Aged 80, billionaire Frank Stronach has achieved in his native Austria what he failed to do in Canada, the country where he built his fortune: make a splash in politics. On Sunday, "Team Stronach", the eurosceptic party that the Magna auto parts titan created only last September, won around 10 percent of the vote in two state elections. This, he hopes, is just a foretaste of what he can achieve when the whole of European Union and eurozone member Austria goes to the polls in September or October.

Austria's far-right lost power Sunday in its late leader Joerg Haider's stronghold of Carinthia after a drubbing in a state election, five years after the charismatic figure's drink-driving death. The election in Carinthia and in a second state also marked the arrival as a political force of a new eurosceptic party created in 2012 by 80-year-old Frank Stronach, an Austro-Canadian auto parts and horseracing billionaire.