You have to admit that Sir Anthony O’Reilly gave it a good go. The Irish media-to-mining magnate has spent a great deal of time, energy and money over the past 20 years trying to make Waterford Wedgwood consistently profitable. Sir Anthony and his brother-in-law have put in the thick end of €400 million (£340 million). Only last September, they invested another €60 million to buy the company time to raise more money. That has all gone.

Most people would have thrown in the towel long ago, but Sir Anthony has had great successes in other fields by sticking to a task, convinced that it would come right in the end. Not this time. It is tempting to compare the company with Woolworths, another famous name that has succumbed. Like Woolworths, Waterford Wedgwood seems to have been struggling for years and the biggest surprise is not that it has failed but that it survived so long.

But the cases are very different. Only eight years ago, Waterford Wedgwood was making profits of €100 million a year on sales of €1.1 billion.

Then the dollar started to tumble and the company struggled. With more than 40 per cent of its sales in dollars and most of its costs in euros and sterling, profits were squeezed. It never really recovered.

Many mistakes were made. The company was too slow in moving production overseas. Cutting jobs in Ireland was expensive, financially and politically. A buyer will now take on only those staff it needs. Management was slow to integrate the different businesses and slow to bring the core brands up to date, despite its successful associations with contemporary designers.

Perhaps Sir Anthony’s biggest mistake was not to recognise that it needed one massive investment to restructure the business rather than a drip feed over a number of years.

He was convinced that the company would succeed in the end because of the strength of the brands. There is little doubt of their value, but it looks likely they will now succeed in other hands. Royal Worcester, which went under recently, has failed to find a buyer and is being wound up. But Waterford and Wedgwood are in another league.

A couple of years ago, Sir Anthony told me that Waterford Wedgwood brands would be an attractive buy for the Chinese, who have the manufacturing, but not the brands. But buying such a complex business out of administration looks more like a job for the private equity professionals.

There will surely be other interest apart from the US financial buyer with which the company has been in talks. After all, there are signs that the credit crunch is encouraging Americans to dine at home. And plenty of them can still afford more than Ikea.

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