“You know what this says?” Tony O’Reilly barked down the phone to his publicist. “This says that Tony O’Reilly is finished!”

And the finish line was drawing closer, financially, for one of the greatest business figures to emerge from the British Isles after World War II. That day, though, the object of the agitation was a front-page profile in The Wall Street Journal written by me, which pointed out that O’Reilly would struggle to the repay the debts on his Irish newspaper business, Independent News & Media, which had been hit by a collapse in property prices. Australians called it the global financial crisis.