Boom helped O'Regan's rise in pub trade

Hugh O'Regan was a doyen of the pub trade but later investments caused his difficulties, writes SUZANNE LYNCH.

ONE OF the doyens of the pub and nightclub business in the 1990s, Hugh O’Regan was best-known as the founder of the Thomas Read Group.

He began his career studying engineering at Trinity College, Dublin, but left without finishing his degree. He joined AIB and completed an Economics and English degree at night. In 1988 he left AIB to study law in Rathmines, but left after one year to work in Gunne’s auctioneers.

It was around this time that his mother died (O’Regan’s father had died when he was four). The family home was sold, leaving the four sons with €19,000 each. With this money, he bought a house in Rathmines and later moved to Sandymount, which left him well positioned to benefit from spiralling house prices.

It was against this house that he secured the loan for his first pub, Flannery’s in Temple Bar, in 1988. He bought the pub with his brother for €190,460, just as the city-centre area was being rejuvenated.

O’Regan swiftly added to his pub interests, opening Thomas Reads, The Crane and Hogans during the early 1990s. In 1994 he netted €2.54 million when he sold a €63,486 option he had over a site in Smithfield, a sale which brought him to public attention. The windfall allowed him to invest in more pubs, including Pravda, Life, the Budda Bar in Blanchardstown, Searsons and the Bailey in Dublin, and O’Riada’s in Galway. His group also won licences to operate bars at Dublin Airport.

His investments weren’t always successful, however. In 2000 he embarked on a failed bid for Capital Bars. Also around this time – the peak of the dotcom boom – he set up bartrader.com with Fintan Wallace. An ambitious plan, it aimed to bring discount bulk buying into the drinks business and consolidate publicans’ purchasing power through an internet marketplace. Guinness opposed the plan however, and, threatened with legal action, O’Regan abandoned the project having invested almost €2 million.

From 2002, moves to sell the Thomas Read Group began. O’ Regan entered negotiations with financier Paul Connolly, who initially purchased 60 per cent of the group, with a promise to buy the remaining 40 per cent. A protracted legal entanglement followed, which involved O’Regan taking a High Court case against Bank of Ireland in 2005.

The Thomas Read Group was finally sold to a consortium involving Mark Leavey and Simon Kelly, son of developer Paddy Kelly, in a €30 million deal in 2005. Mr O’ Regan retained the holding company, Thomas Read Holdings, one of whose subsidiaries operates the Morrison hotel.

He also invested in other businesses such as Kilternan Golf and Country Club in south Co Dublin and 8 St Stephen’s Green which he aimed to convert into a private members’ club.

To many, O’Regan got out when the going was good, securing the sale of the Thomas Read Group’s chain of bars at the height of the boom, but his investment in Kilternan and Stephen’s Green – the businesses at the centre of Sunday’s liquidation proceedings – precipitated his recent difficulties.

He is also a board member of Trinity Foundation, a charity which supports TCD’s educational, research and outreach programmes.