial perspective, Ireland's progress was music to the ears of a group whose raison d'etre is party food.

But for the Pratts, Irish victory was a matter of family honour because football runs through their veins. In the Forties and Fifties, Mrs Pratt's father – Peter Farrell – played for both Northern and Southern Ireland as well as for Everton. Despite their father's clear business pedigree, Mr Pratt clearly hopes that at least one of his five sons (aged 8 to 17) will make it in the footballing world.

By then, at least, he will know whether C&C has scored on the stock markets of London and Dublin.

MAURICE PRATT HOUSEWIVES' CHOICE

Career history: Joined the advertising agency Des O'Meara & Associates in 1973. Headhunted in 1982 to join Associated British Foods' Irish retail business Quinnsworth and Crazy Prices as marketing manager. Became managing director in 1996 and kept the post when Tesco bought the group in 1997. Joined C&C as chief executive in January 2002 to float the business.

Age: 46.

Pay: €500,000 (£325,000)

Hobbies: Tennis, walking, golf, Irish Heart Foundation director.

Biggest influences:

"The tennis player Jimmy Connors, for his never say die attitude. I had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times for dinner and he didn't disappoint off court as a storyteller, either. Personally, my wife Pauline."