Sir Anthony O’Reilly: The spectacular insolvency of Ireland’s most prominent Celtic Tiger

Ireland’s economic crisis has claimed many victims; none, perhaps, as dazzling as Sir Anthony O’Reilly, the former rugby star who became the first outsider to head Heinz, and built a global newspaper empire.

Ireland's economic crisis has claimed many victims; none, perhaps, as dazzling as Sir Anthony O'Reilly, the former rugby star who became the first outsider to head Heinz, and built a global newspaper empire. But the downfall of Ireland's most prominent Celtic Tiger now looks complete, says The Guardian. Last month, O'Reilly found himself in a Dublin court "begging a judge for more time to pay off debts that, in his glorious, glittering past, would have seemed like small beer".To no avail.

Declared "insolvent" by the court, O'Reilly must now scrape together funds to repay Allied Irish Banks a personal debt of €22.6m. He owes a further €195m to more patient creditors and, with a fire sale of his Irish properties already underway, is contemplating declaring himself bankrupt. "The judgment drew gasps of horror from O'Reilly's fellow Irish tycoons," notes the FT. The financier Dermot Desmond slammed AIB "for not showing the same forbearance with its famous debtor" as the government had recently shown to the bank. Mixed in with the sympathy, however, was puzzlement. How had O'Reilly fallen so far, so fast (see below)?

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