On April 1, Quinta do Lago went into lockdown. Management at the Portuguese coastal resort wrote to all of its 500 residents, ranging from millionaires to billionaires, to tell them it planned to remain closed until the end of April before considering reopening the resort again. 

“This decision has been made with the health and safety of our teams, community and of course you, our residents and guests as our greatest priority,” it said. 

“It is vital that we all adhere to these temporary measures. Quinta do Lago is not going anywhere and our vibrant resort and community will return with a renewed zest for life just as soon as it is safe to do so.” 

The decision to shutter much of Quinta do Lago is another blow to its owner Denis O’Brien, whose wide-ranging empire has been hit by the unexpected arrival of Covid-19. 

Quinta do Lago has been a home away from home for many wealthy Irish people. It is where Paul Coulson, the McCann family, David Shubotham, Carol Moffett, Peter Ledbetter, Larry Goodman and many more have gone to relax alongside ex-football stars, resting golfers, celebrities and wealthy retirees. 

Steven Gerrard, Cristiano Ronaldo and Alan Shearer are all reported to have holidayed there or own properties there. Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary and the family of financier Dermot Desmond are rumoured to have bought there. 

Quinta do Lago provides a secure place for the rich to enjoy warm weather, good golf, the beach, decent restaurants and family-friendly facilities. 

It is not a mission-critical part of Denis O’Brien’s empire in the way Digicel, his heavily indebted telecoms group, is. 

It does, however, reveal much about the tycoon’s life, times and approach to business. 

*****

Quinta Do Lago was originally developed in the early 1970s by a Polish-Brazilian property developer called Andre Jordan. It was the Estado Novo period of Portugese history when the country was an authoritarian and conservative state shaped by the ideas of its former prime minister, António de Oliveira Salazar. 

It was a time when censorship, secret police and the oppression of freedom of speech still lingered. But for businessmen like Jordan, it was not that bad a time. 

Jordan recalls seeing the future site of Quinta do Lago as a moment of wonder. “It was a day I will never forget,” Jordan recalled. “I sat on the hill, looked across the marshlands and I had a vision of what would become the Quinta do Lago Master Plan.” 

On the hill where Jordan stood was a crumbling 300-year old farmhouse which later became an O’Brien-owned French bistro called Casa Velha. 

There was no road access, just dirt trails, but Jordan said: “Within 10 minutes I had the concept for the whole project in my mind. I wanted to create a high-quality resort that reflected local character and style.” 

Jordan converted the estate’s farmhouse into a restaurant and he built 20 two-bedroom apartments, leisure facilities, a horse-riding centre, an artificial lake and a beautiful bridge leading guests to the beach. Architect William F. Mitchell designed 27 holes of golf that attracted the Portuguese elite and Europe’s rich. 

A military coup in 1974, known as the Carnation Revolution, overthrew Portugal’s authoritarian regime, putting a spanner in the works. Jordan decided to relocate back to Brazil for a spell, but the resort carried on. 

A works committee took over the resort and managed to keep it going despite a flight of capital out of Portugal. In 1976, Quinta do Lago hosted the Portuguese Open for the first time – an event it went on to host many times, helping establish the resort as political turmoil receded. Jordan began to spend more time in Portugal again and the resort flourished.

In a 2015 interview in The Sunday Times Jordan reflected on how he had hoped to create a playground for the rich that was secure, but also let them relax among each other. “We didn’t want to have people strutting about and driving around in Rolls-Royces and creating a competitive environment in the countryside,” he said. 

In 1986, the Four Seasons Country Club opened, which – while not part of Quinta do Lago – added to the prestige of the area. In 1987, Jordan sold the resort to a consortium made up of a former investment banker from Chase Manhattan called Roger Abraham and food entrepreneur David Thompson, one of the founders of Hillsdown Holdings. 

In 1989, Thompson sold his 30 per cent stake in Hillsdown for £500 million. The Thompson family then took complete control of Quinta Do Lago. 

****

Denis O’Brien was a brash up-and-coming entrepreneur in the late 1990s. From running a pop music station, he had managed to secure Ireland’s first mobile phone licence in 1991. 

He was a brilliant marketeer, and whatever about later controversies, undoubtedly the business grew significantly after it got the licence. 

O’Brien and a team of hundreds of people oversaw about €1 billion in investment growing the business. O’Brien’s first fortune was not a quick flip as it is sometimes glibly depicted. 

O’Brien’s personal wealth began to take off after he floated Esat Telecom on the New York Stock Exchange, when his stake was valued at about $60 million. 

O’Brien was beginning to enjoy himself and he would go on holiday with a gang of his buddies to Portugal. 

In 1998, Denis O’Brien bought Quinta Do Lago for €31 million from the Thompson family. This was a lot of money for him at the time, but more was coming. O’Brien’s late father Dano was involved in helping him with the resort in these early days, and there are depictions of him in his diving days dotted around the resort.

“I suppose if he did it in the last budget they would have said that’s a fix, knowing this country…”

Denis O’Brien on the lowering of capital gainst tax

On January 6, 2001, BT agreed to pay $2.5 billion for Esat Telecom. O’Brien, then just 41, was reported to have made €317 million (IR£250 million). 

He decided to share his good fortune with the Irish public by going on The Late Late Show to be interviewed by Pat Kenny. 

Pat Kenny (PK): “Do you have any sense of what it is to have £250 million? I mean, this is personal money. I don’t know what tax you are going to have to pay. You are going to have pay, some, I’m sure. . .” 

Denis O’Brien (DO’B): “Absolutely.” 

PK: “Capital gains tax, but actually Charlie McCreevy was quite kind in that respect as well…” 

DO’B: “He was, yes.” 

PK: “You only pay 20 per cent, is it?” 

DO’B: “That’s right, yes.”

Sandie Shaw (SS – a singer, interviewed earlier by Kenny): “Wow!”

PK: “So, it means if he has 250 million, he keeps 200…”

DO’B: “That’s right, yeah.” 

SS: “Why did you get this favouritism?” 

DO’B: “Oh no, not me personally.” 

SS: “I might move there”.

PK: “That’s okay. You don’t begrudge Charlie McCreevy the odd 50?” 

DO’B: “No, I think – and I’m sure that anybody who’s selling any shares nowadays thinks 20 per cent is fantastic. And I think it’s a big difference to 40 per cent, a hell of a difference.”

PK: “Everyone got it, Sandy. It’s a change in our budget.” 

DO’B: “I suppose if he did it in the last budget they would have said that’s a fix, knowing this country…”

Almost two decades later, Kenny is an employee of O’Brien in Newstalk. Last week Kenny received a 25 per cent pay cut, as part of a cost-cutting programme by radio business Communicorp in the wake of Covid-19.

“If that’s what somebody wants to do, why not?”

Denis O’Brien, it later emerged, would leave Ireland for Portugal. At that time Portugal did not levy capital gains tax, but the tycoon has said this was not why he left his home country. 

O’Brien’s long-term associate Leslie Buckley, the former chairman of Independent News & Media who sits on the board of Digicel, didn’t have any issue with the move. 

“To be quite honest, if that’s what somebody wants to do, why not?” he told Siobhán Creaton in her biography of Denis O’Brien. 

Sean Corkery, a former Esat colleague and former chief executive of Actavo, said: “I was surprised from a family point of view. From an entrepreneurial point of view I understand it. If I had made IR£250 million I would look at what I could do with that, what I would invest in. He would get a return on the capital. He would get no return if he paid it in tax.”

Experienced public relations consultant Eileen Gleeson noted that some other Irish business people had taken up tax residency abroad before O’Brien, and not been criticised much. 

“Nobody said if you do this you are going to be seen as a bad boy. The other guys weren’t.”

O’Brien later complained bitterly about the depiction of his move to Portugal in the press. 

In a June 2012 email to the journalist Vincent Browne, he complained about the perpetuation of a  “lazy myth” in relation to his financial affairs. 

He disputed how much money he was said to have made from selling Esat.

 “I invested significant personal resources over many years in the development of (the business),” he said.

He also said he did not move to Portugal to avoid paying capital gains tax on his gains from Esat.

“I had moved to Portugal some time before the sale of Esat Telecom to British Telecom and did so for perfectly valid and legitimate personal and business reasons,” he said.

“I am putting you on notice that if you continue to libel me in your TV programme or your Irish Times column I will be left with no other avenue but to sue you personally,” O’Brien warned Browne. 

The year O’Brien wrote to Browne he was named the 205th richest person in the world. Forbes said he had a fortune of $5 billion, up almost $1 billion in one year.

Property dealing and developing 

Denis O’Brien was now living in Portugal and focused on Quinta Do Lago, but already he was thinking bigger when it came to golf, property and leisure in Europe.

In March 2000, Denis O’Brien paid £2.5 million for a 9.2 per cent stake in PGA European Tour Courses, a London-listed company that operated golf courses in Britain and continental Europe. 

O’Brien knew the business as it leased some of his golf courses in Quinta do Lago from him. It was not illogical that he might buy a shareholding in order to have a say in this business, but he soon wanted more. 

In August 2001, O’Brien made a takeover bid for the entire company after he bought another 29.9 per stake in the listed business from a company called ClubCorp (UK). 

The late Mark McCormack’s International Management Group and the Professional Golfers’ Association each held 19 per cent of the company. 

McCormack’s clients included golfing royalty like Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus as well as tennis star Chris Evert and model Kate Moss. There were also about 2,000 smaller shareholders.  

O’Brien’s first offer valued PGA at £32 million, a premium of around 44 per cent of the company’s share price of 35p. This was not enough, however, for McCormack and the Association. 

In September 2001, O’Brien increased his offer by 10 per cent to £35.2 million sterling. This was accepted by the two other largest shareholders. O’Brien was now a significant player in European golf.

In a Youtube video posted in October 2012, O’Brien recalled this time: “We made a hostile takeover bid for a company called European Tour Courses in 2000 and we were interested in two properties within that business. 

“One was PGA Catalunya, which we thought had terrific potential, and second was the golf courses in Quinta do Lago as well. There were other assets as well that were interesting but nothing as interesting as PGA Catalunya and Quinta do Lago.”

In 2018, The Irish Times estimated that O’Brien had invested about €120 million in PGA Catalunya building hotels, leisure facilities and restaurants. It is also a significant property play for O’Brien, who was selling plots there to the wealthy. 

In his 2012 interview, O’Brien stressed he wanted the resort to be six-star. “We have built something that will last for the next 200 years,” he said.

“For example, I wasn’t happy with the clubhouse so I said get rid of the clubhouse,” he added. O’Brien said his Spanish resort was about more than just golf. “Our vision for people who buy properties is one where they have a lifestyle,” he said.  

“We are trying to push people to open their eyes to contemporary architecture, but not in any vulgar or uncouth way.”

An array of assets in Quinta 

But back to Quinta do Lago. O’Brien now had control of both its North and South golf courses. From then he began investing substantially in developing the resort more. His business there has five divisions: real estate, golf, restaurants, lifestyle and security. The overall business is owned by a holding company with an operating company and a property company below it. It is not known how much debt these various assets and companies have attached to them.

The operating company runs its three golf courses, the clubhouses, the professional sports venue, gyms, boutiques, tennis courts and a beach club. 

It also controls at least ten restaurants bars: Casa do Lago, Koko Lane, Koko Beach, the Clubhouses, Pure Boutique Cafe, The Shack, Gigi’s, Casa Velha French Bistro, Dano’s and Bovino SteakHouse. 

The real estate business historically is the more profitable end. 

O’Brien offers holiday rentals, provides landscaping services, manages properties, and helps with re-sales. 

But the real jewel in the business is land and development. Here, plots of land sell for an average of €2 million to €3 million a pop, and then the wealthy create their own mansions. O’Brien has sold hundreds of plots of land down the years, grossing multiples of the price he originally paid for the resort. For example, on his 14.3 acre site at San Lorenzo North, a show home designed by Irish architects de Blacam & Meagher sold for €4.6 million or €8,692 per sq metre. 

Good sites are a finite resource, as millionaire buyers are not prepared to be crammed on top of each other. Equally environmental, planning and infrastructure concerns place limitations on site sales. 

To deal with this issue, O’Brien has bought more land as he went along. 

Plots are for sale or planned in places like San Lorenzo North, Ria Formosa and Batista. 

The Batista lands are about 140 acres between the Quinta Do Lago resort and Laranjal golf course. O’Brien has previously worked on plans to develop 60 small (1,800 sq ft) and 16 large (4,000 sq ft) eco-friendly bungalows on this land. 

The resort is an area of stunning natural beauty, so construction is today closely monitored. At the top end of the resort, mansions can change hands for over €20 million. O’Brien’s own is in that price league.

Quinta do Lago is certainly an attractive location for the rich, but there are headwinds – and not just Covid-19.  

Quinta do Lago saw villas sold earlier this year for €14.5 million and €17.5 million. It remains a super-premium place to live but it has limits on how many sites it has left to sell. O’Brien has sourced more land to develop, but this can take years to bring to market.

There is more competition, too, from other nearby luxury resorts in the Algarve, so staying on top is a constant challenge. 

Portugal has a “golden visa” scheme which grants residency to non-EU investors who spend more than €500,000 on property. This scheme has been criticised on the political left of Portugal for pushing house prices beyond the reach of locals in its cities. Political change is likely when the Covid-19 crisis ends, so this is always a factor to be considered.

If the visa scheme was scrapped, it would not impact an established product like Quinta do Lago directly. But it might cause its more arriviste rivals to cut their prices, putting pressure on margins. 

Quinta do Lago has residents from diverse nationalities but quite a few are English. While the focus now is on Covid-19, the longer-term impact of Brexit on wealthy retirees buying property and holidaying in the Algarve remains uncertain. 

Given how much wealth is being wiped out by Covid-19 globally, real estate prices will be impacted almost everywhere in the short term. 

In the longer term, Quinta do Lago has solid foundations.  

‘In the recession, we spent 40 million’

It was day five of Denis O’Brien’s failed defamation case against The Sunday Business Post. Senior counsel Michael McDowell was cross-examining the tycoon about his business interests after O’Brien had protested that he felt describing him as a developer was damaging to his reputation. This among other complaints had been denied by the paper, the journalist who wrote the story myself, and the editor of the paper Ian Kehoe, who now edits The Currency. The cross-examination gives an insight into O’Brien’s own take on his Portuguese story.

Michael McDowell (MMcD): Could I ask you then to recall your property developments on the Iberian Peninsula? 

DO’B: In Portugal and Spain, yeah. 

MMcD: You bought the Quinta do Lago estate and developed it, isn’t that right? 

DO’B: In 1996. 

MMcD: Yes. 

DO’B: Well, when I say – it was already developed by somebody else. 

MMcD: Yes, but you put a lot of effort into building it up into something much bigger and selling off homes in it? 

DO’B: Well, we inherited land that we already – that the previous developer had built roads to and that. So there was sites there that people could come and buy. And there was two golf courses. Then we built another golf course. We built a professional sports centre then for rugby teams, soccer teams. And we have invested in the whole leisure side of the complex in a very significant way. 

“There is a plot and somebody will say I will buy the plot off you for 3 million and I’ll build a house on it.”

Denis O’Brien

MMcD: Yes. And again, you sell individual homes to individuals in the campus? 

DO’B: Plots. Really mainly, mostly plots in the last 20 years. 

MMcD: You sell building plots, is it? 

DO’B: These are, you know – there is a plot and somebody will say I will buy the plot off you for 3 million and I’ll build a house on it. 

MMcD: I see. So you buy the estate and you sell off individual building plots, presumably you have serviced it? 

DO’B: Most of the roads would have been put in before we bought it, yeah. 

MMcD: Yes, but you sell serviced plots is what I am saying. 

DO’B: We sell plots, yeah, yeah. 

MMcD: Because you told the jury you never did that kind of thing, buying land on a speculative basis and selling serviced…

DO’B: I bought all the sites together in 1996, Mr McDowell. 

MMcD: Yes. 

DO’B: So that is different. So I want to clarify that for you. We bought a resort with sites in it, two golf courses, we built a third golf course and then we built a very big food and beverage and a sports centre as well, a swimming pool. We built a whole pile of restaurants on it. So it was an exclusive development as such for sports mainly, and family. 

MMcD: And what would you say, just now thinking about it, is the total of money that you have invested or you and your co-owners have invested? 

DO’B: Well, in the last – in the recession we spent 40 million. 

MMcD: Sorry? 

DO’B: I mentioned the other day that we spent 40 million. 

MMcD: Yes. Is that an accurate account, do you think? 

DO’B: Very much so, yeah. 

MMcD: That is the upper limit, is it? 

DO’B: We may have spent more in the last year or so. 

MMcD: Do you recall giving an interview to a local English-speaking newspaper in Portugal indicating that you were going to, you were contemplating building a development at Almancil in Portugal for €400 million-plus? 

DO’B: No. Not 400 million. I don’t know where that number came from. We were engaged – the local town had gone into very serious decline and rundown, and we were talking to the local mayor and the council there about helping them restore buildings to actually redo the town of Almancil and contribute to its urban renewal. Now, that’s one thing. Then there was land that we had bought initially for a golf course, which is maybe what he was referring to. I don’t know. If you show me the article I’ll help you. 

MMcD: I will come to the article, I will just have to sort it out at lunchtime and I will show it to you. 

DO’B: Okay, yeah.

“ The owner sings operatic arias…”

The best-known restaurant owned by Denis O’Brien in Quinta do Lago is Gigi’s. It is an institution for elite visitors to the Algarve for over 20 years. Located amid sand dunes, Gigi’s is across a wooden bridge overlooking a tidal lagoon with views of a national park. The Telegraph describes it as “where the jet-set hang out in the summer, and where Gigi, the owner, sings operatic arias and excellently guides you through the fresh fish and shellfish he bought from the market at dawn.” 

Bovino, a more recent addition, serves fine Irish beef, while Casa Velha provides fine dining fare. O’Brien invested €45 million in Quinta Do Lago between 2009 and 2015. In 2009, he invested €15 million in Laranjal, a par-72 championship course about two kilometres east of the resort in the Ludo Valley. Another €600,000 was spent the following year building an adjoining driving range. 

O’Brien has been continually pouring money into the resort. A new members’ clubhouse was built for €2.5 million between 2010 and 2011. Between 2009 and 2014, almost €5 million was put into course improvements. About €2.9 million went into food and beverage outlets as well as retail between 2009 and 2014. In 2014, O’Brien put €6.5 million into refurbishing its North Course. In 2015, a sports centre was built for €3.7 million and that same year €3 million was put into creating Bovino and the French bistro. 

“No other competing Algarve resort is as well invested or as expertly positioned as Quinta do Lago,” potential buyers of the resort were told in a 2015 sales brochure for the resort’s aborted sale. Food and beverage sales are thought to be worth over €10 million a year to Quinta do Lago. 

In 2015, it generated almost €6 million with earnings of €1.3 million, but with more venues opening since then, this number has increased significantly. The closure of restaurants and drying up of visitors will undoubtedly impact this year’s financial performance. Over 300 full-time and seasonal workers are employed in this division. Quinta do Lago is not yet in peak summer time, so it will be hopeful to reopen before that. 

But again, it is hard to know the long-term fallout of this crisis, and whether Irish and European visitors will flock back quickly. Certainly, American visitor numbers are not expected to recover in time for this summer.  

Broadening out

Quinta do Lago has always been about golf, but it is increasingly about wider sports. Unusually, the various high-end hotels near the resort are owned and operated by others and not Denis O’Brien. He has been linked to the Magnolia Hotel in the area, which is more suitable for visiting sports teams than for the super-rich who require more exclusion. High-end hotels near Quinta do Lago however feed O’Brien’s golf courses, leisure facilities and restaurants. O’Brien has bought and developed hotels in other markets like Ireland and Haiti, but he is not that big in this area in Portugal. 

Quinta do Lago does, however, have three fine golf courses: the North course, the South course and Laranjal. In 2013 its golf business had sales of €8.3 million and earnings of €3.3 million. About 86,000 rounds of golf were played that year earning green fee yields of €66 a go plus ancillary golf spend of €33. 

Quinta do Lago has ambitious plans to grow these sales by increasing the number of rounds of golf played to over 120,000 and increasing green fee yields to further drive revenues skywards. Paul McGinley, the captain of the 2014 winning Ryder Cup team, has run a golf academy down there since 2011. 

Over the last three years O’Brien has invested over €10 million in a new sports campus with gym, football pitches, tennis, bike shed and yoga studios. About €1 million is estimated to have been spent on its sport pitches which are international class. Brian O’Driscoll runs a rugby camp there for guests. Judy Murray, mother of Andy Murray, hosts a tennis camp. Chelsea, Celtic and other football teams as well as Irish rugby players have all trained and recuperated down there. Dano’s, a family friendly sports bar and restaurant, is part of this campus. A sculpture of Dano, O’Brien’s late father, diving hangs as a centrepiece from the roof of the barn-inspired venue.

Back to the courtroom…

Denis O’Brien was continuing to be cross-examined by senior counsel Michael McDowell in his failed defamation case against The Sunday Business Post. Matters had turned to the tycoon’s decision to try and sell Quinta do Lago in 2015. 

MMcD: Sorry, before we go away from Portugal, am I right in thinking that at one stage Quinta do Lago was on the market for about €220 million? 

DO’B: That’s right, yeah. 

MMcD: And that you didn’t get your buyer, is that right? 

DO’B: Well, at that time I was really busy with my other businesses. And you’d have people coming up to me in restaurants and saying, could you cut the greens a bit tighter, and give me a commentary on all the golf courses, and to be honest with you my wife said to me, like, you know, this is like work for you, if you are the owner and people are coming up to you giving their views on this, the speed of the greens, it’s not a place where you can go and relax, so I said we’ll sell it. 

MMcD: It was the subject of – it was put out there for offers and you were seeking €220 million? 

DO’B: In the end my mother, who is in her 80s, who loves Quinta do Lago, said to me that she would be very upset if I sold it and I listened to my mother and we took it off the market. 

MMcD: That may all be the case, but I’m asking you to tell the jury, did you have it on the market for 220 million?  

DO’B: Not in a formal process, but we did, we were going to sell it, but then, as I say to you, my mother prevailed and she won the argument.

MMcD: I see. So your wife has to put up with the trimming the greens?

DO’B: Like all wives do, Mr McDowell.

MMcD: You did mention, also an investment at Llorona, which is in the province of Catalunya, is that right?

DO’B: Yes. We made a bid for a company called European Tour Course, which is a publicly quoted company owned by an American group, and also the European Tour which runs golf in Europe. Because when we bought Quinta do Lago, the golf courses weren’t in it and they were in this publicly quoted company and we inherited Woburn, we inherited the golf course near Heathrow, two golf courses up in Scandinavia, where they play the Scandinavian Open, and two golf courses in Girona. And we were initially going to just sell all the golf courses and stick with Quinta do Lago, but my father at the time went to Girona, I hadn’t even visited the place, and he said you should hold onto these golf courses, which we did. So we sold everything else and kept the golf courses in Girona, which had some land around them and plots as well, like Quinta do Lago.

MMcD: Just again, I think it is a very successful development, isn’t it?

DO’B: It is now. But it was like Iraq for about 20 years nearly. That was a really tough project. It’s now thankfully a good project.

Project Jordan

In August 2015, Knight Frank and JLL started circulating to select buyers paperwork related to the sale of Project Jordan, the code-name for Quinta do Lago. The resort was being put on the market for €220 million. 

A financial snapshot of the resort at the time showed it had revenues of about €25 million. Resort management said it had budgeted for Ebitda performance to grow from €10.4 million in 2015, including €5.4 million of property sales, to €17.3 million by 2018, including €5 million in plot sales per annum. “Over the period 2016 to 2018 resort management forecast total cumulative Ebitda of €45.8 million,” it told prospective buyers. In December 2015, O’Brien pulled the sale. 

Bloomberg said the sale was aborted after “bids fell short of the asking price.” Around the same time Emmet O’Neill, O’Brien’s nephew, had successfully sold, for his uncle, fuel retailer Topaz. O’Neill’s next project was to become chief executive of Quinta do Lago. The idea was that O’Neill would enhance both the operational and real estate sides of the business. In particular, he was tasked with freshening up some of its offerings, to make it more attractive to younger visitors. 

Brett Desmond, the son of legendary financier Dermot Desmond, and Damien O’Donohue came on board as directors. Brett Desmond is a smart businessman who keeps a low profile. He is married to the singer Andrea Corr. He has invested in startups and sits on the board of Mountain Province Diamonds, one of his father’s larger investments. 

O’Donohue is chief executive of Ikon Media and Entertainment. He was chief operating officer of MCD/Live Nation in Europe so he has connections to celebrities and entertainers. 

He is one of the founders of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) as well as being its chief executive. The league is sponsored by Digicel and one of the world’s biggest cricket tournaments with an audience of 200 million. O’Donohue is gregarious and likeable. He is friends with O’Brien and also has interests in e-sports and events in Australia.  

In May 2016 Emmet O’Neill took a 10 per cent stake in Quinta do Lago resort in Portugal as well as its sister business PGA Catalunya golf resort in Spain. O’Neill became chairman of the company.

In August 2016, former Topaz chief retail director Sean Moriarty became chief executive of Quinta do Lago. He previously worked with Tesco, Dairygold and 4Home Superstores. 

Moriarty did not have a background in resorts, but he had attention to detail and understood the operational side of the business in particular. 

In a 2017 interview, Moriarty showed how Quinta do Lago was adding to its core offering. “We want to become the premier destination for health, wellness and sports education, with an ever‑present emphasis on service,” he said.

“We consider Quinta do Lago and PGA Catalunya to be lifestyle resorts rather than golf resorts,” Emmet O’Neill, chairman of both locations, told The Financial Times. “Golf is an important offering, but our resorts cater for everyone. The idea is to create destinations where people can spend time with friends and family, and at PGA Catalunya we have had the opportunity to implement our vision right from the beginning.” 

From being seen as a retirement spot for the wealthy, Quinta do Lago was determined to reinvent itself for a younger audience, while not losing what it already had. 

Emmet O’Neill’s involvement with the business did not last, however. 

He has since left to concentrate on business interests closer to home, and is no longer a shareholder. 

****

Denis O’Brien is back in full control of Quinta do Lago. Having not sold it in 2015, he now finds himself with a beautiful resort desolated by a virus that has ravaged European tourism. 

Hundreds of people working on the resort are no longer working. Some restaurants are closed. Many mansions are vacant. A few may still have aspirations to golf. But O’Brien’s resort, and those throughout the Algarve, are obeying strict guidelines imposed across Europe to try and slow the virus. How soon it will be safe to lift these restrictions, and for how long, remains uncertain. 

It is a headache among many facing a man who has been described as Ireland’s richest.