SHANE O'NEILL: SHANE O'NEILL, who has died at his home in Richmond, Surrey, at the age of 50 from the degenerative brain illness Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, was an outstandingly successful Irish businessman on the international stage. He was diagnosed with the disease in May last year and advised that he had only a short time to live.
Born in Cork in 1961 but raised in south Dublin, he attended school at Willow Park and Blackrock College. Although a talented scrumhalf, he was also an enthusiastic soccer player, something that went against the grain at the school at that time. He was a keen supporter of Leeds United.
He graduated in law from Trinity College Dublin, where he met his wife, Sheelagh. They married in 1990.
On leaving university, he turned to accountancy, qualifying with Stokes Kennedy Crowley (now KPMG). It was 1987 and jobs were in short supply in Ireland so he headed for Australia, cold-calling investment banks looking for work. Macquarie gave him the nod and he spent four years there before joining Goldman Sachs, working for the firm in New York, Sydney and London.
His time in investment banking made him a millionaire. He left Goldman Sachs in 1999, joining Liberty Global, a listed company in Colorado.
The decision to switch, he said, was prompted by being “yanked” from a family holiday in Spain to do a business pitch in Dublin. “It just completely disrupted the holiday and I thought I’ve got to change this. I was just jaded from investment banking.”
His role with Liberty involved overseeing its strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate development activities. He was also in charge of Chellomedia, a Liberty Europe-based media content company.
He was the architect of Liberty’s acquisitions of the NTL and Chorus businesses in Ireland, which have since been merged into UPC. To date, Liberty has invested more than €1 billion in the Irish business. It was also an investor in City Channel, the TV station founded by David Harvey. These investments were a matter of great pride to him.
He was a philanthropist as well as a businessman. He was the founder and driving force behind the Chello Foundation, a charity that supports Aids orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Irish arm of the charity has raised about €250,000 for the orphans and helped to educate more than 5,000 children in the region.
Outside business, he helped to front the successful “We Belong” campaign for a Yes vote in the second referendum in Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty in 2009.
That year, he also attended, at his own expense, the Farmleigh brainstorming event for Irish diaspora hosted by the government. He was a board member of the National Treasury Management Agency. Those closest to him said he bore his illness bravely. He made careful preparations to settle his business and personal affairs and remained active throughout.
He wrote his memoirs, recorded an album and played some pub gigs with friends.
He also travelled widely with his family after the diagnosis, making numerous trips to Ireland, spending time on a boat in Croatia and taking his son Jamie to watch Liverpool play at Anfield. A funeral service was held yesterday in Richmond, and a funeral Mass will also be held at 11.30am in the Church of the Assumption in Dalkey on Monday, after which he will be buried at Deans Grange Cemetery.
He is survived by his wife Sheelagh, his daughters Kate and Ellen, and his some Jamie.
Shane O’Neill: born April 29th, 1961; died February 18th, 2012