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The owner of the island of Ireland on Dubai’s The World project has taken his own life amid rumours of financial worries as a result of the global economic crisis, it has been reported.

John O’Dolan, one of Ireland's leading building developers, was one of four business partners from his home country who brought the “Ireland in the Sun” development in March 2007 for AED142m ($38.6m).

'He was always laughing...well he ain't laughing now is he? Read below.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news ... 57585.html

Don't be too harsh, Robby!

I feel sorry for John O'Dolan's family. Ireland has produced some really aggressive, gambling , go-ahead ,entrepreneurs over the last 20 years. But I'm afraid that John O'Dolan won't be the last one to be in trouble. Too many have been carried along by this tidal wave of prosperity, especially in the construction industry!! Now the wave they were surfing on ,has turned out to be a tsunami and a lot of them will be swept away!! There has been too much risky speculation and highly inflated property prices .
Ireland's whole economy is in trouble. The country can't keep up with the likes of Germany , with whom they share the Euro value. They say Germany will have to help out the PIIGS ......Portugal, Italy, Ireland , Greece ans Spain.....who all have Euro problems. Will Germany also demand a firm grip on their economies?
Individuals like O'Dolan were real gamblers, I reckon. How can you pay 38 MILLION DOLLARS for a sand island in the Persian/Arabian Gulf?
The cost of developing it will be a FORTUNE. It all costs more to do by boat , than on land . Besides, for the scheme to be RIGHT.......ALL THE OTHER ISLANDS NEED COMPLETING AS WELL . Otherwise, the scheme will be an unfinished marine building site for YEARS.
The maintenance cost of a sand island ALONE is huge. Sand is constantly going to get washed away. Then you need a boat to get there .That restricts trade.
I reckon it was TERRIBLE JUDGMENT to buy one of the World islands for such big money. It is fraught with future problems . Buyers have been sucked in from all over the world. I saw the Irish buyers speaking on TV a year or so ago. This man must have been one of them. Many of them start with very little money. They achieve some success in building properties ....maybe for 20 years ........THEN THEY GET DRUNK ON IT AND GREED AND AMBITION TAKE OVER!!
They think it will ALL go ON FOREVER!!

But now the banks themselves are in trouble because they have LENT TO PROPERTY SPECULATORS ON A GRAND SCALE!!
But , when push comes to shove..........YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AMONGST BANKERS.....they will look after THEIR OWN SKINS!!

I'm afraid that many more investors in the World Islands will go bust , and there will be many more who have over-reached , like O'Dolan , all over the REAL world, as well..

What happened to your sense of reality? I thought you were the greatest critic of investing in Dubai...than this is simply their own fault, which they could not deal with.

Remember the video of 'the Irish deal'. They had to decide on short notice for the greatest opportunity ever... eh wronggg timing.



"It will be as green as it is in Ireland"... They meant: It'll submerge as fast as Atlantis.

Well , I knew that spending millions on World islands was very risky, because the extra investment to develop them was so big.
I would not have said that buying the right flats in 2004 was so risky,of course. That is a different story now, as well.

Dubai has way over-done things , and buying sand islands out at sea for $38 million dollars is the craziest speculation of the lot.

I still feel sorry for the family of a man who has over-reached himself and died in this way.

I agree, you don't wish this to any family.
But, then again, suicide is their own reaction. And you know what they say about suicide. Its a selfish act. It maybe gets rid of the debt construction to save his family lifestyle, but the emotional burden for his family is not his load to carry...

Sorry! I can imagine the pure despair that can force a man to suicide. He might have been flying high for 20 years , with everything going well and debts under control. Then , one or two bad moves , and an unprecedented economic turn-around like we witnessed in October 2008, and within weeks, the world becomes a very different place !!
The banks themselves are bailed out using the money of struggling tax-payers , and the bosses react by looking after themselves .........and tightening up severely on entrepreneurial risk-taking customers !!

The attitude to banks has fundamentally CHANGED over the last 5 months. People respected them , thought they were really SAFE, and thought they knew their business..........NOT NOW!! The bosses are perceived as greedy , incompetent bast*rds who had NO CLUE about what was really going on........and were too busy chasing commissions to be studying the economy !
The stupidity and myopia of millionaire bankers is what ANGERS the general public!!
There are TENS OF THOUSANDS working in finance in London alone..........so why did no-one spot the mess and call a halt to this stupidity much earlier???

If these bankers were airline pilots .......there would be crashes EVERY DAY!!

From a risk perspective; Buying an island is simply an idiot kind of practice.

Think about it. He could have saved his own live by thinking closer to the box. Not thinking 'out of the box' like in outer space.

Only Richard Branson has the pennies to do that.
From a risk perspective.

RobbyG wrote:.
Only Richard Branson has the pennies to do that.

Don't be too sure about that...Sir Dickie never has a penny in his pocket!

I know!



Knight

What are you saying DK? He lives on credit cards

RobbyG wrote:What happened to your sense of reality? I thought you were the greatest critic of investing in Dubai...than this is simply their own fault, which they could not deal with.

Remember the video of 'the Irish deal'. They had to decide on short notice for the greatest opportunity ever... eh wronggg timing.

"It will be as green as it is in Ireland"... They meant: It'll submerge as fast as Atlantis.

Looks like the Island of Ireland has sank before it's even started now with the death of John O'Dolan. I don't know much about him but I have had dealings with two of the other guys in the youtube video, (Raymond Norton & Andrew Brett) they were directors of a company in Ireland called Larionovo which went into liquidation in Nov 2008 leaving a lot of Irish investors out of pocket on several developments and in our case a development in India. We've since formed a group of about 145 investors and through our own investigations have traced our money to Dubai where it somehow ended up with another big player in Dubai called The Profile Group. Despite verbal agreements from senior management of Profile that our money would be returned we are still chasing them for it. Profile used to have an office in London but that's now closed and from what I'm seeing on this and other forums I wouldn't be surprised if they shut up shop altogether too in the near future. Looks to me like a lot more than John O'Dolan (RIP) got in way over their heads on this deal.