He took over the People at just 22 following his father’s death in 1960. Over the next four decades, Kerry Keane developed it into a major printing and publishing group, acquiring the Clonmel Nationalist, the Tipperary Star, and Wellbrook Press, a specialist colour-magazine printer.
The package caught the eye of Scottish Radio Holdings, then expanding in Ireland. For IR£28.2m it got the Kilkenny People group’s substantial premises too, but the sales price was a real eye-opener for other families who owned provincial newspapers.
In 1999, the Kilkenny People and its subsidiaries had a turnover of IR£8.5m, and a combined operating profit of IR£2.3m. A sales price of 12 times the operating profit was notable, but it was particularly surprising given the combined weekly circulation of the titles was just 43,000.
If Kerry Keane’s modest company was worth IR28.2m, the owners of bigger newspapers reasoned, what must their titles be worth? We soon found out, as ever more outlandish prices were paid by the likes of Johnston Press, culminating in the €138.6m sale of the Leinster Leader group.
The Kilkenny People was founded in 1892 by Kerry Keane’s grand-uncle, Edward T Keane. On his death in 1945, it passed to his nephew Edward, who was then living in Winchester, England, with his young family. His son John was born in 1938.
On moving to Ireland, John was educated at CBS Kilkenny, Clongowes, UCD, and the Kings Inns.
A shrewd editor, he knew exactly what the readers of the Kilkenny People wanted. Nothing about Northern Ireland, he once pointed out. They were concerned about preserving the historic nature of the medieval Kilkenny city, and the provision of third-level education.
Kerry Keane was outspoken about what he saw as the unfair advantage that self-employed and farming families had in getting third-level grants more easily than PAYE workers. In 1996, he published the names and addresses of over 100 local students who had obtained grants from Kilkenny County Council.
In the ensuing row, Kerry Keane defended his decision as matter of public interest.
“There is widespread anger at the perceived inequity in the way in which some of the grants have been allocated. Many PAYE earners only marginally fail to qualify for grants and receive no assistance, while it appears a significant proportion of those who do benefit are from the families of the self employed,” he pointed out.
After the sale of the newspaper, he moved to Switzerland and invested his millions in a variety of projects, not all of them entirely successful. First, though, he gave staff at the newspaper IR£1,000 apiece.
He put IR£1.5m into a vehicle that paid £250m for Jarvis Hotels, a UK-quoted 64-hotel chain. Along with Larry Goodman and Jim Flavin, he was part of a consortium that bought Goldman Sachs headquarters in London in 2001 for almost €370m. It sold in 2011, just after the financial crash, for €100m less than they paid for it.
Kerry Keane was also a backer of Tysan Investments, which bought two office blocks in Sandyford, along with Denis O’Brien, Lochlann Quinn and Sean FitzPatrick.
He was involved in other publishing projects, such as establishing Irish Tatler Publications with Noelle Campbell-Sharp in 1979. A planned investment in the Sunday Business Post fell through just before its launch, as did a deal to print the newspaper, due to technical problems, but Kerry Keane did make alternative printing arrangements for the fledgling title with the Irish Times.
Prominent in cultural circles, Kerry Keane was the first chairman of the board of the restored Royal Hospital Kilmainham, a board member of the RHA, and was a grand prior of the Order of St Lazarus, a Christian chivalric society that worked for the relief of leprosy.
John Edward Kerry Keane is survived by his wife Leonora, his daughters Adriana, Tanya, and Leo. He was predeceased by his daughter Andrea.
In a tribute on Rip.ie, Donie Butler, the former commercial director of the FAI, remembered him as “a wonderful and kind employer during my 14 years at the Kilkenny People, and later a friend”, and said he represented the provincial newspaper industry “with leadership, vision, innovation and integrity.’”
This article was amended on Monday, March 16, at 17.26pm to clarify that John Kerry Keane is survived by three daughters.
source