Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave returns 6 months after quitting over Israel remarks
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Web Summit's former chief executive Katherine Maher during the closing ceremony of Web Summit in Lisbon, in 2023.
PHOTO: REUTERS
DUBLIN - Mr Paddy Cosgrave, the head of Web Summit who resigned in October 2023 after a firestorm over his comments on the war in Gaza, has returned to his role nearly six months on.
Web Summit, an events business Mr Cosgrave co-founded in Dublin in 2009, is Europe’s biggest technology conference, drawing in high-profile executives, investors, celebrities and politicians.
Mr Cosgrave apologised and resigned after a furore over his online remarks about Israel’s response to the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are,” he wrote on X on Oct 13, 2023.
High-profile investors and companies including Google parent Alphabet and Intel withdrew from his flagship event.
His co-founders David Kelly and Daire Hickey at the time called on him to sell his majority stake in Web Summit’s parent company. Filings show that Mr Cosgrave owns 81 per cent of Manders Terrace, the firm that controls Web Summit.
Mr Cosgrave was replaced by Ms Katherine Maher, formerly chief executive officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, but she subsequently departed.
Mr Cosgrave posted on X on April 8 that he was returning to “supercharge this mission even further”. He did not address his October comments. BLOOMBERG
