Siobhán Creaton Boeken

He is now officially Ireland's richest man, having overtaken the legendary Tony O'Reilly. He owns hugely lucrative mobile phone networks in Ireland and the Caribbean, where his Digicel company sponsors West Indies cricket. He recently ousted Tony O'Reilly from control over Irish Independent newspapers (which owns the English Independent as well). He bought a blocking stake in Aer Lingus to deny Michael O'Leary's Ryanair the chance of a takeover. Little wonder that Forbes magazine recently profiled Denis O'Brien in its series on the world's most important billionaires. Now Siobhan Creaton, formerly the experienced finance correspondent of the Irish Times and author of Aurum's acclaimed and constantly-selling book on Ryanair, has written the first biography of this fascinating, powerful and extremely wealthy man. Not only one of the most powerful men in the Irish economy, but also with a business empire stretching to the Caribbean, O'Brien is a controversial character fast becoming a global player in the telecoms industry. Creaton has conducted dozens of new interviews with individuals from all parts of O'Brien's empire, and got very close to the man himself. An obvious bestseller in Ireland, it is also a portrait of one of the new generation of business tycoons who now command the world stage. Siobhan Creaton is the author of two previous books, Ryanair (also published by Aurum) and Panic at the Bank. She lives in Dublin.

The trade paperback of Ryanair, published in June 2004, has already sold nearly 20,000 copies and is in its sixth printing - testament to the fascination this maverick company has for both the business community and the general reader (and budget air traveller). In Ireland it has been a number-one bestseller (indeed, is still in the chart); here it is selling in significant quantities from airports and bookshops around the country. It remains the only book about the airline and its buccaneering chief executive, Michael O'Leary. With Ryanair continuing to expand, the battle for the low-cost airline market in Europe becoming ever more cutthroat, and O'Leary happy to do battle with everyone from airports (for their landing charges) to his own pilots (over pay and conditions) - and generate an endless stream of PR and news stories in the process - the B-format edition of Siobhan Creaton's book is fully updated to take account of all Ryanair's most recent history.

The supercharged growth of this low-cost airline has actually changed the way countless people live their lives, whether it be Ireland's new "Ryanair Generation," for whom its cheap flights to Dublin have eliminated much permanent emigration to the UK, or the thousands of Britons now enabled to buy holiday homes in rural France. This is the first book to tell the full story of the Ryanair phenomenon, from its inauspicious beginnings to its current dominance, from the secret of its business strategy to its cavalier stunts and practices. Siobhan Creaton has spoken to Ryanair employees past and present, as well as its top management and those at its major rivals like British Airways and easyJet, to produce an authoritative, objective, and compulsive account of one of the most colorful companies in Europe.