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YESTERDAY’S UPDATED LIST of billionaires, released by business magazine Forbes, showed five Irish citizens among the world’s 1,226 billionaires.
Among those five, with better-known names like telecoms magnate Denis O’Brien and Dermot Desmond, are Campbell’s Soup owner John Dorrance and Martin Naughton, who is listed as making his fortune in heating equipment.
The richest Irish citizen on earth, however, is someone you’re unlikely to ever have heard of: an 82-year-old man whose shareholding in India’s largest private conglomerate means he’s worth $9.7 billion (€7.36 billion).
Pallonji Mistry, who lives in Mumbai, owns an 18.4 per cent stake in Tata Sons, a catch-all trading group with interests in everything from motors to construction, textiles, chemicals, communications, energy and hotels, and which owns Tetley Tea and Jaguar Land Rover.
His family is deeply ingrained in the Tata empire, with Mistry’s father having been an original investor in Tata Sons some eight decades ago. Tata Sons itself is a major shareholder in the Tata Group, which Forbes says brings in a whopping $83 billion each year.
Indeed, the business empire is so large that in India that the company has even entered into a partnership with Starbucks to open a new nationwide chain of coffee shops.
The Mistrys are send in prominence at the group only to the Tata family itself: the group’s longstanding chairman is Ratan Tata, 74, though Pallonji’s son Cyrus Mistry, 43, will take over that role later this year when Ratan retires.
The two families have links other than their common business interests: Ratan’s brother Noel, who is the chief executive of the Tata Group’s retail arm, is married to Pallonji’s daughter Aloo.
It’s not surprising that you may not have heard of Mistry, however: even staff at his group’s companies rarely see him, as he is rarely seen in public and never gives public interviews.
In fact, a Reuters report last year said the 82-year-old is occasionally referred to as the “phantom of Bombay House” (that being the name of the Tata Group’s Mumbai headquarters), such is his low profile and the quiet way in which he commands power.
Indeed, he keeps such a low profile that we couldn’t find a photograph of him for this article – instead having to use a snap from a recent auto show in which Cyrus helped to unveil a new Tata motor.
But what link, you may ask, does all of this have with Ireland? Well, that relates to a quirk in Indian law which means it is not permitted for an Indian citizen to also have citizenship of another country.
Mistry’s wife Pat was born in Dublin in 1939, and thus herself has Irish citizenship – and so in 2003, when Mistry opted to take up Irish citizenship, he forfeited his Indian citizenship and now only carries an Irish passport.
It was confirmed in the Dáil in 2007 that Mistry’s two sons, Shapoor and Cyrus, also have Irish citizenship by virtue of being the sons of an Irish mother – a fact which will make Cyrus one of the world’s top Irish businessmen when he ascends to power at the Tata Group in December.
And while the wealth of most Irish people is taking a dent, Mistry’s is on the up: his $9.7 billion this year is well up on the $8.8 billion fortune that Forbes gave him only twelve months ago.
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What a happy bunch of lads.
Anything to be said for more “free hugs” outside the Central Bank”?
I was introduced to a girl other day that told me that guys fancy her so much because she smiles all the time and I swear she didn’t stop smiling for the entire 2 hours she was with us. She’s probably right. Smiley happy people are definitely more attractive.
She’s probably a shivering wreck inside afraid to stop in case the boys won’t like her. I bet she was american too… was she american? She was American.
In the modern world we do not smile as much as other places. Go to a very buddhist country, they laugh a lot more that we could ever imagine and more often not they have’t even a broken pot to piss in to.
Yes probably because happiness comes from within and not from impermament material external items. We need to shed our possessions, get naked and mediate in the nearest temple to get on the road to enlightenment.
I used worry about the house, nice car etc.
It is sad case to worry about it, watch people break their health over it.
Happiness certainly comes from within.
Be thankful for what you have is the motto that drives people like the girl in Cork with no limbs.
FF has freed me from the burden of material desires too, Seanie.
That’s some deep s**t Seanie – have you been at the cough syrup again?
If you go around smiling all day most people would suspect you of having mental health issues.
Finally someone is willing to feed, clothe and house me while I play Xbox and Facebook.
Life isn’t about being ecstatically happy to the point of smiling all the time. It it was, we could all just do drugs. Feeling fulfilled and having a sense of self purpose and value to the world is far more important.
To be happy all the time is as unnatural as being unhappy all the time. Life can be shi7 for long stretches of time, you just have to get through it.
This Americanism of pretending that everything has to be great all the time, that every relationship can’t have rough patches, that might go on for a long time, years in fact.
Life is great but it is not fair, it is rough and tough and can shi5 down on people without care for how positive or not they are.
You just have to make the best of it.
Prior to the USC being introduced, I’d imagine adults smiled a hell of a lot more in Ireland…..
That lad on the left is 15? Pretty sure I saw him in a strip club at the weekend. I know why he’s smiling anyway
A smile? That’s a baby gurn!
That made me smile, I’m on 21 now
I smile all day long. Damn coat hanger suck in my mouth!
Can someone explain the relevance of comparing children smile rates versus adults?
Children are stupid. Only idiots smile all the time.
What an horrible grin this picture is.I would rather stay serious than force myself in a fake smile.
Studies show that even fake smiling can make you a happier person.
Depends how much you smoke
Slow day at news desk..smiling never paid a bill
Some of us save them up for when we really need them!
So, why are so many being “diagnosed” with “mental disorders” Mental Health America?- _ “Over a quarter of a million American babies under one year of age were given dangerous psychotropic drugs in 2013. Pharma is laughing all the way to the bank! What an excellent expansion market…each one a life-long customer. We should all be ashamed…!”- http://www.naturalnews.com/046035_psychiatric_drugs…
And that’s about babies under a year old!________________________ PS: what are YOUR actual funding sources MHA?
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