Mighty Quinn: Family business a corporate fairytale

IT BEGAN as a small family-run quarry in rural Derrylin, Co Fermanagh, and has evolved to become one of this country’s most phenomenal corporate success stories, employing more than 6,500 people in various locations throughout Europe.

Today, the still privately owned Quinn Group has interests in a myriad of ventures including cement and concrete products, container glass, general insurance, radiators, plastics, hospitality and real estate. The sprawling group has been helmed by its chairman Seán Quinn who, since 1973, has proven, more than once, that his business acumen is a considerable force to be reckoned with.

Since 2004 the Group has seen great expansion throughout Europe with radiator and plastic manufacturing plants in Germany, Belgium, France, Spain and Slovakia.

The Quinn property portfolio includes some top market hotels and business centres in Poland, Bulgaria, the Ukraine and Russia.

Quinn Direct Insurance, which was launched in 1996, has begun trading in Belgium and the Netherlands and is developing chemical manufacturing interests in Germany.

Seán Quinn, was born in 1947 into a small Co Fermanagh farming family.

Last year he was given second place on a rich list of Irish business people with a family fortune estimated at €2,941 million.

He was denied the top billing by Hilary Weston and family whose fortune is estimated at €6,912m.

Quinn in the archetypal model of the “local boy makes good” fairytale. He left school at 14 years of age and has claimed much of his success has been rooted in the contacts he made through the GAA.

These contacts, he has said in the very few interviews he has granted the media, enabled him to build a company spanning both sides of the Border.

His first venture was in 1973 when he borrowed £100 and started extracting gravel from the family 23-acre farm, washing it and selling it to builders.

That company was called Seán Quinn Quarries Ltd. From this came Quinn Cement, and the foundation of the group’s wealth.

Married to Patricia, the couple have five children, Seán, Colette, Ciara, Aoife and Brenda. Quinn’s $24m Dassault Falcon private jet and a twin-engined helicopter enable him to keep an eye on the group’s far flung interests in characteristic hands-on fashion.

The Quinn financial services business, was founded in 1996, and aimed most of its energies towards unseating the well established insurance companies in this country.

Quinn Direct, which is based in Cavan, made €123m profit in the first six months of 2006, (up 38% on the previous year), on sales of €386m between January and June 2006.

According to his friends, the GAA forms a big part of Quinn’s life. His private life is private and kept that way, and three of his children work in the family business while another two are still in full-time education.