Sean Quinn: We Salute You!
Apr 8th, 2010 by Conor McCabe
Or so said Shane Ross in 2007.
Here’s what Shane wrote. Emphasis is mine:
State monopolies are on the run.It is here, in the new Ireland, that we have bred fresh business heroes such as Sean Quinn.
Last week, Sean Quinn bought Bupa in a lightning deal. He thus dealt the would-be state monopoly VHI a series of blows:
# Blow number one: Sean Quinn, entrepreneur, was about to challenge VHI head-to-head.
# Blow number two: Quinn was starting today. Bupa’s efficient operation would continue seamlessly. Vincent’s hopes that thousands of Bupa customers would be marooned without an insurer were dashed. The delicious prospect of panic-stricken Bupa punters diving into the arms of the nanny state’s VHI had vanished overnight. Sean had bought Bupa’s entire book. Competition was back - this time in spades.
# Blow number three: Sean was promising to freeze all Bupa’s prices for a year. VHI’s are set to increase. Such nefarious activity is known as competition. It should be outlawed.
# Blow number four: Quinn’s initiative was probably within the law.
The semi-state had seen paradise regained, then snatched from its jaws by an interloper at the 11th hour.Being under attack from competition at home was bad enough, but offstage VHI was fighting a rearguard action. While the VHI’s domestic domination was weakening by the hour, it was under siege from another hero of Irish business out in Europe. Charlie McCreevy is threatening court action against Ireland for allowing the VHI to trade under more favourable rules than the competition.
The VHI is privileged. It is not forced to keep as much money in its reserves as Vivas or Bupa. Indeed, it is subject to no solvency demands. McCreevy believes this is unfair to its competitors. So if Bupa and Vivas gain an edge because they do not insure as many older customers, they lose out because they are forced to keep huge sums in reserves. VHI suffers no such albatross; its antics are state-guaranteed. It cannot go bust.
The market is distorted in both directions. The semi-state wins on the swings what it loses on the roundabouts. But it wins by a mile as the biggest whinger about the practices of its private sector opponents.
Sean makes business buzz. He challenged the CRH monopoly - and succeeded.
Sean was fed up with paying excessive insurance on his lorries, so he founded Quinn Direct and built the most successful insurance business in Ireland.
Sean bought 20 per cent of Conor O’Kelly’s live-wire stockbrokers, NCB (once owned by Dermot Desmond, but where the enterprise culture still survives), and has since seen them challenge stuffy establishment brokers Davy and Goodbody.
Two weeks ago Sean bought 5 per cent of an Irish bank. Not blue-chip BoI or AIB. Sean targeted the anti-establishment Anglo Irish Bank - and spent €570m buying its shares.
This genius, who started his business life selling sand and gravel from his family’s Fermanagh back garden, has combined being a champion of the customer with making a mint.A logical step for a man with heretical instincts, a healthy force for revolution in Irish business.
This week we should salute a businessman who managed to rescue 300 Bupa staff from the dole, 450,000 customers from the clutches of the VHI - and the Government from an embarrassing lack of competition.
Good work….
The ‘anti-establishment’ Anglo-Irish. Makes them sound like Allen Ginsburg or something.
It was Donagh who brought the article to my attention. We were just talking on the phone a few minutes ago and we thought, well, it’s too good NOT to be a post.
But yeah, amazing how the language has changed. The risk-takers, the ones who know no fear. the TRUE heroes of this new Ireland.
All the hardship aside, it is quite funny when you think about it.
Business journalists waxed eloquent during the Celtic tiger boom. The newspapers got fat on property advertising and the heroes of enterprise were feted. Good on you for outing Shane Ross, who poses as the people’s friend on certain financial issues.
This highlighted section is hugely ironic alright. However I’m not convinced that Sean Quinn is the vilain here. The media have put a spin on it that Quinn brought down Anglo, but let’s face it he would never have invested in the company if he knew that the share price was artificially inflated by fraudulent banking practices. It’s obvious that even when the share price was falling he was being told it will be ok by advisors/bankers and chased his losses. Losses he claims will all be repaid in full if he keeps his company.
In my opinion if the Quinn Group has enough cash to cover claims but the regulator wants more of a cushion then why not let Quinn fill that cushion out of the 1million a day cash that the business is generating?
We have enough businesses failing here and enough tax payer burden, why are we trying to cause another collapse?
Here’s one of those angry men and author of Who Really Runs Ireland Matt Cooper on Sean Quinn today in the Irish Examiner:
And here’s the 2008 Sunday Times piece.
And, more importantly
Facts don’t change. Only the way of interpreting them.
Lay off shane, he is the business editor of the sindo, so at the time this deal went through he would have felt compelled to write about it. In light of the picture he paints of Quinn it is of an outlaw who goes his own way and takes the market on. At the time Anglo was defo anti establishment but Ross was not to know then how it was thriving by living by the seat of its pants.
As an aside a friend told me something that shocked me with regards to Anglo.
He is in the law game in banking, up till quite recently anglo didn’t have a law dept and just rode roughshod over all the banking regulations. The regulator got on their case and they employed one solicitor to appease him, but compare this to a bank I worked for in the uk that had a team of 40 in the legal dept.
[…] the awed reverence went beyond media shitheads like Kenny, or Shane Ross or the latterday convert Matt Cooper. Even Fintan O’Toole described him in Ship of Fools as […]