James Osborne strides across the lobby of A&L Goodbody’s impressive headquarters in Dublin’s docklands and offers a warm handshake before enquiring of the receptionist as to which room we’d be using.
He spent 12 years from 1982 as the young buck managing partner of the law firm but these days is a “consultant”. The firm is very much “part of my DNA”, he says.
He uses A&L’s offices from time to time to support a career that is now built around a string of directorships, notably as chairman of book retailer Eason, Monaghan Mushrooms and Centric Health. He is also a long-standing non-executive board member of Ryanair and fills a similar role with the Irish domiciled Australian building materials group James Hardie.
His certificate to practise law has long since lapsed though the skills he acquired through a long and distinguished legal career continue to frame his working life.
Osborne is a reluctant interviewee, or so he keeps saying. He’s honouring a commitment from many months back that he would do an interview to give his perspective on the remarkable in-fighting within Independent News & Media last year.
Osborne was appointed as non-executive chairman of INM in October 2011. The company was a mess. It was hopelessly overleveraged during the worst credit crunch in memory. Newspaper advertising and circulation had fallen like a stone in the recession, putting profits into reverse. The pension scheme was massively in the red and a major restructuring was needed.
To top it all, the company’s two major shareholders – Sir Anthony O’Reilly and Denis O’Brien – were at loggerheads. O’Brien wanted Gavin O’Reilly removed as chief executive and actions taken to address the company’s difficulties.
Within six months, Osborne had removed O’Reilly as CEO after deciding that a change at the top was urgently needed. His reward from O’Brien was to be unceremoniously axed as chairman at the company’s AGM on June 8th after O’Brien and Dermot Desmond voted against his re-election.
Osborne had clashed with Paul Connolly – one of two O’Brien nominees on the board of INM – over Connolly’s decision to pursue a legal action against the €1.87 million exit package paid to Gavin O’Reilly on April 19th. It was an unprecedented move by Connolly and Osborne told him that INM would pursue him for the legal costs if the High Court struck it down.
On April 26th, Osborne asked Connolly to resign from the board of INM after he initiated his legal challenge and the board recommended to shareholders that they should oppose Connolly’s re-election at the AGM.
The spat with Connolly sealed Osborne’s fate with O’Brien. On closing INM’s AGM in June, Osborne quipped that this concludes the meeting of “NOT Independent News Media”.
“Maybe it should have been described as the Never Independent Newspaper,” he says now.
Where did it all go wrong?
Osborne traces it back to Saturday, April 14th, when he says Denis O’Brien rang him and demanded that an article about him be pulled from the following day’s Sunday Independent.
“I said, ‘No, that’s not what I’m going to do’,” Osborne explains.
“It was an article that turned out to be pretty innocuous . . . about the biggest borrowers with Anglo and he was one of them.”
Osborne concedes that some of the Sunday Independent’s coverage of O’Brien was over the top. There was one weekend in early April 2012 when he counted the number of references in the paper to O’Brien and was shocked by the result.
“I made it my business to count the number of times Denis was referred to in the Sunday Independent and I counted 106 times. I think I’m right in saying that was just the main paper. I didn’t bother with the travel section. That was ridiculous.”
Did he make that point to the editor Anne Harris or the then INM chief executive Gavin O’Reilly?
“I made it to Gavin and I made it to Denis actually. I said I think that’s crazy. It was unbalanced journalism in a collective sense.”
Osborne insists that he had no prior knowledge of this coverage of O’Brien’s business affairs.
“It was published and I read it like everyone else. The chairman doesn’t, and I don’t believe he should either, get Friday’s ideas of what’s going to go in the newspaper.”
Why did he take the job?
“I was approached on the basis that they wanted an independent chairman, but I’m not sure either party wanted an independent chairman. I don’t think the O’Reillys wanted an independent chairman and, as is perfectly obvious from the results , that Denis O’Brien didn’t want an independent chairman. So on that basis I wasn’t the right guy for the job because I was always going to be independent.”
How does he feel now about his ousting?
“There were certain things about it that were unpleasant. I found the action by Paul Connolly quite extraordinary. The basis of his action was pretty questionable and then the settlement of it was even more extraordinary,” he says.
On July 20th, just before Mr Justice Brian McGovern was about to give his verdict, INM and Connolly informed the court that they had reached a settlement. McGovern’s verdict was consigned to the bin.
He is also sore about the manner of his dismissal as chairman. “The bit that really stuck in my craw was that neither his nominees on the board nor Denis had the decency to inform me in advance of the meeting of what they were going to do.
“Desmond had. In fairness to Dermot, he said, ‘Look, if you pay any money to Gavin O’Reilly I’ll vote against you’. And I said he has to get compensation, that’s what the law says. But he was completely clear from day one.”
Did you not ask them their intentions before the meeting?
“No, I didn’t ask them.”
Why?
“The way the vote was going to go was the way the vote was going to go. I looked upon myself as an independent chairman and if somebody who at one stage was a 22 per cent shareholder and was then a 29.9 per cent shareholder wanted to exercise his votes in some way that’s corporate democracy. That’s the way it works.
“There are a lot of aspects of Denis’s criticism of how the newspaper was run that I would agree with. I just don’t happen to like the way he set about executing me. But that’s democracy.”
Osborne stands over the compensation paid to O’Reilly.
“To get the support of the board, a certain level of remuneration was required, which may seem strange but that’s the way they were.
“We will never know if he would have got that level of compensation had he sued the company for wrongful dismissal. The company didn’t want to be spending all its time in the High Court. It’s very time consuming for executives, and costly.”
Who does he think is in control of INM now?
“O’Brien is running the show. He’s got the chairman and you can reach your own conclusions after that.”
How would he have tackled INM’s woes if he were still in situ?
“Ultimately, do a deal with the banks. That’s what you have to do.”
And sell the South African newspaper business?
“I think South Africa has to go. There will always be an Independent, regardless of what happens in this process. The Independent group and newspaper will remain in some shape or form.”
Does it have a future as a plc?
“It shouldn’t be a plc. It’s too small and look at the costs of being a plc. There are regulatory costs, people on the board costing €50,000 each. It should be a private company and it doesn’t need to go through the public profile of periodic results.”
The mystery is why he took the job given that there was no secret about the discord between the O’Reilly and O’Brien camps, and INM’s financial difficulties were plainly obvious.
“I thought it was interesting. Yeah, it was a viper’s nest but if you were put off by that you wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. What was the worst that could happen? It wouldn’t work out. So what?
“Does it worry me? No, I’m still reasonably young. I’ve learnt from it. Some of it wasn’t particularly pleasant. Would it put me off doing it again? No. I don’t mind a bit of an oul’ scrap every now and then. That’s me.”
Osborne says he knew O’Brien before taking the job but “not well” – “everybody meets Denis in some shape or form”.
He wasn’t even a regular Indo reader. “No, not really, no. It was an interesting puzzle . . . and the number of opportunities here with companies like that are few enough for guys like me.”
Born in Plymouth in the south of England, his Donegal father was an engineer in the British navy, which meant stints living in Malta and Hong Kong among other places.
He was educated in Belfast before studying law in Trinity. In his final year in college, he sailed with two Americans from Scotland to Tobago in the Caribbean on a boat with no engine.
“It was seriously hard work . . . three hours steering followed by six hours off.”
His legal career began in 1973 and in 1979 he was dispatched by AL Goodbody to New York to open an office in the city. In 1982, he got a tap on the shoulder to become managing partner at just 32.
“I was asked to do it. It had never even entered my head. I didn’t think somebody aged 32 would get it,” he says.
This was, he says modestly, in spite of him not being “particularly ambitious”.
In fact, he almost accepted a job from the late Tony Ryan at his Shannon-based GPA aircraft leasing company.
“He wanted someone to go and open an office in North America and I was living in New York. I met him because I acted for a number of investors into GPA . . . I said I wasn’t interested because I was coming home to be managing partner. ”
At 63, Osborne has the air of a man enjoying life. He’s financially secure and is busy with a number of directorships that he appears to enjoy.
“I enjoy doing what I do,” he says. “In so far as I’m able to I want to continue. I see no reason to give up. I feel pretty fit. The old brain is still alright. I can remember your name. I think the day is probably Tuesday. Hah.
“I love watching racing. I do like to shuffle down to Ranelagh, walk in to Paddy Power and put a tenner on a horse. I love a pint of stout, too. My life is pretty ordinary really.”
Before we close off the interview, I ask Osborne if he had his time over with INM what would he do differently.
“Not a hell of a lot because you know what, you can’t be sitting at home ringing up editors to pull articles. Once you start doing that it gets ridiculous. At that stage, you are nothing more than a puppet and that’s not what I describe as good corporate governance. It’s not the school I come from.”
CV James Osborne
Name: James Osborne
Age: 63
Lives: Ranelagh
Family: Lives with his partner Patricia and their six year-old daughter. He also has two adult children from his marriage.
Hobbies: Reading, tennis, sailing and golf.
Something we might expect: He flies Ryanair when possible. "I think it's part of the job . If you sit on the board you should fly Ryanair to see how it's done. Ryanair gets dog's abuse in this country, unjustifiably."
Something that might surprise:He dabbles in watercolours. "It's so much fun. I do it mainly when I'm sailing."
In the news: James Osborne on ...
Sir Anthony O'Reilly"I met him post the job. His thoughts were we should borrow more money. I told him that I didn't think that was very likely. According to him, there were plenty of banks but I couldn't name them for you. There was no chance. I'd never met him before. He was extremely charming, very welcoming. The concept of further gearing in INM, which was overgeared anyway, was nonsense. He gave me the impression that he didn't like Denis very much."
Gavin O'Reilly"Gavin was in the newspaper for a long time. Gavin had a lot of good qualities. In different times he would have been a reasonably good chief executive but this was a time for cost reduction. Serious, serious cost reduction, which I think is what has been happening since and is what would have happened if I had stayed."
Ryanair and Michael O'Leary"Ryanair is without any doubt one of the most successful companies that this country has ever produced. CRH is a great company, Kerry is a great company but Ryanair is something else. Michael is very low key, family man, knows what he likes. He's not in any way flashy. I have huge admiration for him."
