Paddy Cosgrave, Daire Hickey and David Kelly get set for nine-week civil case
The three cofounders of Web Summit will face off in court later this month unless last-ditch efforts to reach a settlement succeed. Photograph: Eric Luke, who have been embroiled in a noxious legal standoff since 2021, cannot settle matters quietly before then, a dizzying array of dirty laundry will be aired in the
No stranger to the whiff of sulphur, it was not altogether surprising to anyone who had followed his career that Cosgrave should choose to go public with his disagreements with his former friends.
Cosgrave accused Kelly of the “co-option of very valuable Web Summit commercial opportunities” in his dealings with Murphy. He accused Murphy and Kelly of a “concerted effort over the course of several months” to “mislead” him and Web Summit and “secretly establish” an investment fund that “improperly usurped” the events company’s brand and resources.
Crucially, Cosgrave claimed that when Kelly began to make known his desire to resign as a director of Web Summit in late 2020 and early 2021, he signalled his intention to break his connection to the follow-on fund. As evidence, Cosgrave furnished to the court a text from Kelly. “I am going to make life simple for myself,” he told Cosgrave, according to the affidavit. “Start my own small business or work for someone else will need to figure that out.
As journalist Sanz details in her book, Kelly – a trained accountant who preferred to stay out of the limelight his co-founders often courted – was brought into the Web Summit fold in 2010 to “handle bigger-picture aspects of the enterprise”. This would eventually include Amaranthine Fund I. Kelly said he had texted some of his concerns about the situation – chiefly that the article could leave the company open to legal action from Varadkar – to Patrick Kirwan, Web Summit’s chief financial officer. Kirwan replied that there was a need to “keep church and state completely separate” when it came to Cosgrave’s interests and Web Summit’s, an effort made “hard at times when PC links directly with the people”.
When the business was restructured and formally incorporated in 2012, Hickey said he, Kelly and Cosgrave were directors and employees of Manders Terrace. “By way of illustration of the seniority and centrality of my role in the company,” he said, “only two representatives of the company generally spoke on behalf of the company on the main stage at the Web Summit or to media: Mr Cosgrave and I.”
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