NOVEMBER 7, 2003

A man who may be involved at Jordan

The identity of the new investors in the Jordan team have not been fully revealed although it seems that Dermot Desmond, JP McManus and John Magnier are part of the consortium involved. We also believe that there are others and there is considerable evidence to suggest that Michael Tunney is one of them.

Tunney started out working for the Allied Irish Banks as a teller and during the 1970 bank strike in Ireland he and his friend Eddie Jordan, another bank clerk, decided to take up karting. Tunney raced against the top names of the era including David Kennedy and Derek Daly and got up to Formula 3 level before retiring to concentrate on his career in banking.

While Jordan went on to build his racing empire, Tunney went up through the banking hierarchy but the two remained friends, sharing a passion for motor racing. Tunney regularly attends Grands Prix as a guest of Jordan.

In the early 1990s Tunney joined Woodchester Bank as head of corporate banking before setting up his own investment business with business partner David Andrews, also from Woodchester. Their investment vehicle is called Lioncourt Capital, which operates from offices in Blackrock and concentrates mostly on investing in property but has been involved in several big corporate deals as well, including investments in Conduit, Emergesmart, the Dublin e-learning company, and Software Dimensions, the Dublin document management firm. Tunney is a specialist in corporate restructuring and putting together syndicates to share the risk of investments. Tunney's clients include Sean Fitzpatrick who owns Anglo Irish Bank and Denis O'Brien who has in the past sponsored Jordan through his ESAT Digifone mobile phone company.

Could it be that Tunney is the man who has put the deal together?