TAKE AWAY the helicopter, the expensive designer suits, the entrepreneurial awards and a few more expensive toys and what do you have? Michael Taggart 20 years ago before he decided to come home to Derry from London and build a multi-million pound business from scratch.
Taggart (42) is the better known helicopter-flying half of Taggart Holdings, the business he set up with his older brother John in 1989. Neither of the Derry brothers seeks publicity, despite the fact they have been making regular appearances on certain "rich lists" in the last couple of years.
The current Sunday Times Rich List estimates the Taggart brothers have a combined wealth of about £95 million (€122 million).
Michael and John left Derry in the early 1980s to work on building sites abroad. The younger brother came home with some money he had saved and put a deposit on a site Derry. He built his first house on the site and sold it for £45,000 - this led to another two houses, then another and then the two brothers decided to go into business together.
Their first official housing development consisted of 15 homes - the next was 45. The Taggarts were ambitious. In the 1990s they built and sold about 500 houses in Derry and in time became one of the largest housebuilders in the North.
In the mid-1990s Taggart Holdings decided to expand further afield - the nearest option was the Republic so they bought 20 acres in Bettystown, Co Meath, for an estimated £2 million. It was the beginning of a run of luck for Taggart Holdings backed up by consistently hard work and an eye for an acquisition. The group bought well but it soon became apparent that their ambitions were not going to be confined to Ireland.
They never turned their back on their home soil - in 2006 they signed a record residential property deal in Northern Ireland for 87 acres of prime development land. At the same time Taggart Holdings aggressively expanded to Britain, France, New Zealand, eastern Europe and most recently, the United States.
At the height of its success Taggart employed more than 320 people directly and several hundred more as sub-contractors.
In 2006, the group reported its best financial results to date with an operating profit of more than €36 million on a turnover of €164 million.
Last year Michael Taggart won the Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the industry category. It was a fitting title for a man who had the vision to build a multi-million pound international property company with his brother.
