Profit was pure luck - Desmond

Financier Mr Dermot Desmond said it was "pure luck" that he made almost £1 million after Feltrim plc, the company originally run by Mr Conor Haughey, was taken over.

When the company was renamed Minmet after the takeover, the shares rose in value and Mr Desmond went on to make a profit of £936,705 through the sale of shares worth £1,250,928. He has a current shareholding of £3,699.

Mr Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal, suggested that what turned good for Mr Desmond was Minmet and not Feltrim.

Mr Desmond said he would never have been in Minmet without Feltrim and it was a "chicken and egg situation".

Mr Healy said he made a profit out of a company that was a "different animal" to the one created by Mr Haughey. The financier replied "it was pure luck".

He invested when approached by Mr Haughey, in July 1990 after the initial share placement in March that year. He bought 83,333 shares for £21,041 in Feltrim plc of which Mr Haughey was managing director.

In August 1991 he gave a loan of £55,000 to Feltrim plc. In April 1992 this loan was converted into 1,100,000 shares in Feltrim plc. Since then his involvement in share issues was for a total value of £216,881.

Mr Healy suggested he had invested for reasons "prompted by your relationship with Conor Haughey mainly and not by any hard-headed business instincts".

Mr Desmond said he was "certainly not putting money into Feltrim to lose it and I wasn't loaning money to Feltrim to lose it. But I certainly wanted to be supportive of Conor Haughey."

Mr Healy suggested that he made the loan to help out Conor Haughey because of his association with him.

Mr Desmond said he was "glad to help out people but I don't help out people by burning pound notes at the same time by helping out".

Mr Healy said there was no rationale in helping out a company facing liquidation unless there was some other, perhaps personal reason. He said he would "prefer the company be liquidated and give Conor Haughey £55,000 to do what he wants afterwards rather than give it to the creditors".

The chairman of the tribunal, Mr Justice Moriarty, said that as events transpired he had "come close to quadrupling your money and you still have some investment but things didn't seem to be that rosy at the outset".

Mr Desmond: "Absolutely".

He agreed he was approached by Mr Conor Haughey to invest in 1990 but said he had discussions with Mr Haughey and Mr Bernie Cahill. He could not contradict evidence by Mr Cahill that he was uninvolved in asking Mr Desmond to make the £55,000 loan, but asked if he accepted it, he said: "He'd have to explain what he was doing in my office talking about Feltrim."

Earlier, Mr Oliver Murphy confirmed he gave £5,000 to the Brian Lenihan fund.