Table of Contents
Prologue: The Man Who Had Everything 1
Introduction: A Spectacular Past, An Even More Spectacular Future 11
A Note on Shares 22
Section 1 1906-1989: From humble beginnings
Chapter 1 Secrets and lies 27
Chapter 2 The flying Irishman 39
Chapter 3 The starting point 57
Chapter 4 The worst turns out for the best 68
Chapter 5 The modern face of Heinz 75
Chapter 6 Becoming Independent 89
Chapter 7 Crisis management and damage limitation 104
Chapter 8 Like father, like son 115
Chapter 9 A lasting legacy: the Ireland Funds 121
Chapter 10 The Heinz model of management 128
Chapter 11 The search for liquid gold 135
Chapter 12 Making the news 151
Chapter 13 Loss and change 160
Section 2 1987-1999: Legend and branding
Chapter 1 Empire-building: the rise of Independent Newspapers 173
Chapter 2 Love, again 187
Chapter 3 'Buy, borrow and buy' 196
Chapter 4 Absolute power at Heinz 203
Chapter 5 Playing the long game 208
Chapter 6 Into Africa 217
Chapter 7 An intimation of mortality 226
Chapter 8 Slings and arrows 237
Chapter 9 Taking full control 248
Chapter 10 Stepping down and moving on 255
Chapter 11 'For services to Northern Ireland' 262
Section 3 2001-2006: A man for a new century
Chapter 1 Best foot forward 275
Chapter 2 Dialling up the numbers for Eircom 283
Chapter 3 Win some, lose some 293
Chapter 4 Extracting the maximum from Eircom 301
Chapter 5 Favouring old media 306
Chapter 6 Falling out of fashion 318
Chapter 7 The case for The Independent 330
Chapter 8 All the government's fault? 339
Chapter 9 Ringing more changes at Eircom 351
Chapter 10 The sound of breaking glass: the truth about Waterford Wedgwood 358
Chapter 11 A question of trust 365
Section 4 2006-2009: A threat to all he'd built
Chapter 1 Exits and new strategies 375
Chapter 2 The politics of big business, the business of politics 389
Chapter 3 Corporate provocation 403
Chapter 4 Watershed 418
Chapter 5 Collapse 441
Section 5 2009-2015: 'If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same …'
Chapter 1 The battle lines are drawn 461
Chapter 2 A new order emerges 482
Chapter 3 A shot to nothing 501
Chapter 4 A very public humiliation 509
Chapter 5 Insults heaped on injuries 523
Epilogue: The Life of a Maximalist 534
Select Bibliography 540
Index 542
