BOOK REVIEW: CIARAN HANCOCK reviews The Unsinkable Entrepreneur by Enda O'Coineen; Kilcullen
Irish Times
ENDA O'COINEEN is not one to pass up an obvious moneymaking opportunity. As a key player in bringing the Volvo Ocean Race jamboree to Galway and an avid sailor, what better time to publish an updated version of his autobiography? In it he details the painstaking process of getting the multimillion-euro boat race to Galway and putting an Irish entry into the water.
O'Coineen isn't just an entrepreneur, he's also a philanthropist and, fittingly, any profits from the book will be donated to the Ocean Youth Trust Ireland Charity, which he helped to found and which operates two sail training vessels for young people.
O'Coineen explains how true entrepreneurs don't hoard their wealth. They have such self-belief that ''if the proverbial dung were to hit the fan'' they could make it all back again. Instead, they circulate their money to other ventures and good causes.
Hailing from Galway, O'Coineen admits to being a rebel as a child and was expelled from secondary school after failing to apologise for a trick played on a teacher.
He kept this rather important detail from his parents for three months. Each morning he would troupe off as usual but, instead of going to school, would head to the docks or a rowing club.
He was eventually found out and had to apologise. ''It was the most difficult thing I had ever done in all my life. To this day, I regard it as the best lesson I learned during my school days. When I apologised, it was like a burden had been lifted.''
The time away from class led to O'Coineen doing badly in his Intermediate Certificate but, realising he needed a third-level education to get on in life, he knuckled down for the Leaving Cert, topping his class in honours maths.
Not that he'd left his wild days behind him. Shortly before the Leaving Cert exams, he brought a cow in from a nearby field and put it into the teachers' toilet, where ''it promptly shat everywhere. I was expelled yet again and started a school strike.''
O'Coineen had an eye for making money at an early age. As a 15-year-old he lied about his age to get into the Irish reserve army, then known as the FCA, to get the pound 100 fee for two weeks of annual camp – ''big money for us then, relatively speaking''. The highlight of his FCA career, he says, was a farting competition on duty in Connemara.
O'Coineen had a passion to go to sea and he made it eventually. As a bet, he undertook to cross the Atlantic in a dinghy. He even rang up Sir Anthony O'Reilly, then the head of Heinz in the US, for commercial support.
'Tony, hearing a few words, promptly put me through to a PR guy who, not really understanding what kind of trip I was planning, organised a supply of tinned beans for the voyage. Although the beans were offered in an attempt to get rid of me, I was nevertheless grateful for them.'
After 46 days at sea, O'Coineen capsized just 480km (300 miles) shy of the west coast of Ireland, before being rescued by a Nato aircraft.
After some time on the dole, O'Coineen's first business venture was a boating magazine in 1981 called Afloat.
This proved successful and led to the launch of an even more successful magazine, Security World.
O'Coineen's career was up and running and has since involved him in finance, telecoms, travel, retail and property in Ireland and, more notably, in central Europe.
His triumphs and disappointments are honestly told and make for engaging reading. He even throws in a funny tale about Charlie Haughey's philandering in Washington at the time of Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1992.
Through it all, O'Coineen's love of all things sailing deepened and ultimately led him to forming a war cabinet of Irish businesspeople who secured Galway as a docking point for the Volvo Ocean Race while also putting Green Dragon into the water with significant backing from China. In all, it was a Euros20 million project that involved Government support of Euros8 million.
O'Coineen's book is a light read peppered with anecdotes and useful insights into how to set up a business and make money. It will also make you laugh.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ciaran Hancock is Business Affairs Correspondent at The Irish Times
'Entrepreneur' book sheds light on Eircom bidder
Irish times
ENDA O'COINEEN'S recent update of his book The Unsinkable Entrepreneur was timed nicely to coincide with the Volvo Ocean Race's stopover in Galway, which he helped to negotiate.
It also shed some light on Irish entrepreneur Sean Melly, who is eyeing up a bid for Eircom with the backing of JPMorgan.
The pair worked together in the late 1990s at a company called Globix, which was set out to benefit from the deregulation of the Czech telecoms market.
Melly paid Euros63,500 for a 30 per cent share in a business that was O'Coineen's brainchild. He had already made a few quid from TCL Telecom in the 1990s, which he sold to MCI WorldCom.
''Of all the potential partners I had looked at, Sean seemed the best,'' O'Coineen recalls. ''He had a reputation for being a sharp operator who didn't take prisoners. True to his reputation, Sean was tough to negotiate and do business with, but most importantly of all, when he gave his commitments he honoured them.''
Globix was successful, but divisions emerged between Melly and Radek Brnak, a local shareholder, on its expansion.
Melly wanted to take it to neighbouring countries and set up eTel with a view to buying Globix.
In late 2000, Melly raised $50 million from private equity groups for a 45 per cent share in eTel and bought Globix for $35 million. O'Coineen and Brnak got a lump of cash and shares in eTel.
''With eTel, Sean pursued the central European telecoms market and made excellent progress. By 2004, it had expanded to four more countries, had 43,000 customers and annual revenues of Euros100 million.''
Melly sold eTel to Telekom Austria in 2006 for Euros104 million, netting about Euros10 million.
Of course, mounting a bid for Eircom, which is massively indebted and has been virtually sucked dry by its previous owners, will be an entirely different proposition, but O'Coineen's book is a reminder of Melly's capabilities.
Entrepreneur sails onto bookshelves
Evening Herald
Sharing his tips on how to make a mint last night was businessman Enda O'Coineen, who launched his new book, The Unsinkable Entrepreneur, at Trinity College.
Enda, who once single-handedly sailed around the world, debuted his novel [sic] to an enthralled audience at the Long Room last night. Mind you, some of his guests were no slouches in the money-making department either - Dermot Desmond, of Sandy Lane fame, officially launched the new tome.
Enda plans to donate the proceeds from the book to Ocean Youth Trust Ireland, an organisation very dear to his heart.
Reluctant Entrepreneur says it's all 'luck'
Irish Independent
Billionaire Dermot Desmond is 'embarrassed' to be called an entrepreneur and puts a lot of his success down to 'luck'.
"I feel really embarrassed being classified as an entrepreneur," said the billionaire, who has stakes in Manchester United and Celtic.
Mr Desmond was in Dublin to launch fellow entrepreneur Enda O'Coineen's new book called The Unsinkable Entrepreneur. The two men got to know each other when Mr Desmond stumped up IR£1.4m to support Mr O'Coineen, who is the head of a Prague-based investing company, in O'Coineen's bid to compete in the yacht racing venture, Sail Ireland. Mr Desmond said that what he had learned from this venture was that: "The committment for any project needs to be a total committment...it can't be an arbitrary committment."
Desmond's Millions
The Sunday Business Post
Billionaire financier Dermot Desmond showed up at the launch of Enda O'Coineen's book The Unsinkable Entrepreneur in the impressive Long Room at Trinity College, Dublin last Wednesday.
Talk quickly turned to entrepreneurship, sailing and O'Coineen's book.
Desmond said he was embarrassed to be considered an entrepreneur. His success, he said, had more to do with luck. He outlined how he developed NCB and the e-learning company Intuition, and how he inexplicably made a packet out of Baltimore: he said he started selling the shares in the technology firm; the shares kept going up, so he kept selling, making more money.
Desmond and O'Coineen first crossed paths in 1987, when Desmond agreed to invest IR£1.4 million in Sail Ireland, the venture set up by O'Coineen to put together a boat and team to participate in the Whitbread around-the-world yacht race. The passages about O'Coineen trying to scrounge money off the movers and shakers in late 1980s Ireland are lively and engaging.
Tony O'Reilly was "polite, but felt that it wasn't for his organisation,'' writes O'Coineen. Charles Haughey, then leader of the opposition, "made it clear the state of the country's finances would not allow him to offer any public money if he was elected''. However, 30 minutes after meeting Desmond in his NCB offices, O'Coineen and his yacht designer Ron Holland walked away with a cool IR£1.4 million of the financier's money.
|
