As workers wrestled on Monday evening with the thought of returning to the grind after the holiday weekend, businessman Dermot Desmond was already fully switched on.

The billionaire, who first committed to investing in Celtic football club in Glasgow in 1994, issued an astonishing statement to its supporters at 9.59pm, 15 minutes after it was announced that manager Brendan Rodgers was departing.

The normally media-shy 34.4 per cent Celtic shareholder accused Rodgers of having “contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the club and fuelled hostility towards members of the executive team and the board”.

It follows the manager’s complaints about a lack of summer player signings and no firm offer to extend his own contract.

Rodgers’s final match was Sunday’s 3-1 defeat against Hearts, which left Celtic eight points from the summit of the Scottish Premiership.

“Celtic is greater than any one person,” concluded Desmond. “Our focus now is on restoring harmony, strengthening the squad, and continuing to build a club worthy of its values, traditions, and supporters.”

But Celtic wasn’t the only commercial matter on Desmond’s mind as the weekend drew to a close. That same evening, confirmation came that another 1994 investment had paid off. And in spectacular fashion.

Listed US healthcare property group Welltower announced that it was acquiring the portfolio of the Barchester Healthcare nursing home group in the UK, which is mainly owned by Desmond and fellow Irish billionaires – and one-time shareholders in Manchester United – JP McManus and John Magnier, for £5.2 billion (€5.96 billion).

The price for the second-largest UK care homes group was well in excess of the £4 billion-plus figure that had been rumoured last week, when it first emerged that Welltower, valued at more than $120 billion (€103 billion) on the New