The Rise and Fall of The Quinn Group

 

In August 2010 Sean Quinn became the latest in a growing line of Irish business tycoons to part ways with that most ubiquitous of status symbols, his helicopter. The €4 million Agusta 109 was of course the property of the Quinn Group, not Mr. Quinn himself, but when it was leant to family friend Bertie Ahern during the former Taoiseach's re-election campaign the distinction seems to have hardly mattered. The helicopter's history is as much a window into the incestuous world of Irish business and politics as the news of its sale was a dangerous portent of turbulent times ahead for the Quinn Group and it's founder, dubbed the 164^th richest individual on the planet in 2008 by Forbes magazine but who now faces bankruptcy.

The Quinn Group started out as a small quarrying operation supplying washed gravel to the building industry in 1973. The business soon took off, expanding into manufacturing, hospitality, property and has even taken a faltering step into the energy market, applying for planning permission to build two gas-fired power plants in 2007. The market for which it is best known however, and which seems to have been its undoing, is financial services. It began with the launch of Quinn Direct Insurance Ltd. in 1996 which specialised in non-life insurance products and followed up with the launch of Quinn Life in 2000 which would go on to acquire the Irish operations of Bupa. Throughout these years of dynamic growth the Quinn family remained very much in charge of every business under the Quinn umbrella. Their dealings would eventually lead to censure and downfall.

The Irish financial regulator handed down a record €3.25 million fine to the Quinn Group over disclosed internal loans that enabled the Quinn family to acquire a 15% stake in Anglo Irish Bank. The bank's nationalisation by Irish government after it went into a tailspin in 2008 saw these shares all but wiped out. Unconvinced of their ability to repay bank loans, Anglo recently moved to oust the Quinns from their management positions within the Quinn group and, in a joint-venture with American insurer Liberty Mutual, looks set to snap up Ireland's second largest insurer which is now in administration.

As the appointed administrators have set about unravelling the shady inner workings of the Quinn Group's most important company the Government has proposed a levy on home and car insurance policies in order to make up the €620 million of obligations that Quinn Insurance's new owners are unwilling to meet. This has provoked a harsh reaction from Irish consumer advocacy groups which feel the Irish consumer should not have to bear the cost of the Quinn family's misconduct. With €2.9 billion in outstanding in outstanding loans to Anglo Irish alone, Mr. Quinn may soon have to sell more than the family helicopter.