Profile Declan Ganley:Declan Ganley is outspoken in his opposition to what he sees as the loss of Irish sovereignty represented by the Treaty of Lisbon, but less forthcoming about his wealth, writes Harry McGee
You could make a comparison between the entrepreneur Declan Ganley and Jay Gatsby, the eponymous hero of F Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby. Ganley is the classic self-made man, who propelled himself from humble beginnings - he was born in London to Irish emigrants who returned home to Glennamaddy in northeast Galway when he was 12 - to ostentatious (if undisclosed) wealth by the time he had reached his mid-20s.
Ganley has many Gatsbyesque trappings: a large mansion in Moyne Park outside Tuam (once owned by the folk singer Donovan); a fleet of sleek cars including a Rolls-Royce Phantom; a penchant for bespoke suits; patronage of the arts, especially chamber music; a love of Cuban cigars and helicopters; and membership of exclusive gentlemen's clubs in London. There have also been extravagant gestures, such as a $25,000 contribution at a Fianna Fáil fund-raiser in New York a decade ago.
And if that weren't enough, an air of mystery has always surrounded aspects of the 39-year-old entrepreneur's career; principally, big information gaps about the source of his early wealth and about his real net worth. A vast acreage of his business life remains out of bounds and fenced off from the world. And when you speak to people who know him, they come up with descriptions such as "an enigma", very controlled and controlling, and "he has a lot of hoof but there's also a lot of spoof". With some there is the subliminal suggestion that there is as much hype as substance to his wealth.
The most interesting things about Ganley are the dots in his narrative that have not quite been joined together - or, to borrow the gnomic phrase of former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "the unknown unknowns".
A LESS THAN flattering profile of Ganley carried in this newspaper in 1999 summed up that riddle adroitly in its opening paragraph: "Either 30-year-old Galway-based entrepreneur Mr Declan Ganley is one of the richest Irishmen of his generation, or he isn't really very rich at all. It depends on who you talk to." Does that still hold true? Well, nearly nine years later he is still there, is clearly no fly-by-night operator, and is still rich. But how rich? A very flattering profile last year suggested he could be a billionaire by the time he reaches 40 next year and valued him at €300 million. But is it true? Ganley baulks at the figure (suggesting it's too high) but won't proffer one of his own.
"It's all very flattering," he himself says. "I would have a different view. You cannot tell how much you are worth until you sell your business. The reason for that is simple. The businesses that I have were all built from scratch. They have not been publicly listed, so the type of information from which these lists are compiled is not readily available in the public marketplace."
But back to Jay Gatsby. In a way that comparison may be a little fatuous. Perhaps we should be looking at the more complex narrator, Carraway, who develops a fascination with a roadside billboard advertising the defunct optometry business of Dr TJ Eckleburg. The massive image on the billboard is of Dr Eckleburg himself, staring blankly out at the world through thick spectacles. Carraway's fascination with the billboard of Dr Eckleburg is that he sees his giant myopic eyes as a symbol for the false god that presides over Gatsby's myopic world.
Similarly Ganley has identified what he portrays as a false god, one he says has duped the Irish establishment.
Ganley has found himself as the de-facto figurehead of the campaign against the Treaty of Lisbon (he refuses to call it the Reform Treaty, saying that label is Government "spin"), surrounded by a motley assortment of fringe parties and groups drawn from the right and left - uncomfortable bedfellows for a businessman who claims to be pro-Europe and was an active supporter of Fianna Fáil.
GANLEY IS A tallish man, bald, with sharp features. He has never quite lost his London accent and has an energetic disposition that says "born to persuade". There is a duality in that, for all the hankering for privacy, there's a part of him that relishes being in the public eye. And for all the trappings of riches, there's also the part of him that suggests turf bank and building sites, hoary-handed son of the soil. He says he was a strong supporter of the Treaty of Nice but his views changed when he read the first draft of the European Constitution Treaty.
"It was a shocking experience to read that document. I had to do a double-take going through the thing. Did that really say what I thought it said?" he says, before adding that "the arrogance of the European elite is breathtaking".
He argues that what's emerged since then has been a "cut-and-paste" job, with some cosmetic changes, but that the so-called Reform Treaty has brazenly ignored millions of French and Dutch voters.
His objections include the supposed 60 areas where Ireland will hand over sovereignty to Brussels. There will be a president and foreign affairs minister with no democratic accountability. Article 48 will allow the treaty to be changed without the necessity of a referendum in Ireland - "that is a fact and all the BS and bluster from Dick Roche will not change that fact. If you do not like what they are doing, you cannot throw them out. The most precious thing about democracy is [the ability to] remove people from posts."
Though he has mulled over the treaty for three years, Ganley's epiphany came at a board meeting in his Co Galway offices. "I suddenly realised that Ireland was going to be the battleground for European democracy. This is where we would make the final stand."
It's interesting to see how Ganley set about the task, approaching it like a new business. Libertas had been set up as a think-tank in 2004 but he ramped it up quickly last year. He cast his eye around and hired a number of sharp young political wonks. Naoise Nunn is the founder of Leviathan, a lively and popular monthly debate on politics that added in a bit of humour and music. David Cochrane runs the successful Politics.ie website, and John McGuirk was prominent in student politics. And Ganley has put his money where his mouth is - his claim on Thursday that the No campaign will be the best resourced in living memory was no idle boast.
THE BALTIC STATES provide the key to Ganley's early wealth. He left Ireland at 17 and worked on the building sites and in a bar in London, before getting a job as a clerk with Lloyds. He then got involved in what seemed like a barmy idea involving satellite launches and Soviet space craft. But that brought him to eastern Europe as a 20-year-old.
His first money-making venture was an unnamed company that shipped aluminium to the West via Latvia. With payment terms of 90 days, he needed no capital. And with the rouble collapsing, it meant that his spread grew during those 90 days, making for bigger profit margins and his first seed capital.
His CV has boasted that he was a foreign economic adviser to the Latvian government for a period in 1992. This claim has been questioned in the past but he says it is true, that it was a junior minister who appointed him.
Around this time, he became involved in what has been generally recognised as a big money-spinner, a forestry company that became the largest in Russia and was bought out by the Soros Group in 1997. One report said the deal netted him £100 million.
With his many ventures in many places, and the opacity of his financial dealings, it is difficult to track his career from this point.
His explanation: "I am a serial entrepreneur. I had no formal training in any specific profession. I am just genetically programmed for entrepreneurship." He built up a communications company called Broadnet that won licences in 10 European countries to provide wireless broadband. Along the way, he also built up a cable company in Bulgaria, and got involved in companies in the Middle East, Central America, Albania and the Russian Federation.
He was part of the consortium that lost out on the bid for the second mobile phone licence in Ireland, and also made a bid for the agribusiness IFI, but, apart from these, his business dealings in Ireland have been very limited.
In terms of yields, Comcast bought out his Broadnet company for €50 million, and he sold his cable business in Bulgaria for a reported €18 million.
There were failures too. The most high-profile was Adornis, an online jewellery retailer that went belly-up in 2000, losing Ganley a reported €7 million. Of this setback he says: "That was one that was difficult to accept at the time. I had been on a roll. That was the first failure that I had. It was a character-building experience."
Another enterprise that he has pulled out of was Capital Route, a plan to create an executive car and chauffeur service across Europe.
His main venture nowadays is Rivada Networks, which he considers the pinnacle of his success.
IT'S A CLASSIC example of how Ganley operates. His wife Delia, with whom he has four children, is a native of Staten Island, and when 9/11 happened, they phoned relatives in New York, including a fire fighter who was on duty. The fireman had heard nothing from the emergency dispatcher but instead found out via a television broadcast seen in Ireland, a phone call to the States and another phone call to his mobile phone. Ganley got thinking about emergency networks, and that is how Rivada was born.
Using existing technology and off-the-shelf equipment, a team came up with the idea of a portable network base station (a kind of roving O2 or Vodafone network) that could be transported in a pick-up truck and would use walkie-talkies. Ganley was quick to spot the potential of this portable network for defence and security purposes, and he has heavily promoted the military credentials of Rivada as a result.
Ganley also established the Forum for Public Safety in Europe and North America, which has run in the University of Limerick for the past three years and highlights issues close to Rivada's interests. The speaker list in the past couple of years has read like a who's who of retired military top brass from the US, and also included former Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell, Bertie Ahern, and former tánaiste Michael McDowell. One observer said that McDowell seemed like a left-winger compared to other speakers.
All of this has been under the radar, not publicised, not reported. It's the duality of Ganley - the more you learn, the less you seem to know.
The Ganley File
Who is he?A Galway-based entrepreneur with his finger in many pies.
Why is he in the news?He is the founder of Libertas, the group campaigning against the Lisbon Treaty. He announced this week that the group will leaflet 1.43 million homes at a cost of over €100,000.
Most appealing characteristics:For all his wealth, he still serves as a private or "grunt" with the Defence Forces Reserve. Passionate in his beliefs.
Least appealing characteristics:Likes the ostentatious trappings of wealth. Opaque in some of his dealings. Some say he can be arrogant.
Most likely to say:"The Lisbon Treaty places government above the people. I believe that power is vested in the people and only delegated to politicians."
Least likely to say:"The first three people on the invitation list for my 40th birthday are Dick Roche, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel."