Michael O'Leary

Michael O'Leary    ( businessman)
Born	Michael Kevin O'Leary 20 March 1961  Cork,  Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Alma mater	Trinity College (Dublin)
Parents	•  Ted O'Leary •  Ger O'Leary
Children	4
Spouse	Anita Farrell
Member of	Bilderberg/Steering committee
CEO Ryanair, Bilderberg steering committee

Michael Kevin O'Leary is an Irish businessman who is the CEO of Ryanair. With a net worth of around €848.6 million as of April 2018, he is one of Ireland's wealthiest businessmen. He attended the 2015 Bilderberg conference, and became member of the Bilderberg steering committee.

Education

His father was the part-owner of a textile factory. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College near Clane, County Kildare, before studying business and economics at Trinity College Dublin.

Career

He became friends at an early age with Cathal and Declan Ryan, both sons of Tony Ryan, a partner in the leasing company Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA), which was powerful in the 1980s. When Tony Ryan founded Ryanair in 1985, O'Leary was not there yet.

In [[1988], O'Leary was hired as a personal consultant to Tony Ryan due to his knowledge of accounting. The small Ryanair was heavily in deficit, so O'Leary was looking for ways to bring the airlines into the profit zone. O'Leary greatly reduced costs and, among other things, eliminated first class on board the aircraft. But these measures did not contribute to the improvement. The state-owned Aer Lingus always pushed its prices down to the level of Ryanair.

In 1989, Tony Ryan spoke to Séamus Brennan, the Irish Minister of Transport, and reported on Ryanair's financial situation. Brennan promised to save the airline and regulated flights on the route between Ireland and London. Aer Lingus received the rights for Gatwick and Heathrow airports, while Ryanair received the rights for the cheaper and less busy Luton and Stansted airports. This saved the airline for the time being.

In 1992, O'Leary traveled to Dallas to get acquainted with the model of the American low-cost airline Southwest Airlines. To this end, he met for talks with the chairman of Southwest, Herb Kelleher. O'Leary then began to transfer the Southwest model to Ryanair. This included, among other things, the conversion of the fleet to a single type of aircraft and short ground times of 25 minutes. Over the years, Ryanair has developed further concepts to save costs. This included the approach to use cheaper, remote airports. O'Leary played the airports off against each other, to get discounts and subsidies. In 1993, Tony Ryan retired, limiting himself to advisory functions. O'Leary became his successor as chairman of the airline. Under his leadership, Ryanair became the largest low-cost airline in Europe.

Michael O'Leary has always tried to keep his airline in the media. Provocative advertising campaigns initiated by O'Leary attracted attention, as well as his own public appearances. Among other things, in 2003 O'Leary drove a tank from the Second World War in front of the headquarters of the competitor easyJet and claimed that he wanted to free the people from Easyjet's high prices. In 2004, he had himself photographed in a cleaning woman's costume for the airline's official annual report. In the same year, he had his Mercedes S 500 registered as a taxi in order to be allowed to use the bus lane in Dublin.

[[Display born on::20 March 1961| ]] 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/2015	11 June 2015	14 June 2015	Austria Telfs-Buchen	The 63rd meeting, 128 Bilderbergers met in Austria
Bilderberg/2016	9 June 2016	12 June 2016	Germany Dresden	The 2016 Bilderberg meeting took place in Dresden, Germany.
Bilderberg/2017	1 June 2017	4 June 2017	US Virginia Chantilly	The 65th Bilderberg Meeting
Bilderberg/2018	7 June 2018	10 June 2018	Italy Turin Hotel Torino Lingotto Congress	The 66th Bilderberg Meeting, in Turin, Italy, known for months in advance after an unprecedented leak by the Serbian government.
Bilderberg/2019	30 May 2019	2 June 2019	Switzerland Montreux	The 67th Bilderberg Meeting, held in Switzerland, the last before the COVID-19 operation that so many Bilderbergers were involved in
Bilderberg/2022	2 June 2022	5 June 2022	US Washington DC Mandarin Oriental Hotel	The 68th Bilderberg Meeting, held in Washington DC, after an unprecedented two year hiatus during which a lot of the Bilderberg regulars were busy managing COVID-19
Bilderberg/2023	18 May 2023	21 May 2023	Portugal Lisbon Pestana Palace Hotel	The 69th Bilderberg Meeting, held in Lisbon, with 128 guests on the official list. The earliest in the year since 2009.
Bilderberg/2024	30 May 2024	2 June 2024	Spain Madrid	The 70th Bilderberg Meeting
Bilderberg/2025	12 June 2025	15 June 2025	Sweden Stockholm	The 71st Bilderberg Meeting, the subject of an unprecedented leak

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