HOME PAYMENTS, the failed Dublin bill-pay and budgeting company, is a shareholder in the wireless broadband company Imagine, founded by well-known entrepreneur Seán Bolger.
Mr Bolger, a close family friend of Eamonn O’Connor, a director and shareholder of Home Payments, said he and Mr O’Connor were involved in property ventures but they were unconnected to the bill-paying company.
Home Payments’ shareholding in Imagine would have a value that could be realised, he said.
However, he had not considered whether the other shareholders in Imagine would buy out Home Payments’ shareholding following that firm’s liquidation, he said.
Mr Bolger described the company’s shareholding in Imagine as “negligible”. He said that he had no involvement with Home Payments.
Mr O’Connor is also a shareholder personally in Mr Bolger’s broadband company.
Imagine is best known for the high-profile television advertisements for its WiMax technology wireless broadband service.
Mr Bolger and Mr O’Connor are directors of a company called Macwood Developments, which shares the same registered address with Home Payments in Rathgar.
The company had accumulated losses of €362,000 at the end of May 2010, according to its most recently filed accounts.
Imagine Communications Group Limited made a loss of €9.7 million on a turnover of €81 million in 2009, company records show.
The business had accumulated losses of €40.7 million at the end of that year.
The company, which is also involved in the telecoms business, purchased Irish Broadband in 2008 for €47 million.
Imagine attracted media attention three years earlier when it handed out free €10 notes to pedestrians on Grafton Street in Dublin as a publicity stunt to launch its broadband service.
