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  1. Wealth
September 7, 2017

Louis Walsh net worth

By Suren Prasad

Discoverer of the hit bands Boyzone, Westlife and Girls Aloud, X Factor judge and impresario extraordinaire Louis Walsh has a reported net worth of £104 million.

Born in Kiltimagh, Louis Walsh’s career began with booking acts for a musical agent in Dublin. His career leapfrogged after he discovered singer Johnny Logan, who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1980 and 1987.

During the early 1990s, Walsh organised a string of auditions for an Irish boy band, later to be known as Boyzone, who waltzed to worldwide success under Walsh’s patronage. Walsh also managed lead singer Ronan Keating’s equally successful solo career.

He then put together the pop group Westlife in the late 1990s, who were later signed by Simon Cowell in a multi-million pound deal. The band has over 20 top five singles and ten top five albums in the UK to its credit.

Walsh then took to TV as a talent expert in the Irish version of Popstars in 2001. The following year on ITV’s Popstars: The Rivals, he managed the successful girl band Girls Aloud, whose debut album went platinum.

Simon Cowell brought in Walsh as a judge on ITV’s The X Factor in 2004, where he mentored talented runners-up G4, whose album outsold winner Steve Brookstein.

In the 2005 series of the X Factor, Walsh mentored Shayne Ward to a final win with more than 10 million votes. Ward’s number one single That’s My Goal topped UK charts four weeks in a row. Walsh also led the successful boyband JLS to second place in the fifth series of The X Factor. Walsh later returned for the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth series of the popular TV talent show from 2010 to 2012.

Mentoring the boys category for the tenth series, Walsh’s charge Nicholas McDonald finished runner-up. In 2014, Walsh appeared in the eleventh series, where Cowell’s Ben Haenow won the final on December 14.

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Appearing several times since 2004 on Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, Walsh has also appeared on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (Ireland’s public broadcaster) in various talent shows.

The only judge to figure in all eleven series of The X Factor so far, it is rumoured that Walsh’s X Factor pay could be up to £1 million per series. The Sunday Independent Irish Rich List 2014 ranks Walsh at 297.

The music manager and TV personality has four houses in Dublin, a London apartment and a Miami beach house. Walsh also has an extensive art collection, including works by Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol, said to be worth £5 million. A luxury car enthusiast, he owns a Bentley and a £75,000 Maserati GranTurismo.

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