DENIS SHARES SOME HARD-EARNED BUSINESS WISDOM

villageAugust/September 

SATIRE DENIS SHARES SOME HARD-EARNED BUSINESS WISDOM

Dear Dermot,

INM gobshites. Badly run with no internet strategy. My mini-Afghanistan, basically. Bloody Sir Anthony blew up the group. Everyone loves him, bloody

poetry-reading patrician. Daddy always told him “it’s easy to win but it’s hard to lose”. Triumph and disaster, that sort of thing. But check-mate to

Denis O’Brien, as Business Plus put it. Get used to it, has-bean.

So all in all I thought you went oﬀ the rails saying he was a role model. Actually, in fairness, you said he was a “role model for myself” (myself, a good

word for underscoring the size of an ego) so we knew that you weren’t exactly putting yourself down. And when you said he was “one of the outstand-

ing businessmen of several generations”, I think everyone knew the space you were creating. You and I, sir. Number One in Ireland and – whatever you

are (, Forbes, I seem to recall!).

“Mr Denis O’Brien – Apology”. It even smelled good. Though not sure there wasn’t something funny going on.

Not a newspaper man so can’t be sure but seemed they could have been apologising for the correction, not the

bloody mistake. Group editor, Stephen Rae, no better man, stopped the print presses after he was tipped oﬀ by

a senior journalist that that woman had written that in practice I control the newspaper. I mean what would she,

merely the editor of the ﬂagship title, know about that anyway.

Campbell Spray did what he was told, one in the centre of the beady eye for Anne Harris. The Phoenix claimed

she’d agreed severance terms and would leave, after a one-year truce with myself, in October but yar wan was

unfortunately right: “the whole story is a lie”.

Still the whole thing reﬂects so well on me. Honour and Nous. In April last year INM got our banks to write

oﬀ €m of an overall debt of €m, in exchange for a small shareholding. Huzzah. Dermot and Desmond,

d’Artagnan and Aramis. Grizzly bears of commerce. They can add that to my €m acquisition of the Siteserv

Group where IBRC, now in liquidation, wrote oﬀ €m of the €m it was owed and my move on the Topaz

Group earlier this year which involved the same fellas writing oﬀ slightly more than half of the €m they were

owed. My purchase of three major Irish businesses over the past two years involved total bank write-oﬀs of more

than €m: €m, Dr Desmond. Congrats btw on the D Econ and good to see the Nordies remembered Drico

the same day. Yours is from Queen’s, mine from UCD. Mere baubles but handy for defusing that middle-of-the-

night sense of well tribunalisation.

Sometimes you make me swoon. Our people need us and you just can’t stop the wisdom of the ages ﬂowing

from great businessmen: “Life is not about the things that you leave. Life is about the experience that you leave

and the example that you set. Money is replaceable, honour is not”, you said at Queen’s. Fair play.But like the pro

you are you made it clear you haven’t gone all SIPTU. As to austerity I can only agree with your key insight that

“the Government has done a great job and I wouldn’t dare to advise them”.

Noted what you said about beany’s philanthropy. As I always say if you don’t do something decent in a coun-

try where you make a substantial proﬁt you’re a gobshite. Clinton. Never forget mother Protestant do-gooder.

Frontline Defenders. FAI. Green Jersey. My people. k annually.

Not too much mind you. Digicel subscribers in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, pay $

for our service. Out of an average per capita income of $. Not a bloody ATM. Hard edge. Green Jersey.

Digicel having barney with internet telephony companies, like Viber and some regulators, in the Carribean. Trying to get fees out of them for provid-

ing voice call services using our data network and had to block some of them when they didn’t play ball. Gobshites. And ﬂogged  percent of Digicel’s

Burmese business to the gobdaws who won the mobile licence there. Shoulda done what we did in Ireland, of course.

Talking of defunct billionaires and philanthropy, planning to give Bernard McNamara, just emerging from bankruptcy in the UK, the contract for

the construction of that new oﬃce block on the southeast corner of St Stephen’s Green, the site of the former Canada House. Think of the loyalty I’ll

get from the old fox. New tactic, bag the old geysers when they’re down and suck them in: doing it for Cowen; did it for Seanie Fitz, and now Bernard.

Loyalty. It’s the only thing. Green Jersey.

Busy.

Recruitment ﬁrm China HR, owned by me and Leslie (he got a quarter), has announced a €m investment programme. We’re the largest Irish-

owned employer in China with , staﬀ in  cities across China.

Former head of asset management at the National Asset Management Agency, John Mulcahy – whom I know from Mount Juliet, has just begun advis-

ing me on the overseas property empire.

Most of my stuﬀ is in Portugal and the Caribbean.

Revenue Commissioners have failed to stop my appeal of their ﬁnding that a tax return  years ago was insuﬃcient due to the bit relating to my

exchange of shares in Esat Telecom being completed in a negligent manner. I can now proceed with a case arguing the Circuit Court should fully hear

my appeal. High Court, ring of steel of course.

Got my hands on the company that publishes ‘Buy and Sell’, Buzreel, after a bids process conducted through the Supreme Court. And dumped €.m

worth of Aer Lingus shares. No idea what O’Leary doing there: Tony Ryan always preferred Denis.

But enough of me. Congrats in order for snaﬄing another million shares in Mountain Province Diamonds (MPD), boosting your stake up to an impres-

sive . per cent – for about €.m. MPD owns almost half of the world’s richest new diamond mine, which MPD estimates will generate net cash ﬂow

of about $m annually for at least the ﬁrst ﬁve years. Nice one.

More importantly, I see you installed a nice Norwegian manager (I wonder what phone service he uses!) in Celtic and UEFA on your side. Green and

White Jersey. And delighted you enjoyed your recent pro-am with Rampant Rory and his dad at Fota. Only downside according to the IT was that Michael

Flatley got diverted and couldn’t join you. Class.

Denis.

even smelled good