Colleary, (James) Gordon (1941–2014), travel entrepreneur and newspaper publisher, was born on 7 March 1941 in Tuam, Co. Galway, the eldest of five children of Gerald Francis Calleary, headmaster of Tuam Vocational School, and his wife Josephine Margaret Calleary (née Gordon). (The children all adopted the name form Colleary, while their parents retained Calleary.) Gordon took his leaving certificate at St Jarlath’s College, Tuam, and commenced studying economics at UCD in 1960. He was elected to the student representative council and volunteered to organise student charter flights in 1961. After he lost the April 1963 election for UCD student president, he left college to serve as a vice-president of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) and as USI travel officer. He collaborated with Bord Fáilte, travelling across Europe and the USA to market Ireland as a destination for international students. He then served two terms as president of USI (1964–6).
Colleary abandoned his finals in UCD to establish the USI Travel Bureau (USIT) in 1966 and serve as its chief executive. He worked directly with the US embassy in Dublin to establish the J-visa programme, which offered Irish students temporary visas to visit the USA. He financed this with an audacious piece of speculation. On hearing rumours that a property at 43 Dame Street, Dublin, was being sought for redevelopment as a new premises for the Central Bank, Colleary signed a long-term lease on the property. Selling the lease to developers six months later yielded a £19,500 profit, which served as working capital.
Colleary rapidly built up USIT. USItravel Ltd was established in 1966 with £25,000 authorised capital, to comply with International Air Transport Association (IATA) regulations. Colleary owned £5,000 while USI owned £11,000 and held an option on the unissued £9,000. Colleary, adept at negotiating charter flight routes and schedules, and needing to fill flights travelling in both directions, developed educational and leisure opportunities in Ireland to entice European students. From the late 1960s he established trading partnerships with student travel organisations across the globe.
USIT sold charter flights to students while USItravel operated a bonded commercial travel agency selling sun holidays and ski trips; among other interests, it held a majority holding in the Spa Hotel, Lisdoonvarna. Through the USItours subsidiary, in 1969 Colleary co-founded the School of Irish Studies with T. W. Moody (qv), Kevin B. Nowlan (qv) and other academics. Initially a summer school, from 1970 it ran year-round courses in Dublin on Irish culture, literature, history and politics, which drew students from colleges and universities across North America. In 1974 concerns from participating academics about the commercial nature of operation ended its relationship with USIT. USIT, jointly owned by Colleary and USI, also held a controlling stake in Nusight Ltd. In early 1970 Colleary and Vincent Browne, a friend and former USI colleague, jointly bought two-thirds of USI’s shareholding in Nusight magazine. Colleary became managing director of the monthly current affairs magazine which Browne had edited since 1969. Financial difficulties caused Nusight to close later that year.
In September 1972 AIB purchased a 51 per cent stake in USIT, which left USI with 25 per cent and Colleary with 24 per cent. The deal, brokered by USI president Pat Rabbitte, drew criticism from some students who were uncomfortable with the increasingly commercial nature of USIT. Colleary left USIT for a time to return to his studies at UCD, but there is no record of his graduation. After he rejoined USIT in 1975, he sold its commercial travel agencies to reduce debt. In the late 1970s domestic pressure to limit the inflow of international students to the USA, as youth unemployment increased there, threatened USIT’s lucrative J-visa and flights business. Colleary, with Minister for Foreign Affairs Garret FitzGerald (qv), successfully lobbied the US government to retain the J-visa programme. In the low-margin, high-volume travel business, Colleary focused relentlessly on price as USIT expanded through the late 1970s, gradually reducing its debts. As turnover reached £5 million in 1981, the company was transformed into a student-staff cooperative.
A year after its 1977 launch Colleary joined the board of Magill Publications, which owned Magill, the influential monthly current affairs magazine edited by Vincent Browne. Colleary served as chairman and in June 1984 he and Browne led a consortium that acquired Tony Ryan’s (qv) holding in the Sunday Tribune for £50,000. Colleary served as chairman, Brown as editor. The paper prospered, with circulation reaching over 100,000 by the close of the 1980s. In 1989 the two held 38 per cent ownership in the newspaper company. In late 1990 disgruntled investors sold 29.85 per cent of the Tribune Group to the Independent Newspapers Group (ING). Colleary and Browne welcomed a full takeover by ING, but this was blocked in March 1992 by Minister for Industry and Commerce Des O’Malley on competition grounds.
In 1986 Magill Publications, jointly owned by Colleary and Browne, complained to the European Commission that RTÉ’s refusal (alongside that of BBC and ITV) to allow Magill to publish a radio and television listings magazine was an abuse of market dominance under European law. In April 1995 the European Court of Justice found that RTÉ, by invoking Irish copyright law to block Magill's intentions, had abused its dominant market position. Upon hearing the ruling at the court in Luxembourg, Colleary ‘wept for joy’ (Irish Times, 7 Apr. 1995). In April 2000 Magill was awarded a £2.4 million settlement, accounting for legal costs, punitive damages and accumulated interest. Colleary, having acquired most of Browne’s shares in Magill Publications Holdings Ltd, was the main beneficiary of the award. The case, establishing that EU competition law can take precedence over national copyright law in member states, attracted significant interest from the intellectual property community. The victory was a significant vindication of Colleary’s enterprising spirit and his willingness to challenge market incumbents.
In 1994 Independent News and Media (INM) acquired a controlling stake (29.9 per cent) in the Tribune Group to insulate the Sunday Independent from competition from the Sunday Times and the Sunday Business Post. Colleary remained non-executive chairman until the Tribune’s closure in 2011, when accumulated debts to INM were estimated at over €40 million. It was primarily his interest in a liberal social agenda and promoting diverse viewpoints that motivated his involvement in publishing, but his main professional focus had always been on USIT. By leveraging a near monopoly on student visas to the USA, USIT substantially increased revenue through the 1990s. Colleary and his wife Mairin owned 20 per cent of USIT International, which owned half of USIT Ireland, the other half being owned by the USI. The 1999 acquisition of a 26.8 per cent holding in ‘travel.com.au’ and a 40 per cent stake in Council Travel, the largest student travel providers in Australia and the USA, alongside similar acquisitions in South Africa, Chile and Argentina, established USIT International as the second largest student travel business in the world. By the summer of 2000 Colleary’s shareholding was estimated to be worth over £20 million as USIT’s stock market flotation was being mooted. During these years, he was widely respected for both his business acumen and his considerate treatment of staff. He had been the driving force behind the creation and expansion of USIT, engineering a social revolution in Irish student travel during the closing decades of the twentieth century. By focusing on low prices USIT enabled hundreds of thousands of Irish students to travel to and across Europe and the USA, many working during such trips to fund their ongoing studies.
The 11 September 2001 attacks in the US caused a rapid downturn in international travel and gravely affected USIT. On 12 September 2001 banks withdrew their financing of USIT’s acquisition of the remaining 60 per cent of Council Travel, forcing USIT to fund the deal from cash reserves. The rapid collapse of Council Travel triggered credit guarantees, precipitating a cash flow crisis which forced USIT, with 15,000 staff in 200 offices worldwide, into examinership. Colleary resigned from USIT in February 2002. The company was liquidated at the end of April, with 82 per cent of the business being acquired by STA Travel of Switzerland for €1.
In April 2004 Colleary sold his home on Bayswater Cove, Sandycove, Co. Dublin, for €3.1 million. The following October the director of corporate enforcement applied to the High Court for an order limiting Colleary and other USIT directors from acting as company directors. Despite claims by the liquidator that substantial trading deficits and operating losses existed in the USIT group prior to the September 2001 attacks, the High Court largely exonerated Colleary in April 2005. In his ruling Mr Justice Peart found that Colleary and his fellow directors did not act irresponsibly or dishonestly and had in fact taken calculated risks in line with normal entrepreneurial behaviour.
While dapper and conspicuous, mainly because of his brightly coloured bow-ties, Colleary avoided publicity. He was known for his integrity and personal generosity: he donated to and fundraised for a variety of causes, including the Dalkey School Project, led by Florence Armstrong (qv), which his children attended. From 1994 he was chairman of Léargas, which organised educational exchange programmes, notably the European Erasmus university scheme. He enjoyed collecting historical maps and spending time in Donegal, where he had acquired a holiday home. He died on 17 June 2014 at Seaford, Sussex, England, where he had bought Florence House with his wife in 2004. After funeral mass at St Joseph’s Church, Glasthule, Co. Dublin, he was buried in Ardara, Co. Donegal. He was survived by his wife Mairin, whom he had married in December 1970 in Rome, and their three children.