https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/companies/arid-41398444.htmlMON, 20 MAY, 2024 - 11:50
EAMON QUINN
Over 40 years, Tony O’Reilly built a business empire that included newspapers, crystal and china, telecoms, hotels, oil and mining prospecting, as well as ‘Big House’ trophy properties, and discount supermarkets.
Mr O’Reilly leveraged his considerable sporting fame and honed a much-storied talent for marketing food brands.
The ascent was more remarkable for his not coming from a notably wealthy family, although he did enjoy the good fortune of taking his first steps in business at a time when the Irish economy was opening to the world.
Mr O’Reilly went on to deploy the multi-millions earned as a high-profile CEO in the US to finance and raise loans in Ireland. In the end, what he built was a collection of disparate stock market and private business interests.
Worth considerable sums at the top of the market during the noughties boom, the debt-laden family empire was nonetheless ill-prepared for an extraordinary series of economic and corporate blows — more fitting material for a Netflix series than anyone could have suspected.
The events surrounding the collapse of the empire eclipsed the heroics of his early business ventures.
Mr O’Reilly unsuccessfully fought to keep rival Denis O’Brien from gaining control of Independent News and Media, the newspaper group Mr O’Reilly had expanded, but only with potentially crippling amounts of debt.
Independent News and Media’s then chief operating officer Gavin O’Reilly voting with his father and former chief executive Tony O’Reilly at the annual general meeting, in Dublin, in 2006. Picture: Leon Farrell/RollingNews.ie
Independent News and Media’s then chief operating officer Gavin O’Reilly voting with his father and former chief executive Tony O’Reilly at the annual general meeting, in Dublin, in 2006. Picture: Leon Farrell/RollingNews.ie
Despite weathering his fair share of corporate scares, Mr O’Reilly failed to anticipate the extent of the banking and property crash. Ultimately, the scale of the debts was laid bare.
Forever financially fragile, the Waterford Wedgwood business was the first to fail in 2009.
A few years later, he lost control of Independent News and Media to Mr O’Brien, the rival Mr O’Reilly had bettered in the intense fight for Eircom only a decade or so earlier.
O’Reilly fought off AIB in the Irish courts to opt for bankruptcy in the Bahamas, where the Irishman owned one of his luxury homes. The last group of creditors was officially paid off at the start of this year.
