More than 100 billionaires living in Britain; Britain has more billionaires than any other country, as the number based in the UK has tripled in the last ten years

May 16, 2014 Leave a comment

More than 100 billionaires living in Britain

Britain has more billionaires than any other country, as the number based in the UK has tripled in the last ten years

By Agencies

7:29PM BST 10 May 2014

The number of billionaires living in Britain has risen to more than 100 for the first time, a study has found.

Some 104 billionaires are now based in the UK – more than triple the number from a decade ago – with a combined wealth of more than £301 billion, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

It means Britain has more billionaires per head of population than any other country, while London’s total of 72 sterling billionaires is more than any other city in the world, the study found.

Indian-born brothers Sri and Gopi Hinduja top the list of the UK’s wealthiest billionaires with a fortune of £11.9 billion.

The London-based pair, who run the global conglomerate Hinduja Group, saw their wealth rise by £1.3 billion in the last year, the study found.

They replaced Russian business magnate Alisher Usmanov at the top after the Arsenal shareholder saw his fortune fall to £10.65 billion, the Sunday Times Rich List said.

The richest Briton, the Duke of Westminster, is ranked 10th on the list after his fortune rose to £8.5 billion.

Last year, 88 billionaires were living in the UK, worth a total of more than £245 billion, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. In 2004, the number of billionaires in Britain was 30, with a combined wealth of £65 billion, it said.

Among the new members of the billionaire club is West End producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh, who saw his fortune rise by £175 million in the last year and is now worth £1 billion, the survey found.

Plymouth-born Chris Dawson, who owns and runs The Range discount store chain, saw his fortune rise by £695 million in the past 12 months to net £1.28 billion.

Meanwhile, Jon Hunt, founder of estate agents Foxtons, has a £1.07 billion fortune, up £145 million in 2013, the Sunday Times Rich List said.

Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley and Sir Richard Branson are among the UK’s top 25 wealthiest billionaires.

In Scotland, Sir Brian Souter and Ann Gloag, the siblings who founded the Stagecoach transport empire, share a fortune of £1 billion – an increase of £270 million on last year.

The wealthiest new entry is Carrie and Francois Perrodo and their family, who own the London-based Perenco oil and gas operation and are said to be worth £6.14 billion.

It is the first time since 2008 that the minimum wealth of the 50 richest people in the country has exceeded £1.5 billion.

A decade ago, a personal fortune of £700 million was needed to be among Britain’s 50 wealthiest people. The entry point to the UK top 50 today is £1.7 billion, the Sunday Times Rich List found.

The combined wealth of the Britain’s super rich is now ahead of the pre-recession levels of 2008, when the total wealth of the UK’s 75 billionaires was £201 billion.

Seventy two billionaires are now based in London, compared with 48 sterling-equivalent billionaires in Moscow, 43 in New York, 42 in San Francisco, 38 in Los Angeles and 34 in Hong Kong.

The 2014 Sunday Times Rich List will be published on May 18.

 

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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