DEVELOPER AND hotelier Hugh O’Regan has told the High Court he almost suffered a mental breakdown last year when a receiver was appointed to his business empire.
Mr O’Regan (47) said he was now living on €3,000 a month from the Morrison Hotel and a small amount of rental income. His wife was working, he added.
He said that with the move by Anglo Irish Bank to have a receiver appointed, “everything else came down”, including a project to build a hotel in Kilternan, Co Dublin, for which he received a €180 million loan from the Irish Nationwide just last year.
He said he was very concerned about the future of the Morrison Hotel and it was a very emotional issue for him. “I had designed it with John Rocha . . . All I want is that it is treated with some level of dignity.”
He felt he was trying to fight “against a big corporation that has just swallowed me up and spit me out. I’m trying to fight for survival.”
He was giving evidence in a case where the receiver appointed by the banks, Martin Ferris, is trying to get €5.4 million he says is owed in rent by the operator of the hotel, Morrison Hotel Ltd (MHL). If he wins the case it is likely Mr Ferris will get control of the hotel.
Mr O’Regan and MHL are defending the case against Mr Ferris by saying the company had arrangements with its landlord over rent credits and a rent holiday. Mr O’Regan was the managing partner in the partnership that owned the hotel.
He said he made the agreements with himself. “I am the landlord. I’m the tenant. I’m talking to me. I can’t say it is any more formal than that.”
Mr Justice Brian McGovern said Mr O’Regan was trying to project himself “as some sort of ignorant simpleton” but he could not be one given the “business empire” he had once run. He said the MHL defence was “the brainchild of Mr O’Regan, and I use that word advisedly”. Barrister Rossa Fanning, for Mr Ferris, said Mr O’Regan’s evidence was “untrue, made up and lies”. Mr O’Regan replied: “I would say it’s not.”
Mr O’Regan said he had been a customer of Anglo for 19 years but he and the bank had “a slight falling out” over a loan in October 2008 to develop the former Hibernian Club on St Stephen’s Green into an exclusive gentleman’s club.
The bank issued €22.5 million to Clubko Ltd for the project even though it no longer had confidence in the business plan. It felt it was committed to the loan. Clubko is now in liquidation.
On July 24th, 2009, Mr Ferris was appointed to Clubko, the Thomas Read group (owner of MHL), and the owners of the Morrison Hotel building, by Anglo which was seeking repayment of €85 million.
Mr Fanning said Mr O’Regan had spoken of almost having a nervous breakdown that weekend, but he had also instructed solicitors to make an emergency examinership petition to the courts. Mr O’Regan said he had secured a €180 million loan last year for his hotel project in Kilternan, Co Dublin. The case continues today.