Mandaric took control of his father’s engineering business in the Serbian city of Novi Sad at the age of 21.<\/p>\n
Five years later it was one of the largest firms in Yugoslavia and on a collision course with Marshal Tito, country’s communist dictator. <\/p>\n
Tito denounced Mandaric as a “capitalist traitor” when the entrepreneur took his family to Switzerland.<\/p>\n
Mandaric spent a year there, desperately trying to get his cash out of the Balkans, then moved to United States where he founded a computer-components firm and an electronics business.<\/p>\n
He acquired US citizenship and signed George Best to play for the first professional sports team in Silicon Valley, the San Jose Earthquakes.<\/p>\n
Frustrated by the slow progress of the game in the US, Mandaric bought Belgian club Charleroi and then moved on to Nice.<\/p>\n
Portsmouth were on the brink of bankruptcy when he bought them in 1999 before being revived under his stewardship in a pattern which would earn him a reputation as football’s ‘Mr Fixit’.<\/a><\/p>\n There would be the wobbly start as owner and club got acquainted, a few spins of the managerial merry-go-round, investment in the squad, improvement, promotion, consolidation, sale.<\/p>\n With Harry Redknapp appointed as manager, Mandaric’s Portsmouth won the Championship in 2003 before he sold the club to French-Israeli businessman Alexandre Gaydamak for \u00a332m in 2006. <\/p>\n Mandaric bought Leicester City for \u00a36m in 2007. The Foxes were relegated to League One in 2007-08 but returned as champions in 08-09 and lost in the Championship play-off semi-finals in 09-10.<\/p>\n He sold Leicester to Thailand’s Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha for \u00a340m later that year and bought a heavily indebted Sheffield Wednesday for \u00a31. <\/p>\n The Owls won promotion from League One in 2012 before Mandaric sold them to another Thai, Dejphon Chansiri, for \u00a337.5m.<\/p>\n Manadaric was also memorably involved with Redknapp in a corruption saga that started with a BBC Panorama investigation in 2006, and ended with them being acquitted of tax evasion in 2012.<\/a><\/p>\n Earlier this year, Mandaric considered buying back Wednesday to save the club from being “destroyed” under current chairman Chansiri.<\/p>\n