Fearless entrepreneur with fire in his belly

FEARLESS in business and hungry for a challenge, Denis O’Brien has regularly flirted with disaster.

A tax exile living in Portugal, the multi-millionaire claims to have nearly gone bust on several occasions during his extraordinary rise to the top.

A former personal assistant to GPA aircraft leasing group founder Tony Ryan, some of his earlier investments, such as a partnership in a shopping channel on Sky TV, did turn sour.

However, his chunky commercial property portfolio is a testimony to his doggedness and the success of his investments in the communications, radio and other technology ventures, mainly overseas.

O’Brien’s home is now in the Algarve, in the much-sought after golfing resort of Quinta do Lago. In 1998, he secured the freehold of the complex for an estimated €30m but the 2,000-plus acre site has since reportedly quadrupled in value.

The luxurious complex is just 20 minutes from Faro airport and boasts a five-star hotel and a series of golf courses. A holiday home costs about €3m with a green field building site well in excess of €1m.

The golf clubs can command upwards of €100,000 for membership from the neighbouring property holders which include Portugal’s highest civic leaders, British soccer stars such as Alan Shearer and managers of showbiz stars, such as Madonna’s right hand man.

In line with the exemplary facilities, security is also excellent with more than 100 security guards safeguarding the massive complex within the wildlife-protected Ria Formoa Natural Park.

Born in Dublin, 45-year-old O’Brien was possibly Ireland’s most eligible bachelor until he married his Foxrock bride Catherine Walsh in 1998.

She was a previously a salesperson at the 98FM radio station which he set up and she later went on to manage some of his commercial radio operations in Prague before returning to the INN news supply service in Ireland.

Their wedding was a lavish affair with O’Brien leasing out Luttrellstown Castle for the entire weekend.

O’Brien demonstrated his entrepreneurial skills at an early stage, encouraging a college friend to make money painting Georgian buildings.

However, when O’Brien did strike, he made it big. He reportedly made more money in one swoop than any Irish business rival when he sold ESAT Telecom for $300m to British Telecom three years ago.

In Ivor Kenny’s book on Irish business leaders, O’Brien told the author: “There was never any question of my not setting up a business. There was never any question of my working for somebody for the rest of my life.”

The person who influenced him most, O’Brien admitted, was his father, Denis Sr, a pharmaceutical sales director who is now a shareholder in his son’s Algarve venture.

O’Brien departed his first job as an assistant manager in Trinity Bank to join Ryanair founder Tony Ryan.

He also worked in the USA in the pharmaceutical business and, on the back of confidence gained during his training with Ryan, became joint chief executive of a television shopping channel.

The unsuccessful venture was a learning process for O’Brien who later founded 98FM, the Dublin radio station which remained profitable from its launch.

In a move, which set him on the road to riches, he secured a radio licence in the Czech Republic and also Sweden.

In 1995, the businessman ventured into the cellular phone business and, backed by the Norwegian state-owned firm PTT, landed the ESAT licence.

O’Brien said later: “The licence, I thought, was the first sign of the new Ireland. In the old Ireland, it would be chicanery with politicians becoming involved, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

"The GSM licence was the first example of a transparent process, independently assessed. It must have been the first time in the history of the State where there was no agenda.”

However, along came the Moriarty Tribunal which spent over a year probing the circumstances of the decision by former Fine Gael minister Michael Lowry to award the country’s first non-State mobile phone licence to O’Brien’s ESAT consortium.

Detesting the Ireland of the begrudgers, bureaucrats and backward thinkers, O’Brien believes that year would have been better spent questioning why broadband technology was still absent from most of the country.