ONE OF Ireland’s best-known London-based business figures, Shane O’Neill, of Liberty Global, died in a London hospital on Saturday, following a 15-month long battle with the degenerative brain disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob.
Highly regarded and liked, Mr O’Neill is survived by his wife, Sheelagh, and three children, Kate, Ellen and Jamie, along with his parents, Noel and Margaret, brother, Brian, and sisters, Jacqueline and Sandra-Jane.
During a successful career, Mr O’Neill worked with KPMG in Dublin, before moving to Australia to work with Macquarie bank.
Later, he joined Goldman Sachs and built up its operation in Australia, before moving with Goldman to the US and London.
He was headhunted to join cable company UPC and stayed with it after it ran into financial difficulties and was taken over by Liberty Global. Mr O’Neill became one of the key executives around legendary founder John Malone, and led Liberty’s purchase of the Parisian cable TV system, which yielded a €1 billion profit.
Later, he played a vital role in UPC’s purchase of Irish cable companyCablelink. He led a €1 billion investment to offer customers broadband, telephone and cable and improve customer services.
In recent months, Mr O’Neill spoke often of his pride in the Chello Foundation, a charity he set up that brought top-flight business skills to international aid development, which has put 3,000 sub-Saharan African children into full-time education.
Mr O’Neill said he had first noticed a problem in December 2010 during a weekly five-a-side football match, jokingly saying that his first touch on the ball was no longer “like Cesc Fàbregas”.
By February last, his balance had been impaired and this was followed by a diagnosis of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob, known to be passed on in medical operations.
The 50-year-old, though confined to a wheelchair, continued to work as chief strategy officer of Liberty – the largest cable company outside America, with 18 million customers in 14 countries.
Last August, Mr O’Neill, cared for by his family for much of his illness at their home in Richmond in London, finalised his last deal. It brought a Bosnian cable operation into Chellomedia, the arm that he built from nothing.
