Mobile phone partners clashed on share stakes

Mr Denis O'Brien said he ditched his original partners for his mobile phone consortium because he decided they were not suitable and because they wanted to make his company, Communicorp, take a minority shareholding of approximately 20 per cent.

"They wanted us to have a token position and we had greater ambitions," Mr O'Brien said in his second day giving evidence concerning the 1995 mobile phone licence competition.

"They missed a great opportunity."

He told Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, that he teamed up with US multinational Southwestern Bell and German company Deutsche Telekom in 1994 with a view to submitting a bid for the licence.

However, he said that by March/April 1995, the relationship was breaking down.

The would-be partners could not agree on the shareholding which would be held by Communicorp. "Big corporations can be the big swinging dick, and they behave in that way because they have the power," Mr O'Brien said.

He also said that it emerged that Southwestern Bell had never won any of the licence competitions in which it was involved in other jurisdictions.

He said Southwestern Bell never recognised that his company was "wealthy in ability" and that it had a "good Irish partner who could bring tremendous advantages to them".

His company decided to take a "tremendous risk" and to terminate the agreement with the partners and look for someone else.

"We were solo," Mr O'Brien said. This occurred in March/ April 1995 and lasted for six weeks to two months.

Meanwhile, Mr O'Brien said, his team continued to prepare for the bid.

He said the irony was that he never needed a foreign partner but had been told by advisers that one was needed for credibility reasons.

"I would have been happier to go it alone," he said.

He travelled to Paris to discuss a possible joint venture with France Telecom.

"We had a magnificent dinner and a lovely lunch" in the Intercontinental Hotel on Place Vendome, with a woman whose name he could not recall. Nothing arose from the meeting "except costs".

The Irish team had been conditioned against a deal because on the way into Paris from the airport, their mobile phones kept cutting out.

In late April 1995 contact was made with Norwegian company Telenor and matters moved quickly. On June 2nd, 1995, Telenor and Communicorp signed a joint venture agreement.

The closing date for bids for the licence, at that stage, was June 23rd, 1995.

Mr O'Brien's evidence continues today.