Sweeney holding firm trebles profits

Galway businessman John Sweeney, a big shareholder in the historic Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, has trebled annual pretax profits at his oil, property and hotel empire to €6.33 million.

The owner of Sweeney Oil and numerous other investments reveals in new Companies Office filings that revenues in his combined business interests approached €150 million in the year to February 2006.

Prominent in Galway but less well known on the national stage, Mr Sweeney has been in pursuit of a large-scale investment opportunity for some time.

Advised by IBI Corporate Finance, he was an underbidder last year to Topaz Energy in the race for Statoil's Irish distribution business, which sold for more than €200 million. He was also outbid by Topaz a year earlier when it bought Shell's Irish oil business for €160 million.

Mr Sweeney's participation in these sales suggests he has access to significant wealth and credit.

His holding company Black Shore Holdings saw its turnover rise 55 per cent to €147.51 million in the most recent financial period, new accounts show.

Oil interests remain dominant in the business, with revenues on the rise to €97.02 million from €78.51 million. The business has more than a dozen company-owned filling stations and a big home-heating oil operation.

Sweeney Oil is a defendant in ongoing criminal proceedings that arise from a Competition Authority investigation into an alleged cartel in the home heating oil business in Galway city and county.

The same Black Shore Holdings accounts show that property sales from Mr Sweeney's significant portfolio provided revenues of €37.43 million for the business.

Like other property investors, he is known to buy and hold property and sell it. Freehold land and buildings had a net book value of €75.53 million and investment properties had a net book value of €36.72 million last February.

Hotel sales are believed to be listed as "other sales" in the Black Shore accounts. These rose to €13.06 million from €7.57 million. There was no contribution from the Shelbourne, which closed in March 2005 for a two-year revamp. The hotel is scheduled to reopen next month.

As a one-third owner of the Shelbourne, Mr Sweeney has a big exposure to the huge rise in its restoration costs, which climbed to some €90 million from a budgeted €50 million. The other owners are developers Bernard McNamara and Gerry O'Reilly, property surveyor David Courtney, and hotelier John Gallagher.

Mr Sweeney owns the Marriott Johnstown House Hotel and Spa in Co Meath, the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Galway and the Clifden Station House Hotel. He also owns 50 per cent of the Holiday Inn in Killarney, Co Kerry.