The tough, dynamic farmer's son who revolutionised the bloodstock industry

horse breeding: The tough dynamic farmers son who revolutionised the blood stock industry - at Moneyweek.co.uk - the best of the week's international financial media.

His eureka momenAlthough John Magnier made his fortune breeding champion race horses, his shrewdness and toughness would have taken him to the top of any business. "The softest thing about Magnier," it is often said, "is his teeth." Nonetheless, Magnier's family background and racing connections stood him in good stead, says the Irish Independent. Born in 1948, the son of "well to do" farmers, he grew up near Fermoy in County Cork where his family had been breeding horses since the 1850s. His mother, Evie Stockwell, who ran the family stud after the death of Magnier's father, was a particularly formidable figure and a close friend of Ireland's most successful trainer, Vincent O'Brien. The connection between the families was cemented when Magnier married O'Brien's daughter, Susan.

Magnier's breakthrough was to realise that the "gentlemanly pursuit" of breeding and owning thoroughbreds could be "professionalised to generate whopping returns", says The Sunday Telegraph. "His eureka was to do it as a business, not a pastime." Certainly, conditions in Ireland in the early 1970s couldn't have been better: in 1969, finance minister Charles Haughey had pushed through legislation giving stud fees tax-free status. Magnier saw his chance, and went for it.

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