Fighting Irish: Has O'Brien KO'd O'Reilly?

Just in time for a St. Patrick's Day decision in the battle of the Irish billionaires, Sir Anthony O'Reilly announced today that he will step down as chief executive of Independent News & Media on his 73rd birthday in May.

The former Heinz CEO, a contrarian champion of the newspaper business, has sparred with rival Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien over the fate of the company's flagship paper, the money-losing Independent newspaper in Britain.

O'Brien, who holds a 26 percent stake in the company, the second largest after O'Reilly's 28.6 percent, has called on O'Reilly to sell the Independent and accused him of running an "old-style fiefdom."

While the newspaper business has imploded in the West, it is flourishing in emerging markets -- South Africa, Indonesia, China, the Middle East -- where Independent News & Media has focused its efforts.

O'Reilly will be "president emeritus" and his son Gavin will succeed him, but O'Brien may have won this round among the fighting Irish, and perhaps the whole bout. The company also announced that it would place three O'Brien loyalists on its board; at the same time, it shrank the number of directors to 10 from 17, further diminishing O'Reilly's power.

In the past year, O'Reilly has been on the ropes. The shakeup comes just a few days after Forbes dropped him from its billionaires list this year -- the first time in a decade that he hasn't made the cut.

Forbes said O'Reilly lost $1.1 billion in 2008, including $250 million in a bid save his dismally performing crystal and fine china company, Waterford-Wedgwood.

by Alexandra Fenwick