The 2010 Sunday Times Rich List, published tomorrow, April 25, shows that the collective wealth of Britain’s richest 1,000 people has increased by 30% in a year.
The speed of recovery in the fortunes of Britain’s super-rich in the last 12 months has been remarkable. The 2010 Sunday Times Rich List, published tomorrow, April 25, shows that the collective wealth of Britain’s richest 1,000 people has increased by 30% in a year. The combined wealth of Britain’s richest 1,000 has risen by more than £77 billion since 2009 to £333.5 billion.
This is easily the biggest annual rise in the 22-year history of the list. There are 53 billionaires in the list, ten more than in 2009.At the top of the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List, for the sixth consecutive year, is London-based steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal who has seen his fortune double in a year to £22,450m, from £10,800m in 2009. Mittal, 59, the boss of the world’s biggest steelmaker, Arcelor Mittal, has benefitted hugely from the recovery of the global steel industry which has rebounded from the worst of the decline in 2008 and early 2009.
In second place on the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List is Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich, 43, who has added £400m to his wealth in a year. The Duke of Westminster, 58, who has seen his giant Grosvenor property group weather the economic storm well, is 3rd, now worth £6,750m, a gain of £250m on last year.
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Brothers David, 71, and Simon, 68, Reuben, ranked 5th, have seen their fortune rise by more than 120% to £5,532m, with the success of their company Global Switch, which runs datacentres across the world.
The soaring share price of the London-based mining group Vedanta Resources has added £3,500m, an increase of 583% on 2009, to the wealth of Indian-born Anil Agarwal, 57, who moves 60 places up the list to 10th.
Joseph Lau, 58, the Chinese property tycoon, ranked 12th with a fortune of £3,825m, is the highest placed new entry in the 2010 Rich List. He recently paid £33m for a house in London’s exclusive Eaton Square. Lau owns one of the world’s finest wine collections, with at least 10,000 bottles, and is an avid art collector.
The highest new entry among the women are the London-based Norwegian sisters Helen, 44, and Marianne Odfjell, 39, and family, who own a large slice of the Bergen-based Odfjell Drilling group.
The owners of many notable high-street companies have made big gains in the last year. Liverpudlian John Hargreaves, 66, and his family, who own discount retailer Matalan, have seen their fortune treble to £1,020m. The family have regained billionaire status after eight years, now ranked 51st, on back of sales in its stores being up 13.7%. The wealth of Guernsey-based Dame Mary Perkins, 66, the driving force at Specsavers opticians, and her husband Douglas, 67, is up from £500m to £810m this year, ranked equal 73rd, putting her well on the way to Britain’s first self-made female family billionaire.
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The owners of the Wakefield-based greetings card chain Card Factory, Dean, 43, and Janet, 42, Hoyle, ranked equal 424th, have seen their fortune rise by 204% to £154m, after they sold their company this month to Charterhouse, the private equity firm. Julian Dunkerton, 45, ranked equal 354th, boss of the Cheltenham-based Superdry clothes label, saw his fortune leap by 157% to £180m with the floation of the parent company SuperGroup.
The Queen, 84, ranked equal 245th in Britain’s richest 1,000, has crowned a successful year for her share portfolio with a personal fortune totaling £290m, up £20m on 2009.
Twilight film star Robert Pattinson, 23, worth £13m, is the top new entry in the list of young millionaires aged 30 and under, ranking 14th. He joins Harry Potter film star Daniel Ratcliffe, 20, now worth £42m and ranked 5th in the young list, ahead of Kiera Chaplin, 27, and Keira Knightley, 25, each worth £28m and ranked equal 7th; Emma Watson, 20, worth £22m at 10th equal; and Rupert Grint, 21, worth £20m and ranked 12th.
The 22nd annual Sunday Times Rich List – the definitive guide to wealth in Britain and Ireland – is published in a special 104-page supplement, which profiles the 1,000 richest people and families in the UK and the wealthiest 250 in Ireland. The list is based on identifiable wealth (land, property, other assets such as art and racehorses, or significant shares in publicly quoted companies), and excludes bank accounts (to which the paper has no access).
The Sunday Times Rich List 2010 is compiled by Philip Beresford, the leading authority on British wealth, and edited by Ian Coxon. Beresford, who has a PhD in politics from Exeter University, edited Management Today before taking up wealth tracking full-time.
Source: Sunday Times
