David McCourt - the last man standing in Ireland’s broadband process

US businessman’s firm fronts the final consortium

US businessman David McCourt is the founder and chairman of Granahan McCourt, a private investment firm specialising in telecoms and media.

Following the high-profile exits of Eir and ESB-Vodafone joint venture Siro and more recently UK plcs SSE and John Laing, McCourt's firm is the only bidder left in the Government's stop-start National Broadband Plan (NBP).

McCourt says he has invested more than a €100 million in telecoms in Ireland mainly through his acquisition and expansion of Irish telco Enet, which he purchased in 2013 and recently sold to the State-backed Irish Infrastructure Fund (IFF).

The Irish-American entrepreneur, who recently bought a home in Co Clare, owns a number of other businesses in the UK and around Europe but insists his Irish operation is central to his plans.

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He made his fortune from the sale of his US phone company, Corporate Communications Network, to WorldCom for $14 billion in the 1980s. Worldcom later went bankrupt.