O'Brien buys IN&M stake for €56.5m

Entrepreneur Denis O'Brien has spent nearly €56.5 million buying a 3 per cent stake in Independent News & Media, the company run and partly-owned by his long-standing business rival, Sir Anthony O'Reilly, writes  Jane O'Sullivan, Markets Correspondent

Mr O'Brien acquired 22.6 million shares in the publishing group, which he once accused of making "outrageous attacks" on him, last week.

In a statement to the Irish Stock Exchange yesterday, Independent News & Media confirmed the latest addition to their shareholder register. A spokesman for the company later welcomed Mr O'Brien's investment.

"Independent is one of the best growth prospects of any media organisation," the spokesman said.

"It offers a high-dividend yield and recently delivered a strong pre-close trading update. It's not surprising it's attracting interest in that regard."

But the reasons for Mr O'Brien's purchase of the stake in Independent, which is 26 per cent owned by its chairman and chief executive, Sir Anthony, remained unclear last night as he declined to comment on the transaction.

The entrepreneur, who became one of the richest men in the State when he netted €290 million from the sale of his Esat business to British Telecom, has locked horns with Sir Anthony over several high-profile business deals in recent years.

Most notably, Sir Anthony led the Valentia consortium which outbid Mr O'Brien's eIsland group to buy Eircom and subsequently take it private in 2001.

More recently, Eircom, which is still chaired by Sir Anthony following its return to the stock market two years ago, succeeded in its bid to buy Meteor after Mr O'Brien dropped out of the race for the mobile phone operator.

But in 1995, Sir Anthony was on the losing side when the consortium in which he was involved lost out to Mr O'Brien's Esat in the contest to secure the State's second mobile phone licence.

That deal has, however, come back to haunt Mr O'Brien, embroiling him in the long-running Moriarty tribunal which is investigating the awarding of the licence and generating significant negative publicity.

In an interview in The Irish Times two years ago, he attacked Sir Anthony's media and business interests.

He alleged that Independent News & Media's titles had made "outrageous attacks against me and my company".

Mr O'Brien, whose interests include the Caribbean mobile phone business, Digicel, and a controlling stake in Dublin talk station NewsTalk 106, has also been criticised in the past for avoiding tax by choosing to live in Portugal.

But the businessman, who chaired the Special Olympics World Games when they were held in Ireland in 2003, has defended his right to live where he chooses, arguing people have the right to invest and move their capital where they wish.