J P McManus

John Patrick McManus was born on March 10, 1951, in Limerick. His love of horses was acquired from his late father, Johnny, who kept show jumpers. He was educated at the Christian Brothers School on Sexton Street.
“I used to study the horses in the papers and I would always try and have a bet on in the big races. It was a problem, as I was too young to go into a betting office and I wasn’t too big for my age either,” he told the Limerick Leader years later.

JP McManus

McManus began his business career at his family’s earth-moving business, and then became a bookmaker at Limerick’s greyhound track, the Market’s Field. Success as an oncourse bookie enabled him to buy his own racehorses, which led to backing and laying horses on the advice of his associate Jimmy Hayes. He also became an accomplished backgammon player.
In 1982, he and his wife, Noreen, a former nurse, bought Martinstown Stud on over 400 acres in Co Limerick from the McCalmont family. He is now jump racing’s largest owner with over 400 horses in training. His first really big win was a horse called Mister Donovan at Cheltenham. His early exploits in the betting ring earned him the nickname “The Sundance Kid”. From 1999, he enjoyed a very public battle with infamous Scottish bookmaker “Fearless” Freddie Williams. On 16 March 2006, McManus won in excess of £1 million from Williams at the Cheltenham Festival.
The most famous of his horses is Istabraq, a three-time winner of the Champion Hurdle trained by Aidan O’Brien. Tony McCoy is retained as his stable jockey. Former champion jockey Jonjo O’Neill trains some of his horses at the Jackdaws Castle facility which McManus helped finance. His horses run in the green and gold colours of the South Liberties GAA club.
His horse Don’t Push It, ridden by McCoy and trained by O’Neill, won the 2010 Aintree Grand National. While he is well known to racing fans, he remains somewhat an enigma. He says he “rarely bets” these days and when he does he usually describes them as “little bets.” He says betting is “not an obsession.” He is featured in “High Rollers of the Turf”, by Raymond Smith.
He has profitable investments in propery and a significant part of his wealth comes from foreign exchange trading which he oversees from his office in Geneva, also his official residence. He also has a permanent suite at London’s Dorchester Hotel. He returns to Ireland regularly.
Currencies have been a speciality and his bets on currencies are bank-scale, always working on the advice of his friends Dermot Desmond and Joe Lewis. He now has a wide portfolio of investments from leisure centres and betting shops to pubs and nursing homes. He is a large shareholder in Ladbrokes.
He part owns the luxury Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados which he acquired in 1997 with Dermot Desmond amd John Magnier for around €60m, with a reported further €280m spent on renovations. (Tiger Woods got married at the Sandy Lane).
He bought a 28.9% stake in Manchester United with John Magnier. In 2005 both men sold their shares in the club to US businessman Malcolm Glazer for €330m, making a reported profit of €130m.
He also profited to the tune of €33m from the €208m sale of the Standard Chartered Bank in London in 2006.
Other investments included his interests in the Next Generation leisure clubs, which he owned with Magnier and Desmond. The clubs were auctioned off for €300m in 2006 to London & Regional (L&R), a UK property firm. This sale netted McManus over €18m for his 14.4% stake, once company debts were accounted for.
In 2010 it was revealed He and John Magnieer had secretly built stakes in Mitchells & Butlers, a listed pub company which owns the All Bar One and Harvester chains.
In 2004, McManus set up Sporting Limerick, which sponsors Limerick GAA teams.
A dedicated philanthropist, McManus has been responsible for raising at least €50m for charity.
In 2006, he built a €120 million residence on his 400 acre Martinstown Stud farm in Co. Limerick.
A keen golfer, he organised the Invitation Pro-Am golf tournament in Adare, Co Limerick, in 2005 and 2010, to raise funds for Limerick charities. Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington and Tony McCoy (caddie: Ruby Walsh) were among the personalities taking part. The event has raised €95 million to date
JP McManus’s personal fortune is estimated at €1.2 billion (£900 million) but at its peak was probably closer to €2 billion. Like many others McManus is reputed to have been affected by the economic downturn.
In 1996, he established the JP McManus Scholarship Award which provides €6,750 each year for third level education to eight selected students at his former secondary school C.B.S. Sexton Street in Limerick. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Limerick and has funded the new Kemmy Business School at the University. Jim Kemmy, a dogged socialist, was a close friend of McManus’s.

Although he lives abroad most of the time, he maintains very strong links with Limerick. “It is a delight that our children feel as strongly about our home place as we do and I look forward to spending many years of happiness in Limerick,” he said on being named Limerick Person of the Year in 2011.

Irked by criticism that he was a tax exile, he said in late 2011: “I didn’t leave the country in order to avoid paying a tax … I paid my taxes and I set up my business abroad.” He added: “Do they want you to come back and try and support the local economy, try to earn some money abroad and then put it in the local economy. That’s what I like to do.”

McManus was diagnosed with cancer in late 2008 and received treatment in the USA. He is said to be coping well. He is married to Noreen and they have three children.