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
Scotland now has a record nine billionaires, according to a new study in a Sunday newspaper:
ReplyDeleteThe 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)