Don't kick the chauffeur
NEVER A DULL moment with Tony O'Reilly. Diving on the shares of Newspa- per Publishing, he has mounted the first ever kamikaze dawn raid. The vessel was limping towards harbour, escorted by Admiral Montgomery in the re-flagged Mir- ror, together with Spanish and Italian units impolitely known as the garlic armada, when the raid blasted her off course — but at what cost? A landlubber might prefer to say that Mr O'Reilly has paid a fancy price for a quarter of the shares in the company that loses money publishing the Indepen- dents (daily and Sunday). The offer would, for instance, have been worth £5 or £6 mil- lion to the Independent's founder, Andreas Whittam Smith — though somehow Mr O'Reilly left him off the list — and would value Newspaper Publishing at £73 million. It is not clear that Mr O'Reilly's Irish news- paper company (confusingly called Inde- pendent Newspapers) could or would pay that sort of money and find more to make its purchase work. His ability to conjure up money may not be quite what it was since the decline of Fitzwilton, which was described as his mini-conglomerate. (Always remember, children, to watch your step when investing in mini-conglomer- ates.) Still, Mr O'Reilly can get by. When he last played rugby football for Ireland, his opponents were urged to kick him and his chauffeur, and nowadays he keeps a winter residence at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, where he sometimes offers a home from home to Nelson Mandela.
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