Milan Mandarić

Milan Mandarić (Serbian Cyrillic: Милан Мандарић; 5 September 1938 – 4 October 2025) was a Serbian-American businessman who owned a string of businesses and association football clubs, including Portsmouth, Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday. He was most recently the vice-president of Serbian Superliga team Vojvodina.

He was born near Gospić, Yugoslavia (today Croatia), and grew up in Novi Sad.

Mandarić took control of his father's machine shop aged 21, and by the age of 26 had turned it into one of the largest businesses in the country.

In 1969, worried by the Yugoslav government's view of his business, Mandarić left Yugoslavia 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, Mandarić was invited to be their third partner. The firm was successful, but disagreements over manufacturing processes led to Mandarić leaving to form his own company, Lika Corporation, in 1971. In 1976, he became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. By 1976, Lika Corp. was the largest manufacturer of computer components in the U.S., and Mandarić was pioneering the boom that led to the creation of California's Silicon Valley.

On 23 December 2009, Mandarić was charged with two counts of tax evasion by the Crown Prosecution Service, however he was found not guilty on 8 February 2012.

Around the same time he had begun using his money to invest in football, Mandarić's 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 United States' first professional league. In 1978, he purchased a North American Soccer League franchise called the Connecticut Bicentennials and moved them to Oakland, California, to play as the Stompers. After one year in the East Bay, the team was moved to Edmonton, Alberta, to become the Drillers.

Sceptical about the future of the sport in the U.S., Mandarić looked to European football, initially taking a stake in Belgian team Standard Liège before taking outright ownership of Belgian club R. Charleroi S.C., then French side OGC Nice. Under his ownership the latter club won the 1996–97 Coupe de France but they were also relegated from the French top division.

In 1998, Mandarić sold Nice and took over English club Portsmouth in May 1999, to whom he had been introduced by ex-player Preki.