Playing the green card

Current Account must admit that it was difficult to keep a straight face watching Mr Denis O'Brien on television, wrapping himself in a green flag and railing against the asset stripping that Sir Anthony O'Reilly, Mr George Soros and their pals in Goldman Sachs might be planning against Eircom.

It was all a bit reminiscent of Irish Distillers's famous "Keep the spirit Irish" slogan when it was fighting off Grand Met during the famous IDG takeover battle a dozen years ago. Back then, Mr Richard Burrows was successful in making sure IDG did not end up in the hands of the Saxon invaders at Grand Met. Instead, the very French Mr Pernod Ricard ended up owning IDG. So much for keeping the spirit Irish!

Since then IDG and Mr Burrows have both flourished, with Jameson an integral part of Pernod's international stable of brands while Mr Burrows is joint number one at the French giant.

But back to Mr O'Brien (resident of Quinta do Lago in the Algarve), the man who promises to defend Eircom shareholders, customers and employees against the onslaught from Sir Anthony (occasional resident of Lyford Cay in the Bahamas) and his band of venture capitalist friends.

At least, we know who is involved in the O'Reilly consortium and the financial clout they have. We don't have any idea who is backing Mr O'Brien.

He has said the debt funding is in place for a bid for the Eircom fixed-line business, but a bid of this scale will also need a large injection of equity.

Where is this equity finance for an O'Brien bid going to come from? We still don't have an answer to that one.

Current Account has no view yet on whether an O'Brien bid, an O'Reilly bid or even a Desmond bid will be better for Eircom and its various stakeholders. But Mr O'Brien - the man largely responsible for selling Esat to British Telecom - will need a more persuasive argument than waving the green flag and portraying himself as a protector of Eircom against foreign aggression.