Sunday, April 26, 2015

The richest get richer


The collective wealth of Britain’s richest people has more than doubled in the last 10 years. The 1,000 wealthiest people in the UK are now worth £547bn, not counting what’s in their bank accounts, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List. A fortune of £100m is what it takes to make it into the top 1,000.

London-based Ukrainian businessman Len Blavatnik, whose empire includes the Warner Music Group, came top of the list thanks to his estimated fortune of £13.17bn. He rose from fourth to first after his wealth rose by more than £3bn.

Galen and George Weston and family, who run a retail empire including Selfridges and Primark, enjoyed a particularly prosperous year – with their wealth soaring by £3.7bn to £11bn.

Meanwhile, the the Nasdaq and S&P 500 closed at new record highs after US tech firms reported strong first quarter profits. Amazon shares by more than 14%, in the wake of revelations about its cloud computing services on Thursday. The company's value now stands at $206.7bn (£136.1bn.) Microsoft, which saw its share price spike over 10% after it beat growth expectations.


According to the new capitalist motto, the banks are too big to fail, while the poor are too wretched to be salvaged

1 comment:

ajohnstone said...

Scotland now has a record nine billionaires, according to a new study in a Sunday newspaper:
The Grant-Gordon whisky family (£2.15bn)
Mahdi al-Tajir, who owns Highland Spring (£1.67bn)
Oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood (£1.385bn)
Former Harrods owner Mohammed Al-Fayed (£1.3bn)
Thomson family, owners of publisher DC Thomson (£1.27bn)
Trond Mohn and his sister Marit (£1.2bn)
Jim McColl, of Clyde Blowers (£1.06bn)
Sir Brian Souter and Ann Gloag, the siblings who founded the Stagecoach transport empire (£1.04bn)
Alastair Salvesen, of the Christian Salvesen shipping empire (£1bn)