Milan Mandaric is a Serbian-American business tycoon who has owned a string of successful businesses and football (soccer) clubs who currently owns English club Portsmouth F.C.. He was born in the former Yugoslavia, in Lika (now in Croatia) in 19?? and grew up in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, Vojvodina.
He took control of his father's machine shop aged 21, and by age 26 had turned it into the largest business in the country. At the time, Yugoslavia was a communist country, but a relatively free one. Private enterprise was encouraged - up to a point. Mandaric, now mass-producing car spares for the whole country and for overseas, became too successful and in the government's eyes went overnight from 'Hero' to 'Capitalist Traitor'.
In 19??, worried by the government's view of his business, he left Serbia and settled in the United States. He had to leave most of his fortune behind, and got a job for an American computer component manufacturer in California. When two of the senior managers left to start their own firm Mandaric was invited to be their third partner. The firm was successful, but disagreements over manufacturing processes led to Mandaric leaving to form his own company, Lika Corporation , in 1971. In 1976, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. By 1976 Lika Corp. was the largest manufacturer of computer components in the USA, and Mandaric was pioneering the boom that led to the creation of California's Silicon Valley. He sold the company to the Tandy Corporation in 1980 and set up a new company, Sanmina , which developed high-tech telecoms products.
In 1989 he acquired a struggling competitor and merged it with Sanmina. He also began branching out into investment companies such as Behrman Capital .
Following the collapse of communism in Yugoslavia, and then the break-up of the state, Mandaric has taken advantage of the new states' free markets to set-up and buy businesses in his homeland, such as Razvojna Banka , which was formerly state owned.
Around the same time he had begun using his money to invest in football, his passion since childhood (as a young man he had played for Novi Sad). He set up firstly F.C. Lika , then San Jose Earthquakes which played in the USA's first professional league.
Sceptical about the future of the sport in the USA, Mandaric looked to European football, owning first Belgian club Standard Liège, then French team OGC Nice. In 1998 he sold Nice and took over English club Portsmouth F.C., to whom he had been introduced by ex-player Preki.
Mandaric's money laid the groundwork for the team to be transformed from a struggling outfit with poor facilities and a crumbling stadium, into a team which now plays in the top division and is planning to construct a new stadium.
