D-Day looms in O'Brien versus INM showdown

THIS COULD be D-Day for Independent News Media. D for Denis O’Brien, that is.

INM’s annual meeting in Citywest should be a lively affair and could well mark the day that O’Brien finally wins control of INM after years of battling with the O’Reilly family.

Yesterday, Lothar Lanz stepped down as a director of INM. The proxies cast signalled that Lanz wouldn’t be re-elected and he appears to have chosen to jump before being pushed.

His departure comes hot on the heels of Gavin O’Reilly’s exit as chief executive and the decisions of Baroness Margaret Jay and Bengt Braun not to bother seeking re-election as directors.

Finance director Donal Buggy is also in the firing line, with O’Brien, and most probably Dermot Desmond, likely to vote him off the board. O’Brien and Desmond own about 36 per cent of INM’s shares between them, giving them the whip hand in any voting.

It remains to be seen if chairman James Osborne will be left in situ. The lawyer is thought to be expecting the worst.

Osborne only took on the role last October and has sought to remain independent of the O’Reilly and O’Brien camps. He always made it clear to O’Brien that he would have to pay up if he wanted to gain control of INM.

The irony is that it was Osborne who forced Gavin O’Reilly out of office, something that O’Brien had long wanted. His reward could be the boot after he publicly challenged Paul Connolly, an O’Brien representative on the board of INM, over his decision to take a legal action to have O’Reilly’s €1.87 million exit package declared unlawful.

Given his role in the removal of O’Reilly as chief executive, Osborne probably can’t even rely on the support of Sir Anthony O’Reilly in his re-election. This might open the way for Leslie Buckley, a long-time O’Brien ally removed from the INM board last year, to make a triumphant return, possibly as chairman.

The fly in the ointment for O’Brien might be Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte and/or the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

Both surely have decisions to make on media ownership given O’Brien’s extensive interests in the sector here.