Down but still a decent man
Former media magnate Tony O’reilly has been declared bankrupt. He should feel no shame, says STEPHEN GLOVER, for he was in many ways a model proprietor
TONY O’REILLY, the former media tycoon who owned the Independent for many years, has been declared bankrupt. This fall from grace has created few waves in the British Press, and may be news to many Oldie readers. He is not exactly a household name in the way Rupert Murdoch is. But he was once the most famous, and probably the richest, man in Ireland, and head of a company which had media interests in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, in addition to his own country. All that, and more, he has lost. You would have to search a long time to find another media magnate who has plummeted so far, so quickly.
Dr O’reilly – former Irish rugby international, inventor of Kerrygold butter, erstwhile chairman of Heinz, and PHD – was probably the chief casualty of the Great Recession in the country which suffered more than most. When I last met him, at the 20th anniversary party of the Independent in October 2006, he was very much the self-confident billionaire. But within a couple of years his difficulties were multiplying. In 2009 Waterford Wedgwood (a manufacturer of glass and china) went into receivership, and as its lead investor O’reilly lost the hundreds of millions of pounds he had ploughed into the company. At the same time the fortunes of Independent News and Media, in which he and his family held a controlling stake, went into reverse. The tycoon was toppled in a coup orchestrated by an up-and-coming Irish businessman called Denis O’brien.
According to one report, when the two men met in O’reilly’s Dublin town house for a showdown, O’brien felt the chair he was offered was lower than that occupied by his urbane host, and inferred this as a deliberate slight. Two chairs of equal stature were brought in. In the end O’brien emerged as the largest shareholder and de facto controller of the media company O’reilly had built up. By one of those weird coincidences, O’reilly’s bankruptcy featured in the same issue of the Irish Times that reported Denis O’brien’s acquisition of a private aeroplane costing £42 million.
It is, of course, O’reilly’s stewardship of the Independent and the Inde
pendent on Sunday that most concerns this column. Independent News and Media snatched a 24.99 per cent stake in the two titles in 1994, but was pipped by a consortium led by Mirror Group Newspapers, which won control. How odd it now seems that grown men were prepared in those days to fight over loss-making newspapers! After a period of uneasy collaboration, O’reilly bought out his rivals. During more than a decade of outright ownership, Independent News and Media must have lost at least £100 million on the venture, and very possibly twice that amount.
O’reilly didn’t buy the Independent to proselytise his views, which in any case were broadly in sympathy with those of the paper. He valued it as a kind of calling card. It may have been lossmaking, but it was well-known abroad, where few had heard of his highly profitable though relatively obscure Irish titles. In South Africa he was welcomed to Nelson Mandela’s table as the proprietor of a renowned and respected British newspaper.
Model proprietor though he was in the sense of being hands-off, he was perhaps too indulgent. The Independent titles occupied a grand office in London’s docklands. They employed more journalists than was affordable. As sales continued to slide, there were periodic half-hearted efforts to rein in costs, but the papers still lived far beyond their means. O’reilly doubtless often had his mind on other things. In the good times his company could absorb the losses of its London papers fairly painlessly, but not when the climate changed. In 2010 they were sold for a nominal £1 to the Lebedevs, who have introduced economies which should have taken place during O’reilly’s stewardship.
Now the Dublin town house, a country retreat in Co Cork and an estate called Castlemartin in Co Kildare have been sold, as a reportedly distraught Tony O’reilly attempts to do some sort of deal with the banks to which he owes tens of millions of pounds. The sale of Castlemartin must have been especially painful because he had buried his parents there. Here he entertained Irish and British guests in the most lavish manner, including, I must confess, myself on one occasion. He won’t starve because he is married to Chryss Goulandris, a Greek shipping heiress, who is believed still to have a bob or two, but there is no doubt he is a broken man.
Some accounts suggest, though, that he grieves because he feels he has lost his honour. Why so? He may have thrown away a fortune but surely not his honour. His former employees almost invariably speak well of him. Like all tycoons he was driven by a love of power and money, but he seems seldom to have behaved badly. He kept the Independent titles afloat. I think we should raise a glass to that comparatively rare phenomenon – a very decent media magnate.