I posted a short piece detailing the fact that Tony O'Reilly, chief executive of Independent News & Media, was fighting off yet another incursion into his company by a rival Irish businessman, Denis O'Brien, who had spent €40m (£28.6m) to increase his stake to 14.5%.
O'Brien's intentions remain unclear. He has been persistently critical of INM's corporate governance. He has called on O'Reilly to resign. He has urged INM to sell off The Independent and Independent on Sunday on the grounds that they lose money. He has poured scorn on make-up and size of the board.
He is now INM's second-largest shareholder, but O'Reilly's grip on the company looks impregnable. He not only holds more than 26% himself. He controls even more through family and loyal friends. Therefore, you might think that it would be good tactics to ignore O'Brien altogether as he makes increasingly annoying demands.
But the corporate insurgent has clearly got under the skin of INM executives, not least the chief operating officer, Gavin O'Reilly, one of Tony's sons. In an interview with the Dublin-based Sunday Business Post he made a personal attack O'Brien, who has become a billionaire through a series of telecoms deals. He is also a media owner, with extensive radio interests in Ireland through a company called Communicorp.
Gavin claimed that O'Brien had very little experience of running a publicly quoted company other than briefly at Esat Telecom, where only four of the 24 directors were independent members. He accused O'Brien of failing to appreciate the subtleties required to run a media business. And he said that INM's radio interests in Australia made more in profits than O'Brien's radio business takes in annual revenue.
"He [O'Brien] has been good at building up capital in businesses, but running and growing a business on through in terms of making a net profit is an optional extra," said Gavin. "Show me the deficiencies. We are growing revenue and profit every year."
He thought O'Brien was critical of INM because ''he is hostile to the editorial coverage of him in titles owned by Independent''.
Furthermore, as Henry McDonald writes in today's Guardian, an unnamed INM spokesman also rejected O'Brien's demand that the Independent titles be sold off. He said O'Reilly would "fiercely resist" such a proposal despite the heavy losses because the two papers are "substantial calling cards" in INM's campaign to acquire new media titles across the world, particularly in South Africa and India.
The spokesman also referred to O'Brien as a "dissident shareholder" and questioned the validity of his criticism by pointing to the fact that O'Brien's empire also contains "many loss-making companies".
I can understand O'Reilly's frustration at the continual needling by O'Brien. But I wonder if it is wise to engage in a war of words with a man who, as far as one can see, has no hope whatsoever of disturbing O'Reilly's position or effecting any change on INM's commercial strategy.
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