Taoiseach Enda Kenny pays tribute to Shane O'Neill (right) with the Chello Foundation Humanitarian Award late last year. In the background are Shane's brother Brian and his son Jamie
Dublin native Shane O’Neill, the chief strategy officer of UPC’s parent company Liberty Global, stepped down from the role at the end of December, it has emerged. Liberty Global is the largest cable company outside the US and one of the fastest growing in the world.
O’Neill was instrumental in driving the success of Liberty Global’s UPC Broadband division in Europe. In Ireland, UPC recently reached the 250,000 broadband subscriber milestone.
O’Neill was also president of Chellomedia, Liberty Global’s content division and its investment arm, LGI Ventures.
Among the developments that O’Neill would have overseen would be the evolution of Liberty Global’s Horizon home digital hub technology the company was developing alongside Intel, NDS, Samsung and Nagravision.
O’Neill unveiled the technology in Ireland late 2010 at the TIF conference in Dublin.
He said of Horizon: “With this, cable subscribers will be able to access internet content, as well as web TV. They will also access content across the household – you can be watching in the living room any content you have on PCs and other digital devices – we will unveil a state-of-the-art user guide to navigate through this.
“It will be easy to use, it is cool and coming to Ireland in summer of mid-2012. This will be coming via UPC, not Apple,” O’Neill said at the time.
O’Neill received an undergraduate law degree from Trinity College Dublin and is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.
He worked at KPMG in Dublin for three years before joining Goldman Sachs, where he specialised in mergers and acquisitions, media and the communications industry.
He became chief strategy officer of Liberty Global in 2002.
