The number of Irish billionaires rose from nine to 11 last year and their combined wealth increased by more than a third to just over €50 billion, according to Oxfam Ireland. Who are they?
The Mistry family
Retaining his spot at the top of Ireland’s wealth pyramid last year was Shapoor Mistry, the owner of Indian construction and engineering giant Shapoorji Palonji. He inherited control of the almost 160-year-old group from his father, Palonji Mistry, who died as an Irish citizen in 2022, aged 93.
Married to Dublin-born Pat “Patsy” Perin Dubash, the elder Mistry – the largest private shareholder in Indian conglomerate Tata – gave up his Indian passport for an Irish one in 2022.
Like his father, Shapoor Palonji is a low-key figure, who shares his fortune with the family of his late brother, former Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry, who also died in 2022.
The Mistry family owns an 18.4 per cent stake in Tata Sons, a holding company in the $165 billion (€159 billion) revenue Tata Group, which includes, among other things, steel producers, chemical manufacturers and hospitality businesses. Cyrus Mistry’s sons Firoz and Zahan Mistry, who hold shares in Mumbai-based Tata Motors, were listed as the joint fifth wealthiest Irish citizens last year.
The Collison brothers
In second place on the Forbes list, each with an estimated fortune of $7.2 billion, are Limerick-born tech moguls Patrick and John Collison. The brothers founded payments company Stripe in 2010, coming up with a simple way for start-ups to accept online payments with just a few lines of code.
[ Ireland’s 11 billionaires saw their wealth grow by a third to €50bn in 2024Opens in new window ]
Since then, the San Francisco and Dublin-headquartered company has developed a range of products that make it easier for companies doing business online. Their first pay-day came in 2008 when they sold their company Auctomatic for more than €3 million in 2008. Valued at $1 billion in 2014, Stripe now has a valuation of around $70 billion after Sequoia Capital last year offered to buy shares from its investors looking to cash out of the fintech.
John Grayken
Boston-born private equity boss John Grayken was the fourth wealthiest Irish citizen on the Forbes rich list last year. Mr Grayken founded Dallas-based firm Lone Star Funds in 1995 before becoming an Irish citizen in 1999.
Following the 2008 financial crisis, Lone Star was an active buyer of distressed assets in the Republic, snapping up, among other things, a €650 million portfolio of non-performing commercial property loans from the EBS loan book in 2012.
Last August, it completed the sale of its property development platform Quintain Ireland to fellow Texan firm TPG for an estimated €200 million, while retaining control of the Cherrywood project in south Dublin, which has the potential to deliver an estimated 3,000 homes.
Forbes valued the publicity-shy Mr Grayken, who resides in London, at $6.9 billion last year.
Eugene Murtagh
Kingspan founder Eugene Murtagh’s rise began when he founded his engineering business in 1965.
From humble beginnings – the years behind his family’s pub – the Cavan-based company would go on to float on the Irish Stock Exchange with a value of £20 million (€23 million), later expanding to a global business with a series of acquisitions that included CRH’s European insulations business and ThyssenKrupp Steel’s construction division.
Mr Murtagh stayed at the helm until 2005, when he was succeeded as chief executive of the company by his son Gene, and stayed on as chairman and non-executive director until 2021.
He owns around 15 per cent of the company, which is listed in Dublin and London. Forbes estimates his net worth at $2.8 billion.
Denis O’Brien
Communications billionaire Denis O’Brien first hit the headlines in 1995 when Esat won the State’s second mobile phone licence, in a surprise result of the competition.
A tribunal later found that Michael Lowry, as minister for communications at the time, had “secured the winning” of the competition for the mobile licence for Esat.
Mr O’Brien has consistently denied any wrongdoing. By 2000, he had sold out of Esat, earning him personally around €292 million.
Mr O’Brien later attempted to recreate his former success in the Caribbean with Digicel. The business propelled him to billionaire status; between 2007 and 2015 he received at least $1.9 billion in Digicel dividends.
But Digicel became hugely indebted, which eventually led to a restructuring deal in 2023 that wrote off $1.7 billion from Digicel’s debt, leaving Mr O’Brien with 10 per cent of the business.
O’Brien’s interests extended to media, establishing Communicorp, which owned radio stations around Europe, and building up a shareholding in Independent News & Media (INM).
He sold his stake in the latter to Mediahuis for a reported €43.5 million in 2019, and Commmunicorp to Bauer Media Audio in 2021. He is now worth $2.8 billion, according to Forbes.
John Dorrance III
An heir to the Campbell’s Soup empire, American-born billionaire John Dorrance emigrated to Ireland in the mid-1990s, swapping a ranch in Wyoming for Dublin.
That was around the same time he sold his stake in the company his grandfather helped build: he invented the formula for Campbell’s condensed soup. The move is estimated to have netted him around $720 million.
He was granted Irish citizenship in 1995, and is a regular name on the Forbes rich lists. Mr Dorrance is worth an estimated $2.6 billion, according to Forbes.
Dermot Desmond
Cork-born financier Dermot Desmond started out in banking before striking out on his own. In 1981, he founded independent brokerage NCB Stockbrokers, which he sold it for $39 million in 1994 and started private equity firm International Investment & Underwriting.
The investment company has stakes in travel software firm Datalex, Mountain Province Diamonds, Barchester Healthcare and Glasgow soccer club Celtic Plc.
Mr Desmond later was part of consortium that bought Baltimore Technologies, and invested in everything from hotels – Sandy Lane in Barbados – to gaming, with BETDAQ, a business that was later sold to Ladbrokes.
Now worth around $2.2 billion, Mr Desmond also invested in London City Airport, a risky venture at the time, but one that proved profitable when he sold it for a reported £750 million in 2006.
John Armitage
British-born John Armitage, the chief investment officer and cofounder of Egerton Capital, began his career in 1981 at Morgan Grenfell Asset Management, ascending the ranks and becoming a director in 1991.
He established Egerton in 1994 with Irish-American financier William Bollinger, and is now worth an estimated $1.5 billion, chiefly due to the investment company.
Egerton Capital now has $15.3 billion of assets under management, and has generated more than $26 billion of profit since it was founded.
The Eton-educated investor became an Irish citizen in 2018, perhaps in response to Britain’s impending exit from the European Union. Mr Armitage had opposed the move, donating what was described as a “significant sum” to the campaign to keep Britain in the European bloc.
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