Horse Racing Owner Profiles

[Sefton]

Barbers are farmers and cheese makers ....never knew backgound to aiteenthirtythree before


The Barber family have been farming and making cheese
at Maryland Farm in Ditcheat, Somerset since 1833.
In the early days, milk from the farm was sold locally and the cheese made was used to feed the family and farm workers.
As time went on, the milk needed to make cheese increased and soon the family were buying milk from neighbouring farms as well.
Today the Barber farms comprise 2500 acres of prime
Somerset dairy land and are home to some 2,000 dairy cows. We continue to use traditional ‘cheddaring’ techniques
combined with a unique collection of traditional starter cultures for which we are sole guardians, to create a truly typical West Country Farmhouse cheddar.
Managing our own herds also allows us to understand the
needs of other farmers and the dairy industry as a whole. Agriculture, and in particular dairy farming, are a significant
part of the local economy and we want to make sure that this remains so for future generations.
AJ & RG Barber is run by cousins Anthony, Chris, Charlie and Giles Barber, the sixth generation of the Barber family, and many other family members are still involved.

[Sefton]

Robin Geffen guy who owns Cristal Bonus and Kauto Stone ( also sponsors the Neptune Hurdle series) ...he set Neptune up.

Robin Geffen is a rare creature among fund managers.
Robin Geffen

Whereas most big City investors prefer to mouth their criticisms with muffled voices and behind the safety of anonymity Geffen, the founder and managing director of Neptune Investment Management, is up-front about what he thinks.

In the last few years he has run three public campaigns against major financial transactions.

He opposed the bid for totemic stores group House of Fraser by the Icelandic corporate raider Jon Ageir Johannesson and Baugur, he challenged the logic of Kraft's winning offer for Cadbury and this week savoured victory when the Prudential bid for Asian insurance giant AIA imploded.

The Rugby and Oxford educated fund manager might seem to be an unlikely rebel. But in a period of market turbulence, when winning the trust of investors has been extraordinarily hard, he has bucked market trends and been willing to back his instincts.

'I don't see myself as a City agitator,' Geffen asserts. 'What I do think is that there are a number of organisations who like to deliberate quietly and vote accordingly and there isn't a tradition of going into the public domain,' he says.

'During the General Election some people were locked out of the ballot.

'There was quite a long tail of investors in the Pru who were in danger of not really having the opportunity to voice their objection to the deal. So I acted as a lightning rod.'

Geffen is an insider, in that he is an important part of the investment community, who likes to think of himself as an outsider.

He runs Neptune in an unconventional way, operating from offices in Hammersmith in West London, rather than the City, and our chat takes place in the neatly groomed, sweet smelling environs of the Hurlingham Club on the riverside in Fulham rather than an office.

From the start of the Prudential's failed assault on the American International Group's Asian offshoot AIA the Neptune chief was suspicious of its motives.

'You had a chief executive here (Tidjane Thiam) who appears very much to be on a mission. He was Aviva's head of strategy when it tried to buy the Pru.

'The Pru does unfortunately have a recent history of making some unfortunate management calls and decisions and it would appear that the charge was very much led by the chief executive (Thiam) and the chairman (Harvey McGrath).'

'It's quite likely they will not survive this, but the Pru has a chance,' he adds.

The whole affair reminds Geffen of the race to buy ABN Amro 'where the Royal Bank of Scotland, in retrospect, was steamrollered by Fred Goodwin - the board, the shareholders and the advisers - into paying ever more for the Dutch bank to get it instead of Barclays'.

What made the Pru bid so 'extraordinary' in Geffen's view is that they wanted to pay such 'an enormous price' when it was the only natural buyer.

In a financial community where price often seems to be the only thing that matters, Neptune likes to take a broader view. He believes that the deal-making culture that has defenestrated many of Britain's most famous companies is largely driven by advisers' fees.

In the case of the Pru offer for AIA the figure was £1.5bn if the deal had gone ahead. Failure has cost investors £450m.

'It would have been the biggest payday for a lot of City firms in their history and a number of these firms, only a year or so ago, were being rescued by the UK and US governments,' he says.

'I think pounds and dollar signs really lit up their eyes.' The same drivers, in his view, sealed Cadbury's fate when it was swallowed by low-growth Kraft.

He says: 'Cadbury was finally controlled by hedge funds, people that bought the shares on a very, very short term basis.'

Geffen believes that the £10bn deal under which Cadbury lost its independence 'under-valued the company's long term prospects by 20% to 25%.

Factbox of Robin Geffen

'It was a company that represented the very best of British manufacturing and we felt that people should take a long term view of Cadbury's prospects.'

In the end the chairman Roger Carr and the board 'didn't defend the company at the last ditch'.

He adds: 'They probably were pushed very hard by the Kraft advisers who got enormous fees for successfully completing the deal. I think it was extremely unfortunate.'

So what would Geffen do to stop this happening? 'I think in that sort of situation you would probably want 75% of the votes.

'I also think that the only people entitled to vote should have held the shares for six months or more,' he says.

Proposals for both a supermajority and voting rights dependent on the time the shares are held was in fact proposed by former Cadbury chairman Carr in a speech at Oxford shortly after the company was sold to the Americans.

Despite his high profile opposition to the House of Fraser, Cadbury and Pru deals Geffen does not like being thought of as a maverick.

'We had been long term shareholders at House of Fraser,' says Geffen.

'We were the second largest and stood up and voiced our opinion.' At present Geffen is not entirely comfortable with the channels that exist for speaking out on shareholder issues.

'I think the existing frameworks have completely failed in this respect.'

He adds: 'There could be an argument for setting up some pure industryled body, not one bossed by paid officials, to stand up and be counted.'

Among other things the Neptune chief has been impressed by how Fidelity, one of the big beasts of the fund management arena, 'has made the case in our industry to ward off punitive capital gains tax'.

He feels somewhat aggrieved that during his battle to prevent the Pru taking over AIA the issue was personalised.

'I think the Pru's press operation has been sort of unpleasant, hostile and rude about me,' says Geffen.

'If they had known what shareholders were standing alongside me they would have been quaking in their boots.

'Among other things they suggested that the only reason I was standing up was because we were about to float.'

But Geffen says: 'That's utter rubbish but it is the sort of contemptible lie that gets spread by outfits trying to discredit people with honourable intentions.'

At present he is happy just savouring what has been achieved at Neptune.

'Eight years ago we were fourand-a-half people in a small room with £12.5m of funds. Now we have £5.6bn and 90 people.'

Geffen adds: 'We've always been prudent and we've never done any leverage.' When investment banks have come along offering 'irresistible goodies' in the shape of highly leveraged deals Geffen has shown them the door.

He believes that Neptune has developed its own culture which has allowed it to grow despite the most volatile financial climate since the 1930s.

[Sefton]

Simon Munir - Grandouet, Raya Star, Roberto Goldback is a fund manager too..this is from about two years ago...

ARSENAL manager Arsene Wenger can take some credit for the two Nicky Henderson-trained winners over the festive season owned by Simon Munir.

Munir, hankering after an involvement in sport at the highest level, had ambitions to play for his beloved Arsenal, but Wenger never quite felt the need for him. At the age of 45, Munir accepted that the telephone call wasn't going to come, and he now makes do with a box at the Emirates Stadium.

A more realistic Plan B on Munir's list of sporting aspirations was to become further immersed in his other lifelong passion. Accordingly, he invested heavily in jump racing last year, advised by Anthony Bromley, and they have assembled a quality team of eight split between Henderson, Paul Nicholls and David Pipe.


Munir won Britain's first jump race of 2010 when the Henderson trained Radium impressed in a novice handicap hurdle at Cheltenham. He has three others with the same trainer. A few days before Cheltenham, Munir's green colours were carried to success at Chepstow by former point-to-pointer Be There In Five, ridden by another Arsenal devotee Tony McCoy.

The same Chepstow meeting was the scene for an unexpected reverse when the McCoy-ridden Sang Bleu was unsuited by the muddy conditions in the Grade 1 Coral Future Champions Finale Juvenile, in which he was beaten by Me Voici.

However, McCoy and Nicholls are confident that lucrative days await the gelding, who in France had won the same maiden hurdle as superstars Master Minded and Azertyuiop.

Munir is chief executive of Galaxy Asset Management, a fund management company, and engages the same basic principles of his day job in the pursuit of excellence over jumps.

"I can now allocate a bit more time to racing," he says. "To buy a horse privately can be a three- to six-month project, as it was with both Sang Bleu and Radium. As with a fund manager, there is a need for a portfolio with diversification when involved in racing."

He adds: "I thoroughly enjoy my involvement with racing and racing people. To win two races within a week over the Christmas period was a tremendous thrill. Hopefully, in time, I may be lucky enough to win some of the bigger trophies. That's the ambition."

Before he launched his own business with Galaxy in 1999, he worked for Merrill Lynch, and with four colleagues shared the Simon Dow-trained No Speeches, twice a winner at Lingfield. Munir worked for Merrill in Geneva for ten years and later managed its Monaco operation. He sponsored Jack Berry's yard, and one of his first trainers was William Haggas, a friend from school.

The present squad includes the Henderson-trained Lady Hight and Radium's half-brother Silicium, the Nicholls-trained Cap Elorin and David Pipe's Ruthenoise. He has two with Sir Mark Prescott, Rock Relief and Bona Fortuna, who are both regarded as jumping prospects.

[mayo]

Interesting stuff Sefton ....keep them coming !

[mayo]

http://www.limerickleader.ie

By Alan English
Published on Tuesday 20 November 2012


Ahead of President Bill Clinton’s visit to Limerick for the All-Ireland Scholarship awards he sponsors last week, JP McManus gave his most candid interview ever to Limerick Leader editor, Alan English.



“CAN we take a picture of you at your desk?” asks Limerick Leader photographer Mike Cowhey as we follow JP McManus towards his private office at Martinstown.

“No problem,” he says. On the way he poses with a bust of the late Irish-American businessman Jack Mulcahy (“a great man - he did so much for the country”). A painting of a huge Boxer dog hangs on the first wall you see as you enter his office and he is drawn to it.

The dog is no longer alive, he says sadly. “He was a great dog, a wonderful dog. My son John got him for his 21st birthday as a present from his sister and brother [Sue Ann and Kieran]. Not alone did he know what you were saying, he knew what you were thinking. But he was on dialysis by the time he died – there’s a time when it’s the right thing to do.”

“What was his name?” I ask.



“Louis.”

“That’s L-O-U-I-S?”

“I guess – he wasn’t able to spell.”

His sense of humour is never far away during our conversation. It’s the second in-depth interview he has done in recent years, both for this newspaper, but I tell him that he has a reputation for speaking guardedly to the media, for giving little enough away.

He smiles and says: “Look at all the fish that would be in the world today – if only someone had taught them how to keep their mouths shut”.

I’m here to talk to him about the All-Ireland Scholarships he has funded for five years – the latest 125 winners were given certificates by Bill Clinton at UL on Saturday, receiving €6,750 a year for the duration of their studies.

But I’m hoping that, as with the last time we spoke, he will open up on other topics.

He talks about a 10-page letter he received a few years ago from the mother of one of the scholarship winners. It was written the morning the family received a letter in the post confirming the award. Overjoyed with the news, the mother wrote it while her daughter slept upstairs, oblivious that her life had just changed.

“I keep a copy of it in my office in Switzerland,” he says. “It inspires me. You’re welcome to read it, if you like. I remember thinking, ‘That letter is reason enough to do these scholarships.’ When you read it, I bet it will bring a tear to your eye.”

It’s probably unwise to doubt him on this point. To paraphrase the sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney, betting against JP McManus is the shortest route to the poorhouse.


AE: Let’s talk about the awards first. The latest intake will bring it up to 619 scholarships. Where did the idea come from?

JPM: Very often the best ideas come over a drink. I got talking to Mary Hanafin [the former Minister for Education] at a function and it came from that. A good education system is so necessary in the country. We had two things that made Ireland attractive in the Celtic Tiger years, or whatever you want to call that period. One was the rate the punt was put into the euro – it was put in so cheaply. That was a catalyst, because it made Ireland very attractive for the multinationals to come in. Ireland was cheap. I think it was a major coup for the country, getting us in at that rate. That was rarely mentioned.

The second thing was our education system. From what I hear – I didn’t go to school too long myself – we are a very educated race. Companies had access to high-quality people here. I know savings have to be made now, but we need a good educational system.

AE: Have you seen cutbacks that have concerned you?

JPM: I wouldn’t be the one to say – I don’t know. But I believe our future will revolve around keeping our standards high in education. So back then I told Mary Hanafin it would be nice to do something and she followed up on it. I met her for breakfast one day and it was basically deal done.

First it was about scholarships. Then the Trustees came on board – Gerry Boland, Roger Downer and Pat Dowling – and we had the idea to involve the North and make it a 32-county, all-Ireland project. So as it stands, you have a minimum of two winners from each county. Then you have the next 48 in Ireland, irrespective of what county they come from, and the next 13 in Northern Ireland. So 125 scholarships each year in total.

AE: What has the feedback been like?

JPM: I think in the early days the students weren’t really aware of where the money was coming from, but now that they are, some students keep you well versed on how they’re getting on. They write - and that’s nice to hear. There might not be many jobs in the country for graduates at the moment, but if they have to leave, they’ll leave after a good education.

There was a lad in with me just before you arrived. He’s an occupational therapist, he did four years in college. He’s off tomorrow week to Perth and I know he will do well.

It’s sad – it’s our loss, that he’s not staying. He worked for us on the farm and I believe he was a very good worker, very diligent. So I think it’s sad they have to go, but our forefathers went out and they didn’t have that education. At least there is a good system that allows them to go out there with degrees.

The problem is the best always leave. Years ago, when our forefathers left, who did mother send? Only the best. She always sent the strongest, the ones who could stand up to it. When they were waving them goodbye they knew they were never going to see them again. The ones who went to America, the ones with Irish links, so many of them did so well, because they had no choice. They were the ones who put the few dollars in the envelope to support the rest of the family back home - and we bred from the weaklings at home [laughs].”

[mayo]

AE: We’re getting on to racing now, are we?

JPM: We’re both in that boat. And that’s what happened here too, in our own country. People from Eastern Europe came here – and the best of them came, to work and to look after those at home.

AE: You’ve had some high-profile people attending the awards - Michael Flatley, Mary McAleese, Enda Kenny, Dermot Desmond, Charlie McCreevy. People were agog when it was announced that Clinton was coming this time.

JPM: Well, he had a lot to do with the peace process in Ireland. So I thought he was the ideal man to get.

AE: And how did you go about getting him?

JPM: With difficulty [laughs].

AE: Do you want to elaborate?

JPM: I did it with the help of friends. I got a friend of mine to make an enquiry. He [Clinton] was given a few days that would work for us, so he picked November 17, which clashes with the Paddy Power meeting at Cheltenham. I said to myself, ‘Why did I include that date?’ But to work for him, it had to be that. He’s in Europe, flying around, and this is an extra pit-stop.

AE: Have you met him before?

JPM: Yeah, I played 18 holes with him one time in The K Club. He wasn’t long out of office. We were supposed to play only nine, but then he said, ‘Have we time for another nine?’

AE: Any plans for him to play golf this time?

JPM: I believe he’d like to – but it’s a challenge, because the days are short. So I’m not certain about it.

AE: There was a bit of speculation that he might be staying here in Martinstown?

JPM: If he is, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. I believe he’s coming in and flying out on the day.

AE: But he’d be welcome to stay if he needed a bed for the night?

JPM: I’m sure Noreen would be happy to put him up.

AE: You mentioned the Celtic Tiger ... do you have a view on those years? The country changed profoundly. What did you think of Ireland in those years?

JPM: What did I think? Nobody knows for certain but it seemed like it was an accident waiting to happen. Did it affect me? Yeah. It affected everybody in some form or other. Did it affect me as much as others? Probably more, but relatively speaking – no. It created opportunity as well, a lot of opportunity if you had capital. I’m sure everybody would do things differently if they could turn the clock back. You had a hope that it would continue and a fear that it was built on sand.

When you go into Europe, you give away so much. You give away your independence. You’ve no control over your interest rates or your currency, and that makes it very difficult for the powers that be.

Do I blame developers? That’s the game they were in. It’s hard to blame them, that’s what they did, that’s the way it was. I feel sad for a lot of them. But what the banks did – the lending – all that only delayed our problem. We’d have had to face it earlier. Nobody ran away with the money, you know?

AE: People in Limerick particularly have said about you that you never forgot where you came from – do you have a sense that Ireland, as a country, did forget?

JPM: In hindsight, that’s the way you see it. At the time, I was fearful but when you get to your mid-fifties you’ve been around a while and you recognise that – basically – we are still a lot better off than we were in the Seventies. There’s a great community spirit there now – I can sense it. I won’t say we lost it in those years, but it’s stronger than it was. There’s good comes out of every bad situation and there’s good in this too.

AE: OK, just to bring it back to Limerick specifically. You’ve had some high profile initiatives in terms of trying to lift community pride. You must have taken great satisfaction out of the Going for Gold challenge.

JPM: It’s great to see so many people wanting to make it work. I don’t do very much, but I like to feel that I am a part of it. There’s a lot of pride in our city and people can see that progress has been made. It would be nice to see it get to the next level. We’ve wonderful people in this city – and the county. They give it everything.

AE: We still have a tough challenge ahead, in terms of getting the city back on track.

JPM: I think you have to think small at the start and let it grow, rather than thinking big and being shot down. More and more people become involved. You see, when you’re 12 or 13 years old and in school – who do you always remember? You remember the kids who passed you the ball in the yard, or the guy who gave you a lift on the bar of his bike. The 15-year-old who passed you the ball, that’s the guy you looked up to. And the 10-year-old looks up to the 13-year-old – whatever he tells him to do, he’ll do it. They feed off each other. They’re the people they want to get the praise from. If you’ve a 60-year-old man talking to them, it doesn’t mean anything.

AE: Next year it will be 40 years since Limerick last won an All-Ireland, the only one in most people’s lifetime. What’s your overall view of those years?

JPM: I suppose you get what you deserve, but then again we could have three or four as easy as one. It wouldn’t have taken a lot. The Wexford game [1996 final] I believe we should have won. Much more than the Offaly game [1994 final]. Offaly finished very strong that day, our lads had given it everything but they were burnt out at the end. It’s a 70-minute game and Offaly were putting them over from every angle.

Against Wexford, I thought we were on top of them. They had a man sent off and it seemed to work more against us than for us.

AE: And have you found it very frustrating?

JPM: When they give it everything you can’t ask for more. I think we have a better underage system now and hopefully we’ll get the rewards. There’s an awful lot of work goes into winning an All-Ireland – so many people have to make it their lives to win one, or even to be good enough to compete. It’s difficult. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too much longer. You can see some hope, but Kilkenny are a tough act to depose.

AE: You’ve been well known for financial assistance to the local GAA for years, there’s been talk that you’ve paid for the appointment of various managers …

JPM: There’s no truth in that.

AE: Really?

AE: No. We never get involved in the administration. We sponsor the team and that’s the only involvement we have.

AE: So all this talk about you bankrolling the appointment of managers is wide of the mark?

JPM: Totally wide of the mark. The only involvement I have is what I give to the county board. It’s up to themselves what they do with it. It’s not a lot of money – it is what it is.

AE: And have you ever expressed an opinion on the administration, or the managers?

JPM: No – I just let them get on with it. It would be a mistake to have somebody who is controlling anybody. It’s a difficult job being an elected member of the county board, I’d say. The county board is the county board.

[mayo]

AE: Yeah, that’s fair enough. But the county board isn’t infallible.

JPM: Listen, there’s none of us infallible. Not by a long shot.

AE: OK, moving on to another small-ball game – golf. Your last charity pro-am was a massive success. What are your thoughts at the moment about the next one – if there is going to be a next one?

JPM: There’s a couple of factors. One is that you have to try and do it at least as good as the last time. It worked out well the last time because it had great support, from a lot of people. I enjoy it, because people around you are so enthusiastic about making it work – whatever it takes. There’s a lot of travel involved – you have to meet the people. You’re not giving them anything, because it doesn’t work. But you’ve got to make them feel welcome, and you’ve got to encourage the wives, so that they’ll enjoy being there. Then the husbands follow.

But it’s probably easier now than it was in 2000 or 1995, because you’re being asked about it. And a big benefit is that you get people to come and play and the next year they’re here, they’ll bring people with them. At the time it’s great, but there’s a spin-off. We need more events like it, more reasons for people to want to come back.

It takes an enormous amount of time and now we have less time than we had a few years ago – the rules have changed. [He can spend no more than 182 days in Ireland, under tax residency laws]. It used to be nights in the country – now it’s days. So if I come in at seven o’clock and go out at seven in the morning that counts as two days here. Once you’re here over midnight, it counts as two days. Before, it was one. They have to do whatever they have to do, but I don’t know how much they achieve by it.

To be honest, if we were doing it in 2015, you’d have to be thinking about it in the next three or four months – because people plan their schedules a long time in advance.

We don’t have the best climate in the world, we have to make the most of what we’ve got. And the thing I have here that I value more than anything is my children and my grandchildren. You’d like to be home to spend more time with them, but at the same time I’ve a business to run abroad. As I said to you before, I didn’t leave this country for tax reasons, I went to Switzerland to set up a business. Thankfully, the business has done well. More people should be encouraged to come back – and to see what they can do when they come back.

That young man this morning is going off to Australia. If he makes it big there – and God willing, he will – I wouldn’t like to see any barriers against him coming back to Ireland.

AE: You’re somebody who does things to a very exacting level – do you find the organisation of such a big event stressful?

JPM: Well, enthusiasm makes up for any mistakes and when you get to a certain stage, it’s solutions you want – you don’t want to be faced with problems. It’s solutions you need - whatever it takes. You can make the best out of a bad situation – there’s positives in the negatives.

AE: On the subject of golf, I noticed a pro-am trophy on the way in – you were in a team with Seve Ballesteros.

JPM: That’s right – we played together down in Madrid.

AE: What do you remember of that?

JPM: Well, I remember after we played we went for a meal – a buffet or whatever was there. I was a big milk drinker at the time – I ordered milk. The waiter comes with a glass, he puts some powder in the bottom of it, he adds some water and he’s stirring it up. I didn’t say anything, but I wasn’t drinking it anyway.

So Seve said, ‘You not drink the milk? You don’t like it?’ I said, ‘Look, when we drink milk it’s a little different. It comes fresh from the cow.’

So I go to Valderrama for the Ryder Cup the next year and I get a message from the European team office – Seve wants to see me. He was the European captain and I said, ‘Ah, this is a ballhop.’ I didn’t go looking for him – even if it was true I felt he’d be too busy.

After the Ryder Cup, we went back to Madrid for the pro-am. I arrived in the car with a couple of my mates and Seve says to his brother – ‘The present I have for JP – go get it.’

He produces this great big package, a box all wrapped in gift paper. I said, ‘Thanks very much Seve, I don’t know what it is but I’ll put it in the boot of the car.’ He said, ‘No, no, no – you must open it now.’ I take all the wrapping paper off – and what is it only cartons and cartons of fresh milk. Ah, he was a character.

AE: And what did you do with all the milk?

JPM: Well, I had some of it for lunch – put it in the fridge and it was ready when we came in. I toasted him with milk.

When I came back here afterwards I was speaking to the lads in the office, speaking to Declan [Moylan]. I said, ‘You know what I’m going to do with Seve? I’m going to send him a cow – for the craic.’ It was a great laugh, but when we tried to send the cow over the logistics were too difficult.

AE: What about the big party you had here in Martinstown during the summer – there was huge interest in it.

JPM: There was maybe criticism in some quarters for having a party, but it does something for the economy when you have a party. We had people from different parts of the world and because they’re coming they plan on having a week in Ireland, or 10 days. They bring the kids. And it adds to the economy. I think you need it. It helps – you need more events.

AE: The invitations were about it being a celebration of two of your racehorses. Was that a ruse? In the early hours, there was a big happy birthday for Noreen …

JPM: Ah that was a last-minute thing. She was probably a bit embarrassed by it.

AE: But it was her birthday.

JPM: It was her birthday alright – in the morning.

AE: Surely that was the reason you had the party in the first place?

JPM: We don’t always need a reason to have a party. She said to me, ‘People will think I’m older than I am. I said, ‘They’ll think you’re younger.’ But it’s not often you have a Gold Cup winner and a Grand National winner. That’s worth celebrating too.

AE: You referred to some criticism of it. Was that something …

JPM: You’ll always have critics. But you can’t bury your head in the sand and do nothing in these times. I don’t think it does any harm. You have to show the world we’re able to celebrate too.

[mayo]

AE: You’re a serious businessman – was there a bit of that involved too, business?

JPM: We don’t start off with that intention, but you never know what develops out of it – for me or for other people. They get together, they chat, they’re having a few drinks late in the night. You never know what good things could happen.

AE: Around this time last year, on the day of the scholarship awards, some people might say you were ambushed a bit by the media and asked about your residency in Switzerland. That became the story the following day, rather than the awards. What was your view of that?

JPM: Well, for me the day was about the scholarship winners. It was a day for them. I didn’t think it was a day for that. It was disappointing that they took that angle on it. Maybe they feel that was their role.

AE: You had already spoken about the tax situation in a previous interview with the Leader, so you were really only restating what you’d said then, a year before.

JPM: True. People have different views on it.

AE: So would you have been angry about it?

JPM: Angry is too strong a word. The only people that ever upset me are the people I care about. They can upset me very easily. I may have appeared angry at the time. I may have been forceful about the point I was making at the time, rather than angry. I think – going forward – we need a country that tries to attract the wealth of the world. I’m not talking about JP McManus. But you need to have a situation where you have a country about which people say, ‘Why wouldn’t we come to Ireland?’As Jamie Dimon once said, ‘Capital goes where it wants. It stays where it’s well treated.’

AE: Right. Excuse my ignorance – who’s Jamie Dimon?

JPM: He’s the head of JP Morgan. I met him one day, a few of us had lunch, and I remember him saying that. Now you can look at a few individuals in Ireland and you can write the rules because of them. There may be a lot of political mileage in writing about it. But don’t drag down the country. Don’t drag it down to get more votes in your constituency by it. All you’re doing is affecting the people - you’re not helping them. That’s about playing to the lowest common denominator. Let’s try and get the highest common denominator.

I don’t intend to die a wealthy man. That’s not my ambition in life. But I’d like to have enough to live for the rest of my life.

AE: And you intend to continue making charitable donations?

JPM: I’ll be supportive.

AE: The residency rules are clearly something you feel strongly about. Is your life dictated – or at least influenced to a significant extent – by them?

JPM: No. What it means for me is, I have to spend so much time working anyway, so it’s about my free time – where do I spend it? Like , over an-eight week period I only spent two nights in Ireland. I go down to the South of France – it’s only half an hour away. That’s no great hardship. Would I prefer to be coming home to Ireland at the weekend and spending the time trying to work from here? Yeah, I would. Sure. I feel I could do more. But it’s not a great penance – it just means you organise yourself differently. There are a lot of people who’d like to do a lot for their country. They’d like to do it. They are doing it – in their own way.

The biggest difficulty I see is when you are entertaining people. You’d like to bring them to Waterville, or the like. But when you bring them, you’ve got to be there – so you have to block that time out. Instead, you can say to yourself, ‘It’s a bit difficult with the time, let’s bring them to play golf in Scotland or somewhere else.’ And it’s a pity, it doesn’t achieve anything. It has a negative effect, not a positive one. I think people are sometimes misinformed …

AE: About tax exiles?

JPM: Well, what is a tax exile? For me a tax exile is somebody who leaves the country in order to avoid paying a particular tax that was due in the country. And as I said to you before, if you leave the country and you don’t want to come back – you don’t want to do anything here – then you’re an emigrant. If you go abroad and do well and you decide you want to come back, you’re an exile. But people think differently on these things.

AE: OK, you’ve made a lot of money from the currency markets. Dermot Desmond has said you’re “a wizard” with figures.

JPM: Ah, I think that’s overplayed.

AE: People say you have a computer brain for numbers.

JPM: Ah listen, maybe in the primary school I was OK. I think these days I get lost.

AE: You don’t back your own horses if you don’t think the odds are reasonable?

JPM: Betting isn’t a big part of my life. I might have a game of gin or backgammon that would mean something, but as for betting on horses it’s not significant.

AE: It’s a bit of fun?

JPM: I’d get more fun out of my mates having a few quid on, getting the kick out of it.

AE: But clearly betting was – I don’t want to go into your whole life story now, but there was a time when it was a big factor.

JPM: Well, my life centred around gambling. I do believe I had an addiction to gambling in my youth.

AE: Really? You’d put it that strongly?

JPM: I’d bet on anything if I could find someone to bet with me. But looking back – and as a friend pointed out to me – you change the addiction to gambling to one for winning. It’s not the gambling that’s important, it’s the winning. That’s something that came to me on reflection. It’s something I’ve tried to say to anybody who’s prepared to listen.

AE: How does that process work, that change of emphasis?

JPM: I’ve tried to teach a few people that the need is to win, not to gamble. That means you don’t have to bet all the time, you’ve to be more selective. It’s like a business decision, gambling. I’ll have a bet on a game of golf – I’ll have 50 euros, or depending on who I’m playing it might be 10 euros. It just has to be important to them for me to want to win – but not enough that it’s going to be life-changing, for them or for me.

If you can change the addiction, you become more controlled, more conscious. You have to have discipline and temperament. Gambling nowadays – I don’t want to be driving people mad, I’m not recommending anybody to go into it, but the punter has a chance. The margins for bookmakers are very tight.

I remember when there was 20 pence in the pound tax paid on a bet – that in itself, strangely, was a good thing for bookmakers. Contrary to what people said – because it acted as a protection for them. Anybody who paid 20% tax, they couldn’t beat the system. So they were trying to do multiples instead of singles.

I loved the gambling, I loved all to do with it. I loved playing cards in Spellacys. Even though it was an amateur game, we’d have been one of the better amateurs in there. I loved it. But the best thing that happened to me was when tax went to 20% because I quit overnight. I found it upsetting. I thought,‘What are they trying to do?’ Then, when I went bookmaking, I made a lot of mistakes.

[mayo]

AE: What was the biggest?

JPM: There was loads, but I remember one time I went to Killarney – 1972 I’d say it was, I was 21. I had got a lift to the races with Paddy Murphy, who lived up there in Rathbane, he used to have the sweet stall at the races. His son used to have an ice cream van – lovely people. So he gave me a lift and I had my big betting bag and my tripod.

At the races I lost a few hundred quid on the first day. It was a three-day meeting and I was staying at the Torc hotel. I started playing cards that night and whatever money I had, I lost the lot. I remember hitching back home on the Wednesday morning and having to face into a field of hay in the afternoon.

But it was a learning process – you’re back to your father for a little while, trying to get a few quid again. That’s what it was – and it gave you time to think about what you were doing wrong. I used to get out these betting books and think, ‘That didn’t make a lot of sense, did it?’ And it’s like the old thing – if you learn from them, they’re not real mistakes. But I do believe if I my dad had given me a million pounds, I’d have lost the million before I started to learn.

AE: You were a potential case for Gamblers Anonymous, were you?

JPM: I had disciplined myself at that stage. I’d stopped betting.

AE: I’m talking about earlier on.

JPM: I don’t know about Gamblers Anonymous, don’t know much about it – I just know I had a gene in me and I wanted to gamble all the time. But I was very lucky, when I started gambling on the racecourse. One, I didn’t have a family history going into it. That can be an advantage in that there were no old-fashioned ideas. Maybe we were the start of that new group who believed they could make punting pay. And I saw, as a bookmaker, punters who were very regular winners. They weren’t big gamblers – but they fed their families, sent their kids to college. You’d find you were writing them the cheque every Monday. I never closed a winning account – I just used it to my advantage.

AE: How?

JPM: I always thought it was nice to know what they were doing – rather than guessing. You had to respect what they were doing. The information was worth something.

AE: But just going back to Dermot Desmond’s point – there must be something to what he’s saying. I don’t understand currency markets and what goes on in them, but you must have some exceptional facility for understanding risk and recognising opportunities.

JPM: don’t know about that. Most things come down to common sense. It’s not a subject taught at school, but it’s the most important subject. Just common sense.

AE: My dad would agree with you on that one - he says it’s not so common. OK, second last question. These Rich Lists that come out - from The Sunday Times – do you see them?

JPM: Well if you don’t see them somebody shows them to you.

AE: Are they guessing?

JPM: Are they guessing? I don’t know what they’re doing. But nobody seems to argue with them.

AE: Are they guessing in your case?

JPM: Listen, I’m not going down that road [laughs].

AE: OK, you’re 62 now ...

JPM: Coming up – I’ll be there soon enough, God willing. Sixty-one at last count.

AE: Have you any number in mind as to when you might retire from the business?

JPM: I just hope I can live as long as I can – healthy and well. I enjoy what I do. I don’t do anything I don’t enjoy doing. If that’s business, or in the office, or down here – I’m just happy. Happy with my life, happy I feel I’ve got extra time [he was diagnosed with cancer in 2008 but made a full recovery]. My health is perfect. I was so lucky it was caught in time.

AE: OK, that’s good, I really enjoyed the chat.

JPM: Thanks.


A file of correspondence has been placed on the desk we’re sitting at. He looks through it in search of the letter from the scholarship winner’s mother, but it’s not there. There are updates on the student’s progress, letters from the girl herself, but not the one that so moved him a few years ago.

He suggests ringing his office in Geneva. The call is made and the letter – all 10 pages of it – is put on a fax. When it arrives he steps out of the room and leaves me to read it alone.

Had there been a bet struck, he would have won it

[Moscow]

Thank for that mayo. Good read.

[Sefton]

Clive smith ...with the day that s in it. From 2009 makes interesting reading ...

National Hunt followers tend to have a fixed image of Clive Smith. He is the man in the tweed with specs and a smile, leading in Kauto Star or Master Minded after their latest big-race success. It would surprise many of them to hear that he is also a keen big-game fisherman but not, perhaps, that, when he casts his line into the sea, he rarely waits long for a bite.

"The first time I ever went out on a boat off New Zealand, I caught a marlin that was over 200lb," Smith says. "The skipper of the boat said I was a lucky English so-and-so. The best I've had was a marlin of 420lb, which is about half the weight of Kauto Star. It took an hour to reel it in and there were people pouring buckets of water over me to cool me down."

Smith will be back in New Zealand shortly after Christmas but not before Kauto Star, the outstanding chaser of the last 20 years, has attempted to become the first horse in history to win the King George VI Chase at Kempton four times in a row.

The good fortune that follows him around like an adoring puppy is something that jumping fans now almost take for granted. In all he has had no more than 14 horses in training, a tiny fraction of the strings that owners such as JP McManus and David Johnson will support each season, never mind over a lifetime.

Yet, in addition to Kauto Star and Master Minded, both of them outstanding champions, he has also finished second in a Grand National with Royal Auclair and won the valuable Swinton Hurdle with Rainbow Frontier.

"I'm that sort of guy," Smith says. "I'm a very positive person. I'm an inquirer and I've sort of found a lot of things. I look to be lucky, really, and I don't expect to be unlucky."

Smith is also "a numbers man", who made a fortune from building and selling golf courses, though he says that "you can't make money just by numbers. You have to find something that you really want to do."

Luck and a positive attitude have clearly played a large part in Smith's racing success but there have been some very shrewd decisions too. Smith, a fan of the sport since the 1960s who was at Kempton when Arkle ran his last race, was an owner with Martin Pipe before shifting his allegiance to Paul Nicholls' emerging powerhouse in Ditcheat.

His purchasing strategy, meanwhile, is also straight to the point. Where some buy untried horses that could be anything but are probably not, Smith goes for young horses, usually from France, with promising form already in the book. Kauto Star cost €400,000 in 2004, a significant amount for a gelding with no breeding potential, but he has repaid the investment many times over.

Self-made men can be difficult racehorse owners, as their natural hands-on approach can spill over into their equine interests too. Smith, though, restricts his input as much as possible.

"Paul really knows the business and he describes things to me very, very well, so I can understand it and see his reasoning," he says.

"The only thing we really talk about is the programme. When we lost to Denman [in the 2008 Gold Cup], he'd run an incredible King George and then a sparkling race at Ascot in February but had some pus in his foot afterwards and didn't race quite so well [at Cheltenham]. I said, why don't we miss out Ascot in future, and I think Paul had had the same idea anyway, and so now we're just doing three races a season and that's it. That's the only sort of thing I would say."

Smith's grand run of luck in recent years has been shared by Kauto Star's many backers, who have collected after 15 of 22 British starts, including six times in his perfect 2006-07 season. Smith likes to share it with the marlin too, incidentally, preferring catch-and-release to the more traditional kill-and-photograph approach.

The question is if, or when, his streak will end. "It really has been quite a roll," he says. "Even after Kauto I've still got Master Minded and he's only six, and Free World too, who we think is a good horse in the making. I bought one called River D'Or a couple of months ago and I might buy another in a year or so."

Smith will also fit in some fishing in between. Oversized marine predators in the southern ocean should mind how they go.

[Sefton]

Another from 2006 says he might have been a trainer ....

Racing: Smith and Kauto teed up for Kempton

From a racecourse to a golf course and back to the racecourse. For Kauto Star's owner, there has been an almost spooky symbiosis between the two sports he loves. Clive Smith's business is fairways and greens; his first was at Hawthorn Hill, between Windsor and Maidenhead. In view of current events, it is more than fitting that the verdant acres that launched the venture that now funds the Gold Cup favourite and his Paul Nicholls stablemates once hosted steeplechases.

In Chris Pitt's excellent history book A Long Time Gone, which charts the rise and demise of now-defunct British tracks, the chapter on Hawthorn Hill, established in 1888, ends with the perfunctory information that the course was sold "in the early 1980s and is now a golf course with little sign of its former life remaining".

That may be, but nonetheless the part it has played is now unpickably woven into the fabric of racing. Smith's creation, development and management of public golf courses proved hugely successful and although Hawthorn Hill has since been sold, he still has the two that followed, near Camberley.

He named his first horse Hawthorn Hill Lad and after that Jenny Pitman-trained hurdler won his first two races, at Wincanton and Cheltenham in 1988, he was hooked. Over time, the golf courses paid for more horses and the distinctive green, yellow and purple silks they carry were inspired by the colours of the club where their owner was once captain, Camberley Heath.

Smith, 64, once played off four and is now a nine-handicapper. He is now finding the newer hobby as wholly absorbing as the original one and speaks with a slight pang of regret that he has come to it relatively late. "If I hadn't got into golf, maybe life would have taken a different turn," he said. "I think I might have ended up as a trainer. It's a business I really think I'd enjoy, the planning, the buzz, the whole thing."

Until the coming of Kauto Star, Smith's best-known horse was the tough Royal Auclair, runner-up in the 2005 Grand National. The chestnut was first with Martin Pipe - with whom he won the 2002 Cathcart Cup - before his transfer to Nicholls. Like the trainer, Smith is a more than competent millionaire businessman who has grafted for his rewards and finds the set-up at Manor Farm entirely gemutlich. He welcomes being involved in boardroom decisions about his horses; indeed, his input into Kauto Star's Tingle Creek run was evident.

"I'd been with Martin for about 12 years and had some good times," he said, "but I felt perhaps I wanted more fun out of it. I called in to Paul's one day when I was down that way and the welcome I got was terrific. Moving was a no-brainer."

The purchase of Kauto Star, reported yesterday to be in splendid nick ahead of his tilt at the King George VI Chase, was another serendipitous series of events. It has been well-documented that Smith was outbid at auction by JP McManus for his first crack at the top of the market, Garde Champetre, and settled instead for Kauto Star. As it was the deal, brokered by agent Anthony Bromley, was completed only with difficulty as the horse's French trainer wriggled, desperate not to lose what was then the best four-year-old hurdler in France.

Smith still remembers the thrill of his new acquisition's first victory in his colours, when he ran right away from Foreman in a novices chase at Newbury two years ago. "Everything that has happened this season has been tremendously exciting," he said, "but that first win was some buzz. He showed terrific speed as he went straight past Foreman and you could see then that there was something extra-special there. Paul and Ruby [Walsh] were almost jumping up and down. And he's proved that that impression was entirely correct."

The tall, white-faced bay is well on the way to taking his place among the greats on the sport's pantheon. "You almost dare not think of such things," added Smith, "but he could be one of the real greats. He's a quick-silver jumper, he goes two miles or three miles, and he's still only six."

Smith takes massive pride in his young horse's progress. But then, he is used to the pursuit of excellence. Another of his achievements ties up golf with his other great passion, horsepower in the form of vintage Lagondas, of which he owns 1930 2-litre and 1929 3-litre models.

He is founder of the Lagonda Trophy, an annual tournament for top amateur golfers played at the Gog Magog course near Cambridge. "Some real good people have won it," he said. "Like Lee Westwood and Luke Donald. And Oliver Fisher, who won at 15 and has just turned pro. Look out for him - he's another Kauto Star."

[Sefton]

First Greg wood

Second sue Montgomery

[Rhinestone Cowboy]

Good digging Sefton. Think you get a clue to Smith's make up from these quotes:

The good fortune that follows him around like an adoring puppy is something that jumping fans now almost take for granted. In all he has had no more than 14 horses in training, a tiny fraction of the strings that owners such as JP McManus and David Johnson will support each season, never mind over a lifetime.

Yet, in addition to Kauto Star and Master Minded, both of them outstanding champions, he has also finished second in a Grand National with Royal Auclair and won the valuable Swinton Hurdle with Rainbow Frontier.

"I'm that sort of guy," Smith says. "I'm a very positive person. I'm an inquirer and I've sort of found a lot of things. I look to be lucky, really, and I don't expect to be unlucky."

ie he doesnt think it was just luck that he ended up with Kauto

"If I hadn't got into golf, maybe life would have taken a different turn," he said. "I think I might have ended up as a trainer. It's a business I really think I'd enjoy, the planning, the buzz, the whole thing."

Fancies himself as a trainer

"I'd been with Martin for about 12 years and had some good times," he said, "but I felt perhaps I wanted more fun out of it. I called in to Paul's one day when I was down that way and the welcome I got was terrific. Moving was a no-brainer."

Just wants some fun

[Rhinestone Cowboy]

all nothing to the row Nicholls had with Oliver Carter over Venn Ottery

OLIVER CARTER was bristling with indignation yesterday at the criticism he has attracted over Venn Ottery, who was put down following the Game Spirit Chase at Newbury on Saturday.

The Horseracing Regulatory Authority is examining the circumstances that led to the 12-year-old, whose point-to-point and hunter chase form had declined dramatically, having to be destroyed when found to have fractured his pelvis for a second time after being pulled up before the eighth fence by Andrew Glassonbury in the Grade 2 contest.

Before the race, Paul Nicholls, who saddled Venn Ottery to his only four victories, during a three-week spell in 2004, called it "an utter disgrace" the gelding was running.

The controversy was further fuelled when Sue Gardner, for whom Venn Ottery was making his first appearance, afterwards admitted to the Racing Post that she had been overruled by Carter, 88, who insisted he take his chance.

HRA officials plan to speak to both Gardner and Carter, but the West Country permit-holder has come out fighting in defence of what he claims is a slur on his family's reputation.

"We are animal lovers and we don't uphold cruelty," said a clearly upset Carter. "It is terrible to think that headlines in the paper are condemning a family that are genuinely horse-lovers.

"What happened to Venn Ottery was one of those accidents that happen in racing. Everybody knows the risks and he is certainly not the first horse who has had to be put down because of an injury suffered in a race. Only the other day two horses were lost at Taunton.

"I spoke to the jockey and asked where it happened, and he said he didn't know. He said it never happened over a jump, it happened on the level. Well I can't stop that can I?

"I am obviously sad to lose Venn Ottery, I do everything I can to make sure our horses are well cared for and all of them are family pets, but he was fully entitled to run in the race.

"He finished fifth in the Queen Mother Champion Chase, and I've run horses in the Grand National, in France and in Ireland, and I'm not a bloody mug.

"I have got a better record than 90 per cent of trainers and have won the Horse and Hound Cup four times, including with horses aged 16, 15 and 14. I have also won the Whitbread Gold Cup and been placed in it twice; all of them trained on our farm by the kindness of my family. I know he was a 200-1 chance, but I have seen winners at 200-1."

Carter dismissed the comments from Nicholls, who he described as "a gas-bag", saying: "It has got nothing to do with him", and went on: "I told Sue Gardner when I sent her the horse that I would be making the entries and deciding where he ran, as I was fully entitled to do, because I didn't want him running on firm ground. I don't run horses on firm ground. My horses win races at 15 and 16, and how many trainers are doing that?

"I could have trained Venn Ottery myself, but after my granddaughter met with an accident and is on crutches, I had no staff good enough to train Venn Ottery and hold him."

Carter added: "I don't want to be cruel to horses - never. We love our horses, we breed them, we idolise them. My following in Devon with all my friends and people is colossal. They ring me all the time, wanting to know how my horses are. I've got four runners at Buckfastleigh if the weather's right on Saturday, and it will be a pleasure to watch them run."