27 Facts About Barry O'Callaghan

Barry O'Callaghan was born on 1969 and is an Irish business executive and financier.

Barry O'Callaghan is the Chairman and CEO of AKLO Capital and the former CEO of HMH.

Barry O'Callaghan grew the small educational software company Riverdeep into the largest K-12 publishing company in the American education system through a series of acquisitions.

Barry O'Callaghan was born in 1969 in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland.

Barry O'Callaghan was captain of the school's senior cup rugby team and later he played rugby for Trinity College Dublin, where he studied law in the late 1980s.

Barry O'Callaghan worked in the London office, then later in the Hong Kong office, before moving to New York City to work at Salomon Smith Barney near the beginning of the dot-com bubble.

In 1997 Barry O'Callaghan got a senior job the telecommunications and technology division of investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston.

Barry O'Callaghan quit Credit Suisse First Boston in 1999 to become the Chief Executive Officer of the digital publishing startup, Riverdeep, in order to take the company public.

Just as CD-ROMs were gaining popularity, Barry O'Callaghan transitioned Riverdeep away from CDs into offering online subscriptions to educational content.

Barry O'Callaghan led the acquisition of a software company called Logal, which sold math curriculum online.

Barry O'Callaghan took Riverdeep through an initial public offering on Nasdaq in 2000.

Barry O'Callaghan used low-interest loans to fund acquisitions of traditional print publishers.

Barry O'Callaghan merged Riverdeep with Houghton Mifflin in 2006 to create the Education Media and Publishing Group, before acquiring Harcourt Education in America from Reed Elsevier.

Barry O'Callaghan owned about one-third of the company and is estimated to have had 1.5 billion euro in assets after both acquisitions.

Barry O'Callaghan became Chief Executive Officer of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2009, after the prior CEO retired.

Barry O'Callaghan refinanced the company in 2009, reducing its debt by $1 billion.

Barry O'Callaghan tried to sell the Houghton Mifflin business, but turned down the offers he got as being too low.

Barry O'Callaghan went from being seventh place in the Sunday Times list of richest people, to the 21st.

Barry O'Callaghan continued to serve as CEO until resigning from that position in 2011 and serving as an advisor for an additional year.

Barry O'Callaghan said the company's financial problems were the result of unpredictable market circumstances for textbook purchases and paying too much for the Houghton Mifflin business.

In 2011, Rise Global purchased the Chinese business of Houghton Mifflin and Barry O'Callaghan became CEO of Rise Global, which teaches English to people in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Barry O'Callaghan personally owns exclusive rights to some of HMH's educational materials for teaching the English language.

Barry O'Callaghan sold the Rise China Chinese business to Bain Capital for 14 times its annual profit due to Chinese legal restrictions on foreigners owning educational assets in China.

The success of the Rise China led Barry O'Callaghan to found the Rise Global network including Rise Korea, in which he aims to make English language more applicable and relevant to Korean students.

Barry O'Callaghan has a controlling interest in Patheos, a spirituality website.

Barry O'Callaghan is the owner of Beanstalk Innovation, an online education consultancy in Massachusetts.

Barry O'Callaghan owns the Cliff House hotel and Cliff Townhouse restaurant and guesthouse in Ireland.