Davy may have evolved from its family business origins, but a century after its establishment, it remains connected to the founding family.

When James Davy was granted a stockbroking licence in 1926, Ireland was recovering from the triple blows of the first World War, the War of Independence and the Civil War. The departure of the British crown was accompanied by a loss of wealth as asset holders left the country in droves. Much of its infrastructure lay in ruins.

James and his younger brother Eugene were undaunted. As Eugene’s son Joseph recalls, his uncle James was “the more academic and commercially minded,” while Eugene was “very sporting”.

Of his uncle James, he says, “very few people in the 1950s-1970s had such an influence on Irish business”.

Both men were highly skilled at making business contacts. Eugene was captain of the Irish rugby team but had to set aside rugby in favour of the burgeoning business.

“In 1930 he was invited to go on the Lions Tour in Australia,” Joseph recalls. “In those days they were big, long tours, over six months. Eugene felt that he couldn’t accept that invitation and give up that time, having just set up J & E Davy.”

Throughout his life, James served on a wide range of company boards. He was president of the Dublin Stock Exchange in the 1940s. He initially served his apprenticeship with a small Catholic firm, James McCann.

Eugene had pursued a different route into stockbroking, having worked for a time in the J & T Davy pub, now Portobello House pub beside Rathmines bridge. His father, Thomas, owned four pubs at the height of his career, including the Leeson Lounge and two pubs on Lower Baggot Street.

Thomas was part of an expanding Catholic middle class. He was treasurer of the Grocers’ and Vintners’ Association, which had ties to the Irish Parliamentary Party at a time when it was the biggest political party in the country.

Eugene worked at Portobello House for a year after graduation before deciding that the pub trade was not for him, a decision backed by his widowed mother Alice, who advised him instead to do something he found “challenging and fulfilling”.

The pub had been wrecked on a couple of occasions by soldiers of different stripes. The family received compensation, which must have helped as James gathered the capital required to establish a stockbroking firm. The cost to the applicant of a license was then £2,000 – a large sum at the time – with the same amount required from a guarantor. Money was released from the estate.

Joseph says it was “a difficult time in which to be starting a business. There was no money. A debt was owed to Britain. The people James and Eugene went to school with – at Belvedere College and UCD – did not have much to invest. That only changed in the 1960s when Ireland’s economy started taking off.”

The pair took every opportunity to get involved in industry, although the focus was on the private client. In 1930, the firm – by now, J & E Davy – was appointed as court broker, responsible for handling money lodged on behalf of orphans and other financially vulnerable people.

In the 1932 general election Eugene ran for the outgoing government party Cumann na nGaedheal, losing to a future taoiseach, Seán Lemass. The Wall Street Crash had been followed by a worldwide depression as peoples’ savings disappeared. In Ireland, the era of protectionism began.

James, meanwhile, remained resolutely unpolitical.

Two Control of Manufacturers Acts were passed. This led to new industries emerging behind trade barriers. Irish Steel was founded in 1935, the same year the firm moved office from Westmoreland Street to Grafton Street.

Davy was listed as broker to the Irish Worsted Mill and the Milford Bakery and Flour Mills, in Co Donegal, in 1936. Local development committees helped fan shareholder interest. The value of new issues jumped hugely by 1939.

During the second World War, contacts were maintained between the Dublin and London stock exchanges.

The brothers amassed directorships: Irish Sugar, the Gresham Hotel, Hammond Lane, Johnston Mooney & O’Brien. As president in 1944, James welcomed the lord mayor Martin O’Sullivan on to the floor of the Dublin Stock Exchange. The Irish Central Bank was established. James served as a director from 1955.

The 1950s was a tough time. A report by the secretary of the Department of Finance triggered a shift in the form of a Programme of Economic Expansion. Ireland had begun building overseas ties. Investment began to flow – slowly at first.

Says Joseph: “When I was at UCD, all the talk was of Whitaker and Lemass. It was a much more exciting time in which to be young. The place was opening up.”

By 1965, the firm had 40 employees in Grafton Street and by 1969 needed more space. As Joseph recalls, the move to a new office block nearby – developed by a key client, Norwich Union – opened the way to expansion.

Over the folowing years, a new generation of outside managers began to join the firm, readying it for a new era in Irish industry. “We were recruiting some of the best graduates. It was an exciting time.”