Denis O'Brien


Denis O'Brien is an Irish billionaire businessman, and the founder and owner of Communicorp. He was listed among the World's Top 200 Billionaires in 2015 and is also Ireland's richest native-born citizen. His business interests also extend to aircraft leasing, utilities support, petroleum, and football, being a minority shareholder of Celtic F.C.. O'Brien was implicated by the Moriarty Tribunal as having improperly influenced the decision to award a mobile phone license to the Esat Digifone consortium, which he chaired.

Early life

O'Brien was born in the city of Cork and grew up in the Ballsbridge area of Dublin. His father was a salesman for a veterinary pharmaceutical company, and he often accompanied his father on business trips, where he learned how to "sell and to present". He attended The High School in Rathgar, and although he was suspended for disciplinary problems, his talent for rugby was such that he was asked to return so that he could participate in a championship for the school.
He studied politics, history and logic at University College Dublin, graduating in 1977. After winning a scholarship from Boston College while attending UCD, he completed an MBA in corporate finance there in 1982. Upon his return to Dublin, he was employed as an assistant manager in a local bank, but left that job and became a personal assistant to Tony Ryan, owner of an aircraft leasing company.

Career

O'Brien has spent most of his career in the communications technology and mass media industries. He has also been a part owner of energy, aerospace, and industrial service companies.

Communicorp

O'Brien is the owner of Communicorp, a media holding company operating across Europe. He started the company in Ireland in 1989, where it has owned independent radio stations like Newstalk and Today FM. The company expanded to markets in Eastern European countries, later selling some of its stations to local operators. In 2014, Communicorp expanded to the United Kingdom, acquiring eight radio stations across the country; in 2017, Communicorp moved its UK radio stations to a new independent company, Communicorp UK, of which O'Brien owns 98% of the shares.

Esat Telecom and Esat Digifone

In 1991, O'Brien formed a telecommunications consortium called Esat Telecom to compete with the state-owned Telecom Eireann. In partnership with Telenor, Norway's state telecom operator, Esat formed Esat Digifone, which made a successful bid for Ireland's second GSM mobile licence. Circumstances around the awarding of the licence to Esat Digifone became the subject of the Moriarty Tribunal.
On 7 November 1997, Esat Telecom Group plc held an initial public offering and was listed on the Irish Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ. In 2000, Telenor made a bid for control of the company, but O'Brien sold it to BT, reportedly making €250 million from the sale.

Aergo Capital

In 1999, O'Brien co-founded aircraft leasing company Aergo Capital, of which he owned an 80% stake. From its inception until 2014, Aergo traded more than 150 aircraft with a gross value of over €791 million. In October 2014, O'Brien and his partner, Fred Browne, sold the company to CarVal, a US investment firm; Browne remained with the new company as CEO.

Independent News & Media

In the late 2000s, O'Brien began purchasing shares of Independent News & Media, ultimately spending an estimated €500 million to amass a 29.9% stake in the company. O'Brien clashed with the company's board, especially former owner Tony O'Reilly, who stepped down from his position as CEO in 2009 and sold most of his INM shares in 2014. In April 2019, O'Brien and Dermont Desmond, INM's second largest shareholder at the time, sold their shares to the Belgian media group Mediahuis; O'Brien reportedly received €43.5m as part of the deal.
Although he never owned a majority stake in INM, O'Brien was at times accused of exerting significant influence at the company. In 2014, allegations arose that Stephen Rae, a group editor at INM, ordered amendments to a column by Sunday Independent editor Anne Harris that contained references to O'Brien. In 2015, Paul Meagher, a solicitor for O'Brien, reportedly called INM solicitor Simon McAleese in 2012 to block a story related to environment minister Phil Hogan.
In March 2018, the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement in Ireland applied to the High Court of Ireland to appoint inspectors to Independent News and Media to investigate an alleged data breach. According to an affidavit filed by the ODCE, invoices for the data interrogation were discharged by Blaydon Limited.
In June 2019, Independent News & Media was sold to the Belgian group Mediahuis and de-listed from the Euronext Dublin exchange, thus ending O'Briens involvement in the group. It was reported that he lost in excess of €450m in total on his INM investment.

Digicel

In 2001, O'Brien founded Digicel, a telecom company that operates in the Caribbean, South America, and Asia Pacific. Using the cash from his sale of Esat Telecom, O'Brien used Digicel to build a wireless network in Jamaica. That same year, Digicel expanded into the South Pacific. As of 2019, Digicel operated in 31 countries.
Along with Digicel, O'Brien created the Digicel Foundation, which has worked with local organizations to develop community services, build schools and health centers, and support recovery efforts. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, O'Brien pledged €3.5 million to assist recovery efforts. In 2012, President Michel Martelly of Haiti awarded O'Brien with the National Order of Honour and Merit for his investments, contributions and promotion of the country, and in 2015, O'Brien received honorary membership of the Order of Jamaica for his service to the country's telecommunications industry.
Digicel was involved in an extensive court battle with the Jamaican Office of Utilities Regulation throughout the 2000s. The issue originally arose after Phillip Paulwell, the then Jamaican minister of industry, commerce and technology, instructed the OUR to refrain from interfering with the pricing policies of Digicel, after the regulator had itself instructed Digicel to amend its interconnectivity fees. Although Paulwell was ruled to have had no power to issue the instruction to the OUR, Digicel unsuccessfully appealed the ruling first at the Jamaican Supreme Court, which overturned the ruling, though it was subsequently upheld by Court of Appeal after a counter-appeal by OUR, and then at Jamaica's Privy Council.
In January 2014, the Financial Timess Telecoms Correspondent wrote of O'Brien's intention to expand Digicel into next-generation mobile and fixed line services, with O'Brien quoted as being excited by the prospect of a "world order is changing."

Actavo

In 2012, O'Brien purchased Siteserv, a utilities support company, from IBRC for €45m; in 2015, the company was renamed Actavo. Actavo was bought and controlled through O'Brien's firm Millington on the Isle of Man.
In 2016, Actavo expanded into the United States through the purchase of Atlantic Engineering Services, a structural engineering firm. Actavo was also involved in the installation of fibre networks for Digicel in the Caribbean.

Topaz Energy

In December 2013, O'Brien purchased €300 million in debt owed by Topaz Energy to the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation. In December 2014, Topaz's parent company, Kendrick Investments, announced it would buy all of Esso's Irish operations.
In December 2015, Alimentation Couche-Tard, a Canadian convenience store company, announced that it planned to buy Topaz. The sale was completed in February 2016; Topaz had more than 2,000 employees and close to 35% of the consumer market in Ireland at the time of the sale.

Economic and financial career

O'Brien has attended the World Economic Forum's annual winter meeting in Davos, Switzerland, alongside other billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros.
In 2000, O'Brien became a director of the Bank of Ireland, and in September 2005, he was named a deputy governor of the bank. In September 2006, he resigned as both deputy governor and as a member of the bank's court. O'Brien reportedly resigned due to increased demands related to his international business interests.

Football

Between 2008 and 2016, O'Brien gave the Football Association of Ireland as much as €12 million to help pay the salaries of senior officials within the organisation, including Giovanni Trapattoni. In 2018, O'Brien was named Honorary Life President of the Football Association of Ireland.
In 2006, O'Brien purchased a 2.82% stake in Glasgow-based Celtic F.C. from former manager Martin O'Neill. As of June 2018, O'Brien reportedly had increased his ownership to 13%.

Other interests

In 1998, O'Brien purchased Planal SA, the holding company for the Quinta do Lago golf resort in Portugal.
O'Brien supported the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games, for which he was the chairman of the Games Organising Committee and later the Chairman of Council of Patrons.
O'Brien is a director on the United States board of Concern Worldwide, a humanitarian aid organisation.
O'Brien has worked with the Clinton Global Initiative. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, O'Brien worked with CGI's Haiti Action Network and the Digicel Haiti Foundation to help rebuild the Iron Market in Port-au-Prince. In 2010, O'Brien was named a goodwill ambassador for the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by Mayor Jean Yves Jason, who cited O'Brien's help with disaster recovery efforts after the earthquake. In 2012, O'Brien received a Clinton Global Citizen Award from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, in large part due to his disaster relief efforts in Haiti. He has also contributed to building 50 primary and secondary schools in the 18 months following the earthquake. In September 2016, then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sent a campaign email criticising Hillary Clinton's relationship with O'Brien, about which O'Brien declined to comment.
O'Brien has been a member of the Trilateral Commission. O'Brien donated €2,500 to the campaign of independent candidate Mary Davis for the 2011 Irish presidential election.

Moriarty Tribunal

In 1997, the Moriarty Tribunal was established to look into allegations against two Irish bureaucrats, Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry. After 14 years, the Tribunal's final report found, among other things, that Lowry, Ireland's then energy and communications minister, assisted O'Brien in his bid to secure a mobile phone contract for Esat Digifone. The tribunal found that this happened after Fine Gael received a $50,000 donation from O'Brien via a circuitous route, although the tribunal also acknowledged that the money was not intended as a payment. The tribunal concluded that Lowry gave "substantive information to Denis O'Brien, of significant value and assistance to him in securing the licence" on at least two separate occasions. However, because the Tribunal was not a court of law, its findings were legally "sterile".
Sam Smyth, a radio show host that aired on one of O’Brien's networks, claimed he was fired as a result of his reporting on the Moriarty Tribunal. Today FM responded to the claim, stating that "the decision was made to address a decline in listenership and was part of an initiative to improve programming quality." The Today FM board supported the decision, which was one of several programming changes made by Willy O'Reilly.

Relationship with the media

In 2012, O'Brien allegedly threatened to sue journalist and broadcaster Vincent Browne over statements in Browne's articles that O'Brien claimed were defamatory. The Sunday Independent criticized the lawsuit as an attempt to "instill a fear of financial ruin".
In February 2013, O'Brien sued the Irish Daily Mail for defamation over his numerous appearances in RTÉ news reports on the relief effort after the Haiti earthquake. The court awarded O'Brien €150,000. The case was the first time a journalist had attempted to use the honest opinion defence before a jury at the High Court since the Defamation Act 2009 became law.
In August 2015, the editor-in-chief of satirical website Waterford Whispers News, Colm Williamson received a cease and desist order from O'Brien's solicitor to remove a satirical article about O'Brien. Lawyers for O'Brien also demanded that a reprint of the story be removed from Broadsheet.ie.
In 2019, O'Brien began an action for defamation against the Sunday Business Post over the articles published in the newspaper in March 2015. The articles, which centred around a confidential Price WaterhouseCoopers report given to the government in November 2008 on the exposure of Ireland’s banks in 2008, identified O'Brien as being among the 22 biggest borrowers from Irish banks in 2008. O'Brien claimed the articles defamed him and injured his reputation and also alleged malicious publication. The jury found in the defendant's favour and Justice Barton declared that the case was dismissed with an order for costs against O’Brien.

IBRC and parliamentary privilege

IBRC controversy and RTÉ injunction

In 2015, arguing that revelation of his relationship with his bank was an invasion of his privacy, O'Brien successfully applied for an injunction against RTÉ preventing the state broadcaster from airing a report on how O'Brien was allegedly receiving, on foot of a claimed but disputed verbal agreement with a former CEO of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation —the former Anglo Irish Bank, and another senior executive, a rate of approximately 1.25% when IBRC "could, and arguably should" have been charging 7.5%. This alleged rate applied to "outstanding sums of upwards of €500 million", or "over €300 million" according to the RTÉ producer's court affidavit. O'Brien then allegedly wrote to IBRC's special liquidator Kieran Wallace to demand that these same favourable terms that were granted him by way of verbal agreement be continued. The Irish government later appointed Kieran Wallace to conduct a review into various IBRC transactions, including the sale of Siteserv by IBRC to Denis O'Brien. Acting as IBRC special liquidator, and in order to protect the confidentiality of IBRC's relations with its customers and of any legal advice given to it, Wallace then joined with IBRC and Denis O'Brien to seek an injunction in Ireland's High Court to hide this information from the public. High court judge Justice Donald Binchy granted O'Brien the injunction and told the court that certain elements of the judgement would have to be redacted. The Irish media therefore could not report on details of the injunction.
Independent TD Catherine Murphy attempted to raise this in the Dáil on 27 May 2015. Seán Barrett silenced her and called her contributions "out of order". Catherine Murphy then attempted to raise the matter again the following day, this time with more success. O'Brien "claimed the information was false and that it was an abuse of Dáil privilege.". Lawyers acting for O'Brien immediately forced much of the country's media to censor its own coverage, with some media outlets confirming they had received warnings from O'Brien's lawyers. RTÉ reporter Philip Boucher-Hayes tweeted that Drivetime would play Murphy's speech; in the event, Murphy's speech was not broadcast and his tweet was later deleted. Tonight with Vincent Browne featured Colleran reading a statement from TV3 management asserting that no discussion about Murphy's comments would be allowed following letters from O'Brien's lawyers. At least one foreign commentator covering these events for the international media suggested that in Ireland "the bedrock of any society claiming to be democratic" had been "wiped away at a stroke". Some enterprising citizens received a positive response by printing Catherine Murphy's speech from foreign media coverage and handing copies to passers-by on the streets of the nation's towns and cities in an attempt to inform those relying on state media.
The Irish Times stated that "it is an unprecedented development that the mainstream media have been prevented from publishing privileged remarks in the Dáil due to the threat of legal action". However it also added that Deputy Murphy's Dáil speech was still available on the Oireachtas website, and that the website Broadsheet.ie had ignored a request by solicitors to remove a copy of her speech. Broadsheet.ie rejected the request by referring to Article 15.12 of the Irish Constitution - this states "All official reports and publications of the Oireachtas or of either House thereof and utterances made in either House wherever published shall be privileged." Former Attorney General Michael McDowell indicated that parliamentary privilege does not grant "absolute impunity", but that he expected it would apply in this case. In the High Court the following Tuesday, Justice Donald Binchy stated that it was "never intended nor could it have been intended that any order of this court would impact upon entitlements of deputies to speak as they see fit or the entitlement of the media to report on those utterances", but added that it was "entirely understandable" that RTÉ had sought court clarification on this.
When giving written reasons for the injunction a few days later, Judge Binchy said "there was no allegation whatsoever of any misconduct or wrongdoing on the part of Mr O'Brien". Earlier O'Brien had defended himself in an Irish Times article, stating that he had been shocked that somebody took confidential files from a bank, tampered with them, and then leaked them, that he had done much to try to help the Irish economy and the stability of its banking system in recent years, that the 'throwing to the wolves' of decent Irish borrowers by institutions like NAMA had ruined many lives and led to suicides, and that he was being vilified to an unprecedented degree by enemies, competitors, publicity-seeking politicians, and social media cowards, for trying to defend his privacy.
On 17 June 2015, RTÉ published what it stated was "a curtailed version of the story RTÉ sought to publish last month. Two paragraphs of the original planned story cannot be published as they are still covered by the injunction granted to IBRC against RTÉ in May." The curtailed version was accompanied by an alleged "timeline of events". The omissions were not due to O'Brien's lawyers, but to objections by IBRC to publication of reported legal advice given to IBRC that was not already in the public domain.

Commission of Investigation into IBRC

On 10 June 2015, a Commission of Investigation was established to inquire into the wider issue of certain transactions of IBRC under the Commission of Investigation Order 2015 passed by Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann. This was partly as a result of controversy over the sale by IBRC of Siteserv to a company controlled by Denis O'Brien, and of complaints by Deputy Catherine Murphy that IBRC special liquidator Kieran Wallace, who had originally been asked to conduct an inquiry into such matters, could no longer credibly do so after he had joined with O'Brien in his [|above lawsuit against RTÉ].

Lawsuit against the country

On 16 June 2015 Counsel for O'Brien informed the High Court that he was suing the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, Ireland and the Attorney General over remarks made by Independent TD Catherine Murphy and Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty about his banking affairs in an alleged breach of parliamentary privilege, violating his constitutional rights and his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. The Oireachtas Committee on Procedures and Privileges had previously rejected O'Brien's claims that Deputy Murphy's allegations were a breach of parliamentary privilege.

Personal Life

In August 1997, O'Brien married Catherine Walsh, who helped Communicorp expand into the Czech Republic and who earlier was the head of marketing for Independent Radio Sales. The couple have four children.
In June 2000, O'Brien set up the Iris O'Brien Foundation, named after his mother, through which he coordinates many of his philanthropic efforts. In 2006, UCD awarded O'Brien an honorary doctorate.

Wealth and residences

As of February 2020, Forbes estimates O'Brien's wealth as approximately $3.2 billion.
Some time after his purchase of Quinta do Lago in 1998, but before Esat Telecom's sale to BT in 2000, O'Brien sold his home in Dublin and established a primary residence in Portugal. Media reports have suggested that the move was spurred by a then-existing exemption to the capital gains tax in the Irish-Portuguese tax treaty, which reportedly would have saved O'Brien about €63 million in taxes.
While considering the flotation of Digicel on the New York Stock Exchange, a March 2006 filing to the Companies Registration Office listed O'Brien's residential address as Sliema, Malta. Although O'Brien has remained silent about his change of address, media have speculated that the mediterranean island's lack of taxes on assets or income brought into the country was the primary incentive for the move.