2010 Estates Gazette Rich List - Estatesgazette.com

ALL IMAGeS: Rex feATuReS 

Rich List 2010 

Property’s surviving super rich are marching in the right direction again: onwards and 

upwards. Two painful years wiped almost £30bn off their collective wealth, taking the top 250 

property titans from a high of £98bn in 2007 to a low of £69bn last year. But, for most, the recovery is 

now feeding through. The 2010 Estates Gazette Rich List scrutinised empires worth a total of £72bn – 

still way below the peak of the boom but a not insignificant improvement. 

Leading the charge are inevitably those with low borrowings and solid assets – witnessed by the 

resilience of the big London estates such as Grosvenor, Cadogan and Howard de Walden, all of which 

have seen their fortunes rise. But these centuries-old piggy banks are not the only ones in credit. 

Assets acquired far more recently put consummate deal makers like David and Simon Reuben and 

Richard and Ian Livingstone among the top performers. 

Not everyone is seeing a recovery of fortune, however. The Irish feature heavily among those who fell 

several notches down the list. And they continue to be hammered. Many of the financial records and 

accounts that we use in the compilation of the list are historical, so events such as the restructuring of 

Ireland’s property debts by “bad bank” NAMA (the National Asset Management Agency) can overtake us. 

That said, the list provides an unmatched snapshot of how property’s elite stand in the wake of the 

downturn. We hope you find it useful. If you have any comments, please contact our number cruncher 

Dr Philip Beresford directly at philipberesford@aol.com. 

Julia Cahill, deputy editor 

Estates Gazette 

Lord Foster 

Foster Holdings 

pAgE 33 

Gerald Ronson & Family 

Heron 

pAgE 40 

John Caudwell 

Caudwell Holdings 

pAgE 8 

inside 

6 Rich in the South East 

9 Rich in the West Midlands 

11 Richest overseas 

16 Number residing in each 

region 

18 Rich in Yorkshire & the 

Humber 

21 Richest in Wales 

29 Rich by star sign 

30 Rich in Ireland 

36 Rich in the North West 

38 Rich by decade born 

43 Rich in the South West 

47 Rich in the North East 

47 Rich in the Channel Islands 

57 Five youngest 

54 Rich in Scotland 

59 Rich in the East Midlands 

60 Rich in the East of England 

61 Richest women 

Editor Julia Cahill 

Managing editor Alison Henry 

Authors Philip Beresford, 

Dominic Prince 

Sub-editor Alan Coventry 

Layout Chris Gardner 

Advertising Jonathan Lister 

For all EstatEs GazEttE sErvicEs 

rinG 0845 077 8811 

20 November 2010 www.estatesgazette.com 3

estates gazette rich list 2010 

sixth duke still 

comfortably 

number one 

Grosvenor Group, the property 

giant controlled by the 58-year-old 

Duke of Westminster, is expected 

to make around £55m from its joint 

venture development of 197 flats 

just behind the Tate Modern on 

Bankside. 

Its success prompted Grosvenor 

to enter into a second joint venture 

to pay £100m for the two-acre 

Holland Park Comprehensive 

School site. Some 72 upmarket 

flats will be built when the pupils 

vacate it in three years’ time. 

Grosvenor, which owns 

swathes of Mayfair, Belgravia and 

Knightsbridge, reported pretax 

losses in 2009 of £236m. 

4 www.estatesgazette.com 

20 November 2010 

This was down sharply from its 

£594m pretax losses the previous 

year, when it was still making 

provisions for the costly Liverpool 

One development. 

The group has also built up a war 

chest of nearly £1bn to return to 

global property markets such as 

Shanghai and other Chinese cities. 

It has, according to chief executive 

Mark Preston, “weathered the 

downturn well”. 

He said that the group had been 

around for more than 300 years, 

experiencing 20 recessions and 

more than 250 wars worldwide 

during that time. 

The Grosvenor Group shares are 

£6,800m 

The Duke of 

Westminster 

Grosvenor Group 

2009: £6,500m 

(+£300m) 

1 

owned by various Grosvenor trusts 

set up for the benefit of the family, 

which is now headed by the sixth 

duke, who stood down as chairman 

of the board in 2007 after 33 years 

in the role, although he remains 

chairman of the trustees. 

The net asset value of the 

Grosvenor Group fell sharply in 

2009 to under £2.4bn. 

However, with the private 

estates outside the group added, 

and with the top end of the London 

housing market now in recovery 

mode (as the Tate Modern sales 

show), we raise our overall 

valuation of Westminster slightly 

to £6.8bn this year.

the 

reubens 

make 

billions 

£2,500m 

Earl Cadogan & Family 

the cadogan Group 

2009: £2,000m (+£500m) 

Earl Cadogan is confident that 

the property company which runs 

his 93 plush acres in Chelsea has 

the “fundamental resilience” to 

come through the deep property 

downturn. 

It recently began drawing up 

plans for a 100,000 sq ft office 

development above shops on 

Sloane Street. 

The 2009 accounts showed 

a rise in net assets from £2.1bn 

to £2.3bn, though profits fell 

slightly from £40.4m to £38m. 

The crowning glory is the new 

£150m redevelopment of the 

old barracks and sports ground 

at Duke of York Square on 

fashionable Kings Road. 

The foundation of the Cadogan 

Estate was laid in 1713 when the 

physician Sir Hans Sloane bought 

the Manor of Chelsea. 

In 1717, Sloane’s younger 

daughter, Elizabeth, married 

Charles Cadogan, later the 

David and Simon Reuben are 

hoping to implement longstanding 

plans to float their fastgrowing 

data-centre company, 

Global Switch, next year with a 

value of more than £2.75bn. 

The brothers are in talks with 

banks including Barclays, HSBC, 

Deutsche and Credit Suisse, 

about listing the business which 

has soared in value recently. 

The strong performance has 

been spurred by regulatory 

requirements that have increased 

the need for companies to 

retain more data and back-up IT 

2facilities as part of their disaster 

recovery plans. 

Global Switch has centres 

in London, Amsterdam, Paris, 

Frankfurt, Madrid, Sydney and 

Singapore, covering almost 3m 

sq ft. It lets space to big blue-chip 

companies such as IBM, Microsoft, 

Shell and BP. 

The business, one of the 

brothers’ most successful 

investments, has less than £80m 

of debt and is on track to generate 

underlying earnings of £175m in 

Second Baron Cadogan of Oakley. 

The present Earl Cadogan, 

73, began his career at merchant 

bank Schroder Wagg and took on 

the management of the family’s 

property portfolio in 1974. 

Having inherited the title 

from his late father in 1997, 

Cadogan has presided over a hefty 

investment programme covering 

£5,432m 

David & Simon Reuben 

aldersgate 

2009: £3,300m (+£2,132m) 

The Earl and Countess 

Cadogan, at the launch of 

the 2009 Derby Festival 

2010-11. That figure is expected 

to grow to £235m by the 

following year. 

The Reubens have been active 

in the British property market 

for the last decade after making 

their fortune in Russia in the 

1990s, where they were dubbed 

the “metal tsars” for their role 

in restructuring the aluminium 

industry there. Their origins 

were anything but regal. Born in 

Bombay, they made their way to 

London, where Simon, now 69, 

went into property and David, 

72, started trading in scrap 

metal. Their foray into Russia, 

which ended in 1999, earned 

them at least £1.3bn. 

Today, their vast interests 

include a 29.5% stake in 

racecourse owner Arena 

Leisure, and the joint venture 

Merchant Square development 

in Paddington. They have 

extracted hefty profits from 

property investments sold 

before the market crash. 

Their two main companies, 

Aldersgate and Reuben 

Brothers, are now valued at 

more than £5.5bn. Despite the 

recent failure of their Sapphire 

Retail Fund, other assets take 

the Reubens to £5.432bn. 

3 

the Cadogan estate. Cautiously, 

with recovery in the air in the 

upmarket London acreage, we 

value the business on its net 

assets figure. 

Past dividends, quoted 

investments held by the separate 

Cadogan Settled Estates, personal 

property and estates should take 

Cadogan to £2.5bn. 

20 November 2010 www.estatesgazette.com 5 

desmond o'neill features


4 £1,900m 

Eddie & Sol Zakay 

topland Group 

2009: £1,500m (+£400m) 

Topland Group swung from a 

£29m loss to a £5.3m profit in 

the year to May 2009. It should 

see further improvement this year 

after taking advantage of renewed 

investor appetite by concluding a 

number of UK property sales. 

The Zakays launched their 

business during the 1980s’ 

property boom before expanding 

into the American and Middle 

Eastern markets. They made 

much of their fortune in the UK 

in a series of multi-million pound 

deals with chains such as Marks & 

Spencer and Tesco. 

The Zakays have around 146 

directorships and their total 

portfolio world-wide has been 

valued at around £4bn. In all, 

after stripping out borrowings, the 

Zakay family should still be worth 

£1.9bn in the current climate. 

Sol has quit Britain after the 

introduction of a 50% tax rate 

on high earners. He recently 

resigned as chairman and chief 

executive officer of Topland 

Group and the UK Topland 

companies to join the group’s 

offshore parent company as a 

consultant. 

Richest in the South East 

No Name Wealth (£m) 

1 The Duke of Westminster 6,800 

2 David & Simon Reuben 5,432 

3 Earl Cadogan & Family 2,500 

4 Eddie & Sol Zakay 1,900 

6 Ian & Richard Livingstone 1,650 

7 Mark Pears & Family 1,600 

8 Poju Zabludowicz 1,500 

9 Baroness Howard de 1,400 

Walden & Family 

12 Viscount Portman & Family 1,000 

13 Bernard Lewis & Family 920 

14 Gerald Hines 800 

16 Benzion Freshwater & Family 732 

17 Lord Sugar 730 

20 Jon Hunt 660 

23 Richard Caring 600 

23 The Jatania Family 600 

25 Sir Donald Gordon & Family 530 

25 Sir Anwar Pervez & Family 580 

29 Chris Lazari 522 

31 Leo Noé & Family 500 



The Topland business, built 

with his brother Eddie, will 

remain in the UK. Eddie, 60, is 

to become chairman of the UK 

businesses and stay in England. 

Sol, 58, will concentrate on 

finding global opportunities. 

Topland has also spent £289m 

buying supermarkets in Spain, 

and has become involved in a 

£1bn housebuilding fund in 

India to target the country's 

burgeoning middle class and its 

demand for home ownership. It 

has £1.2bn in the bank. 

5 £1,800m 

Sir David & Sir Frederick 

Barclay 

ellerman investments 

2009: £1,000m (+£800m) 

The Barclay brothers are 

investing in a vineyard on the 

island of Sark with the hope of 

producing a vintage worthy of the 

wine list at their exclusive Ritz 

Hotel in London. 

Their mission is so serious that 

they have recruited a leading 

Bordeaux winemaker to take 

charge of the project. It is a 

sign of how much the brothers 

are determined to make their 

extensive assets “sweat.” 

At the same time, their Home 

Delivery Network bought the 

parcels division of DHL to create 

a £600m turnover operation 

which will be a strong competitor 

to Royal Mail. 

The oncelow-key Barclays have 

become much more prominent 

in British business since 

their £665m purchase of the 

Telegraph Group in 2004. 

The twins, 76, started on the 

road to wealth in the 1960s 

London property market. Their 

first coup came in 1983 when they 

bought the Ellerman Lines for 

£48m. They later sold the assets 

making over £250m. 

They made a £100m profit on 

the sale of a separate shipping 

line and another £100m from 

backing Sir Philip Green in the 

break up of Sears in 1999. 

By some adroit deals in 

retailing, they gained the valuable 

Littlewoods mail order business for 

a total outlay of around £340m. 

Although the Barclays’ main 

Sir David Barclay 

Sir Frederick Barclay 

operations in media, hotels, 

property and retailing have had 

mixed fortunes in the recession, 

we can see much higher net assets 

of more than £2bn in their four 

main but separate companies led 

by Ellerman Investments, which 

had £728m net assets in 2008. 

With economic recovery, we 

raise our valuation of the Barclays 

to £1,800m, which takes account 

of both personal assets and 

borrowings in their empire. 

6 £1,650m 

Ian & Richard Livingstone 

london & regional Group 

holdings 

2009: £1,400m (+£250m) 

The Livingstone brothers have 

been stepping up their activity in 

the UK property market over the 

past 18 months. 

Their London & Regional 

business has recently teamed up 

with Chelsfield Partners to buy a 

stake in the £1bn redevelopment 

of Elizabeth House in Waterloo, 

and the brothers have added to 

their hotel empire with the £50m 

purchase of the Marriott Marble 

Arch hotel. 

They should be well cushioned 

against the worst effects of the 

recession and credit crunch, 

having taken £619m in dividends 

since 2007 from their Loopsign 

company. 

Ian, 48, who began life as an 

optician, purchased and built up 

the David Clulow chain which 

now owns more than 50 opticians 

and is overseen by the Optika 

Clulow Group, which he still chairs. 

Younger brother Richard, 

45, was a chartered surveyor for 

Richard Ellis, now CB Richard 

Ellis, and the pair formed 

London & Regional in the early 

1990s, buying distressed assets 

in the midst of the commercial 

property crash. 

The brothers shun publicity 

but their empire stretches 

from Russia in the east to the 

Turks and Caicos Islands in 

the west. They own more than 

60 hotels with around 10,000 

bedrooms, more than half of 

Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront 

shopping development, 

and a string of health clubs

including David Lloyd Leisure. 

Loopsign's 2009 profits came 

in at £12.1m on £390.3m sales. 

Its net assets fell sharply to 

£690m. We value it at £750m. 

Past dividends and other assets 

take the Livingstones to £1.65bn. 

7 £1,600m 

Mark Pears & Family 

William Pears family holdings 

2009: £1,500m (+£100m) 

The Pears family is moving into 

banking. The low-key Londonbased 

brothers are backing a new 

Home and Savings Bank to the 

tune of £50m. 

The move comes after they 

pulled off a coup in January 

2009 by buying the Trillium 

outsourcing business for £750m 

from Land Securities, merging it 

with their own Telereal operation. 

The price was around £250m 

less than LandSec had hoped 

to achieve. The deal reflects the 

strength of cash-rich groups like 

the Pears in a difficult market. 

The family empire was started 

by the grandfather and father of 

the Pears brothers, in 1952. He 

had assembled a Hampsteadbased 

property empire that now 

embraces thousands of London 

homes, flats, and office blocks. 

The three young Pears were 

propelled to run the family 

empire when their father and ace 

dealmaker, Clive Pears, died in 

his early 50s. Mark is managing 

director of the main company, 

William Pears Family Holdings, 

but there are at least 23 separate 

companies which showed around 

£835m net assets in 2008-09. 

The family also owns fund 

management group Talisman. 

A portfolio of more than 50 

buildings let to Royal Bank of 

Scotland – including the Strand 

HQ of top private bank Coutts 

– was put on the market by the 

Pears family at the beginning of 

this year with a £475m price tag. 

The value of their entire portfolio 

has been put at £6bn. 

The Pears are also not short 

of a bob or two, with dividends 

of £40m in the last four years 

and nearly £82m in 1996. With 

economic recovery, we nudge the 

Pears up to £1.6bn. 

8maGnate Plays his cards riGht... 

£1,500m 

Poju Zabludowicz 

tamares real 

estate investments 

(uk) 

New entry 

Property magnate Poju 

Zabludowicz gave two donations 

totalling £100,000 to the 

Conservative Party last autumn to 

help swell the party’s election warchest. 

Zabludowicz holds a Finnish 

passport, but has lived and worked 

in London for most of his life. 

His father Shlomo, a holocaust 

survivor, built the family business 

around Soltam, an Israeli defence 

contractor that was a major 

supplier to the Israeli military. 

Most of the defence interests have 

now been off-loaded and the family 

has diversified into Las Vegas 

property and hotels. 

Zabludowicz, 57, has sold many 

of his Las Vegas assets but still 

holds some downtown real estate. 

He recently sold a property called 

the Princess Arcade on Piccadilly 

for around £120m. He has a 

number of companies including 

Tamares Real Estate Investments 

and Ivory Gate. Zabludowicz has 

also moved into private equity 

with the launch of Synova Capital, 

an £80m fund which will invest in 

small UK companies. 

Equity investments in areas 

such as card payment technology 

have also proved lucrative for 

Zabludowicz, who is a major 

modern art collector and on the 

board of several Jewish/Israeli 

charities. Zabludowicz campaigns 

to improve the portrayal of Israel 

in the West and counts Bill Clinton 

and Shimon Perez among his 

friends. Though there is little 

evidence of asset wealth in his 

British companies, we believe 

Zabludowicz is worth £1.5bn. 



9£1,400m 

John Caudwell 

caudwell holdings 

New entry 

9 £1,400m 

Baroness Howard de Walden 

& Family 

howard de Walden estates 

2009: £1,070m (+£330m) 

Marylebone landlord Howard 

de Walden Estates jumped at 

the opportunity to buy in more 

Harley Street property earlier this 

year. It paid the Crown Estate 

£34m for a block of 14 period 

buildings that had not been 

traded in more than 470 years. 

In 2008-09, Howard de 

Walden Estates made a near 

£30m profit. More significantly, 

it showed up-to-date values for 

its estate for the first time and the 

net asset figure was £1.248bn. 

John Caudwell’s buying spree 

in the last three months of 2008, 

when he spent £80m on properties 

in London and elsewhere, looks to 

have been well timed. 

But he could easily afford to 

take such a gamble, having sold 

his Caudwell Group in 2006 to 

Providence Equity Partners for 

£1.46bn, a far higher price than 

had been expected for the Stokebased 

mobile phone operation. 

It was in 1970 that Caudwell 

took his first job as an engineering 

apprentice. He’d quit school 

the year before after a term of 

A-Levels with a burning desire to 

get out, on, up and rich. 

While waiting for his Michelin 

apprenticeship to start, he swept 

pottery floors, worked at a 

steel factory and as a night club 



uPWardly mobile tycoon 

In the past 15 years, the family 

has clocked up more than £266m 

dividends. The family trusts 

also own Welbeck Land, which 

saw its profits rise sharply from 

£187,000 to £15.4m in the same 

period. 

With £32.4m net assets, 

it is highly active in property 

development round the country 

from Guildford to South Wales 

and Manchester, to name but a 

few of its developments. 

With an uptick in central 

London values, we reckon the 

business assets of the family 

are now worth £1.25bn and we 

add another £150m for past 

dividends and other property 

assets to the Howard de Walden 

family after tax. 

bouncer. Eventually he became a 

successful car dealer but his path 

to serious money came through 

an early move into the fledgling 

mobile phone industry in 1987. 

When he sold up, Caudwell 

was the biggest independent 

player in the European mobile 

phone industry. His 85% stake in 

the business was worth around 

£1.24bn at the sale price. Two 

years previously he had sold off 

his Singlepoint customer billing 

operation to Vodafone for £405m. 

Caudwell, 58, has retained a 

financial interest in Phones4u. 

He has also paid an undisclosed 

sum to take a 51% shareholding 

in Caudwell Marine, which has 

developed a new propulsion 

system for the recreational 

boating market. 

Viscount Portman 

11 £1,060m 

John Whittaker 

Peel holdings 

2009: £1,360m (-£300m) 

The £600m MediaCity scheme 

at Salford Quays in Greater 

Manchester is the latest jewel 

to be added to John Whittaker’s 

crown. The Peel Holdings 

development will become the 

northern home of the BBC 

next year. 

The business empire amassed 

by Whittaker, who is famous 

for developing the Trafford 

Centre, covers ports, airports, 

real estate companies and 

energy – including a 28% stake 

in UK Coal. 

Whittaker, 68, nearly became 

a Catholic priest but went into 

the quarrying business before 

moving into property. In the 

1980s, he fought a long and 

sometimes bitter battle to take 

over the Manchester Ship Canal 

Company. 

He has not been unscathed 

by the recent recession. Peel’s 

airport business, which owns 

Liverpool John Lennon airport, 

saw its losses widen from £4.6m 

to £13m in the year to March 

2009, for example. However, 

the airport business has recently 

found a strategic partner to help 

it weather the drop in traffic, 

selling a 65% stake to Vancouver 

Airport Services. 

Whittaker’s two main 

companies, Peel Holdings (TCL) 

and Peel Holdings (Land and 

Property) showed £1.2bn of 

assets in 2008-09. Whittaker’s 

share is worth £660m. His 

other assets, including personal 

property and the quoted stakes, 

should take him to £1.060bn. 

12 £1,000m 

Viscount Portman & Family 

Portman estates 

2009: £950m (+£50m) 

Viscount Portman’s Burtley 

Estate consists of 2,000 acres of 

farmland and woodland in the 

Buckinghamshire countryside. 

Home to an organic herd of 200 

pedigree South Devon cattle, 

it is Portman’s latest venture,

complementing his 3,000 acre 

Herefordshire estate. Early 

customers for the beef include 

Waitrose and the Hyatt Churchill 

Hotel. Portman’s principal 

property holding – 110 acres 

of prime London estate – is 

undergoing a huge upgrade. 

Gareth Clutton, who took the 

helm of the property company 

two years ago, has been finding 

plenty to get his teeth into. The 

estate has been busy forming a 

joint venture to bring forward 

a mixed-use redevelopment of 

Marble Arch House, which sits 

at the gateway to the Portman 

Village shopping streets. 

As well as the London estate, 

Portman, 52, owns a clutch of 

rather obscure assets, including 

17,000 acres at Wagga Wagga, 

in New South Wales, Australia. 

Other assets include a share 

in commercial properties in 

Manhattan and Palm Beach 

in Florida. There are few signs of 

family wealth in two companies, 

called Brickleton Group and 

Portman Settled Estates, with 

£500,000 net assets between 

them. 

With the improvements on the 

estate and the central London 

property market showing signs 

of revival, we raise the estate 

valuation to £950m in the 

current climate. We add another 

£50m for family assets including 

the Herefordshire estate and a 

holiday home in Antigua. 

Rich in the West Midlands 


9 John Caudwell 1,400 

40 Tony Gallagher 425 

41 Roy Richardson & Family 400 

55 Bob Edmiston 320 

93 Sir Euan Anstruther-Gough 160 

-Calthorpe & Family 

111 Peter Horton & Family 135 

142 Eric Grove 110 

152 Simon Clarke & Family 100 

160 The Marquess of Northampton 90 

167 Con Folkes & Family 85 

170 Bill Morris & Family 82 

196 Woon Wing Yip & Family 67 

198 Rupert Mucklow & Family 66 

201 Jim Leavesley & Family 65 

209 Paul Bassi 60 

225 Fred Pritchard & Family 53 

225 Andrew Ruhan & Family 53 Bernard Lewis 

13 £920m 

Bernard Lewis & Family 

lewis trust Group 

2009: £920m (No change) 

The Lewis Trust group saw its 

profits fall sharply in 2009 from 

£108m to £60.5m though sales 

rose from £966m to £1.02bn. 

The Lewis family, which 

owns the retailing to property 

and hotels group, is headed by 

chairman Bernard Lewis, 84, 

whose seven decades in retail 

began when his parents ran a 

fruit shop and aged ten when he 

was left in charge of the till. 

Years later, after being 

demobbed from the RAF at the 

end of the second world war he 

tried his hand at the greengrocery 

trade. His first venture in 1946 

was a corrugated iron and timber 

shack on a bomb site on north 

London’s Holloway Road. He 

paid £5 a week on a weekly 

tenancy, with no security of 

tenure. He was 22 years old. 

Next came a knitting wool 

shop, called The Wool Shop, on 

another bomb site in Holloway, 

and soon textiles won out over 

soft fruits. In 1948, the first 

clothes shop was open. The 

numbers grew and the Lewis 

Separates chain was born. 

In the mid-1950s, Lewis started 

designing his own clothes. By the 

mid-1960s, with the Kings Road 

in Chelsea seen as the centre of 

fashion, the chain was renamed 

Chelsea Girl. In 1987, the first 

River Island store was opened 

and, within four years, all the 

Chelsea Girls had been rebranded 

as River Island. 

River Island profits fell 15% 

in 2009, reflecting the highly 

competitive retail market. The 

Lewis family and trusts own 

all the business, which showed 

nearly £404m net assets in 2009. 

We value the company at 

£420m. Dividends and other 

property assets should add 

perhaps £500m after tax. 

14 £800m 

Gerald Hines 

hines 

2009: £800m (No change) 

Celebrated American developer 

Gerald Hines, 84, knows all about 

big projects, running one of the 

largest property operations in the 

world. 

For the past 10 years he has 

been based in Mayfair and is now 

active in Britain. Having rejected 

the opportunity to build the 

original Canary Wharf, Hines is 

now completing a £400m office 

scheme over London’s Cannon 

Street rail station. 

Hines’s start in life was far 

from silver spoon as the son of a 

steelworker and a schoolteacher 

from Gary, Indiana. He grew 

up in the Depression, and his 

ambition to make money was 

present from an early age. His 

first proper job was selling fans 

and blowers for office buildings 

in Houston. But in 1952, Hines 

started out in property and 

became one of the world’s bestknown 

property entrepreneurs, 

bringing fine architecture to the 

commercial market. 

From London, Hines 

spearheads expansion across 

Europe and the world. Forbes 

magazine reckons that Hines has 

put up more steel and concrete 

than any other American 

developer. 

The group manages more 

than 120m sq ft, around half of 

which is Hines-owned, and half 

is on behalf of third parties. In 

2000, a Forbes analysis suggested 

that Hines was worth around 

£1bn, and possibly a lot more. 

In the current climate, we keep 

him at £800m. 



15 £750m 

Eddie Healey & Family 

stadium (holdings) 

2009: £750m (No change) 

British Land sold a 50% stake in 

its Meadowhall shopping centre 

near Sheffield for £587.7m to 

investment company London & 

Stamford and an unidentified 

partner in February 2009. 

Meadowhall was valued at 

£1.4bn in September 2008, 

so British Land took a sizeable 

hit with the sale. Even so, that 

value reflects what a goldmine 

Eddie Healey and partner Paul 

Sykes created. The £1.17bn sale 

of Meadowhall in 1999 netted 

Eddie, 72, around £420m for 

his 60% stake (taking account of 

£470m debt in the sale price). 

With some of the Meadowhall 

proceeds reinvested, we can see 

around £410m of net assets in 

the 2008 accounts of four Healey 

family companies including 

Stadium Holdings, which is 

slightly up on last year, although 

overall the figures are down from 

£650m net assets in 2007. 

But the jewel in Healey’s 

crown is CentrO, Europe’s largest 

shopping centre built on 196 

acres of an old steelwork site on 

the Ruhr, Germany. Work started 

in 1996 and it has been granted 

permission for an extension. 

Some 20m people visit it 

every year and it is still entirely 

owned by the Healey family. 

With its success and scarcity 

value, it should easily be worth 

£300m on its own in the current 

difficult climate. 

In all, Eddie Healey should be 

worth perhaps £750m, allowing 

for any double counting. 

16 £732m 

Benzion Freshwater & Family 

daejan holdings 

2009: £495m (+£237m) 

Daejan Holdings is now valued 

at £376.5m. Chairman and 

managing director, Benzion 

Freshwater, 62, and his family 

have a 79% stake in trusts in the 

London-based property group. 

That stake is now worth £325m. 

Freshwater’s s father, Osias, 



suGar sWeet 

on mayfair 

ProPerties 

arrived in London three days 

before the second world war as a 

penniless refugee. 

In 1957 he took over Daejan 

which had been created in 1935 

to exploit Dutch East Indies 

plantations. When he died in 

1976, he was London’s biggest 

private landlord with 20,000 

tenants. 

Benzion Freshwater has 292 

directorships in a complex web of 

companies. Aside from the stake 

in Daejan, we can see three other 

main companies, Highdorn, 

Metropolitan Properties and 

Centremanor, which had 

£720m net assets between them 

in 2008-09, but allowing for 

double counting on our part 

and any charitable stakes cuts 

the net assets attributable to the 

Freshwaters to perhaps £370m. 

We have ignored a host of 

minor companies to allow a 

17 £730m 

Lord Sugar 

amshold Group 

2009: £730m (No change) 

BBC’s Apprentice TV show host Lord Sugar saw 

profits at his Amshold Group slashed in 2008- 

09 from £78.9m to £4.7m. The value of its net 

assets also fell from £272m to £203m. 

Amshold, which holds Sugar’s property 

interests, said that it had “long-term faith in 

the property market”. Showing his confidence 

Sugar, 62, recently put two of his Mayfair 

properties on the market with a £130m price 

tag, reflecting a return to 2006 prices. 

Sugar, knighted in 2000 for services to 

business, was created a life peer by Gordon 

Brown in 2009. A Hackney tailor’s son, Sugar 

made headlines with his Amstrad operation, 

started in 1968, which became a leading 

consumer electronics group in the 1980s 

and 1990s. But following the £125m sale of 

Amstrad in July 2007, his business activity 

is largely concentrated on property. Sugar 

should have received around £36m for his 

Amstrad stake. He has at least £400m worth of 

property held either via Amshold or overseas. 

Sugar certainly has not lost his eye for a 

bargain , snapping up a £35m Spanish hotel 

in 2009 for just £2.5m. But Mayfair is where 

Amshold has been a hefty investor in property. 

In addition he has £150m of cash, and personal 

assets including property in London, Florida 

and Spain. We value Sugar at £730m. 

safety margin on these figures. 

To the £695m business wealth, 

we add £37m for past dividends 

to the Freshwater family, taking 

it to £732m. 

18 £680m 

Prince Charles 

duchy of cornwall 

2009: £520m (+£160m) 

The heir to the throne’s 

intervention in plans to build 

a modernist scheme on the 

prime Chelsea Barracks site was 

described as “unwelcome” by a 

high court judge earlier this year. 

But Prince Charles, 62, 

has never been shy about his 

preference for more traditional 

architecture. His own taste is 

on view at Poundbury, outside 

Dorchester, which was built 

on Duchy of Cornwall land

and tested his ideas about 

architecture, the environment 

and town planning. 

The Duchy, created by royal 

charter in 1337 by Edward III, 

delivers its annual income to 

Price Charles in his capacity as 

Duke of Cornwall but he cannot 

profit from the sale of capital 

assets. In 2009-10, it produced a 

surplus of £14.7m. 

The Duchy also saw a sharp rise 

in its 2009-10 net assets to nearly 

£664m after the dip in 2008-09. 

Its prime properties performed 

particularly well and the overall 

value of its commercial portfolio 

rose 9% to £141m. 

We value the Duchy on its net 

asset figure, and Prince Charles 

in his capacity as steward at 

£680m with personal wealth 

added, even though he cannot 

personally benefit from realising 

any assets. 

19 £673m 

Peter Jones & Family 

emerson developments 

(holdings) 

2009: £556m (+£117m) 

Emerson Developments, the 

Alderley Edge-based company 

was started by Jones, a former 

joiner, who moved into 

housebuilding in Cheshire way 

back in 1959. 

He was one of the first 

developers to spot the 

development potential of 

south Manchester, buying up 

tracts of land cheaply. He never 

looked back and has taken his 

development work overseas 

to Portugal and Florida. But 

Emerson was not immune and 

in 2008-09 went from a £34.7m 

profit to a £6.1m loss, mainly due 

to exceptional losses on foreign 

exchange borrowings of over 

£24m. Group turnover fell from 

£180m to £130m and net assets 

from £694m to £605m. 

Jones, 75, has another 

company, PE Jones (Properties), 

with around £50m of net assets 

in 2008-09. Jones and family 

trusts own all the shares in both. 

With economic recovery starting, 

we value the businesses on their 

£657m net assets, and add £16m 

for other assets and property. 

20 £660m 

Jon Hunt 

ex-foxtons 

2009: £660m (No change) 

Since the collapse of Lehman 

Brothers, Jon Hunt has invested 

more than £150m in distressed 

commercial, residential and 

agricultural opportunities (the 

assets at his Suffolk Estate 

now include over 4,000 acres 

of prime arable land ) which 

he hopes will show significant 

growth in the future. 

Hunt, 57, is an expert at timing, 

having sold the London-based 

Foxtons estate agency at the 

height of the boom in early 2007 

for £375m. Foxtons has had 

a torrid time in the property 

downturn but Hunt showed no 

inclination to buy it back even 

for a fraction of the original 

sale price. 

Last year, he bought properties 

for his serviced office business 

Ocubis. In May 2009 he spent 

£16m on a Kensington High 

Street building, following that 

with a £20m Victoria Street 

building. 

Hunt has clearly come a 

long way since his days at 

Millfield, the private school in 

Somerset to which he won a 

sports scholarship for tennis 

and rugby. He left after O-levels 

and tried his hand in the army, 

but didn’t see it as a long-term 

career. 

He had a stint of part-time 

employment, including one job as 

a car washer in California, but his 

talent for business came through 

when he joined an independent 

estate agency in Woking, Surrey. 

He worked there for eight years 

before striking out on his own 

in property. A formidable estate 

agent, Hunt also took Foxtons 

into America but the business 

folded as the American housing 

market collapsed. 

Hunt has also been built up his 

own residential and commercial 

property portfolio. including his 

London home and Suffolk estate. 

With personal assets added, these 

are worth £335m. 

Adding in his Foxtons 

proceeds, Hunt is now worth 

around £660m. 

Prince Charles 

Jon Hunt 

Peter Jones 

rex features empics 

Richest Overseas/ 

Isle of Man/Monaco 


21 Peter Green 650 

28 Jim Mellon 530 

62 Alan Lewis 250 

79 Alan Murphy 190 

152 Andrew Rosenfeld 100 

21 £650m 

Peter Green 

luscar 

2009: £500m (+£150m) 

Peter Green will have been 

pleased with the sale in June 

of the Knightsbridge Estate 

for £580m, a yield of around 

4%, to Saudi Arabian investor 

Olayan Group. Green, 75, was 

part of a consortium led by Derek 

Quinlan which bought the trophy 

asset for £532m in 2005. 

In July 2009 Savills valued 

the estate at £480m, putting 

pressure on the loan, so the price 

achieved this year will have come 

as a relief. Green had a 20% stake 

through a Cypriot company, 

Misland. 

Green’s father was a 

Manchester draper who later 

developed a chain of grocery 

shops which were sold in 1965 

to Tesco. But Green’s life was to 

change completely in 1975 when 

he went on a cultural trip to 

China. There he met Mary-Jean 

Mitchell, daughter of Sir Harold 

Mitchell, reckoned then to be one 

of the top 20 richest Britons. 

Mitchell had left Scotland for 

Bermuda in 1947 disgusted with 

the way his mining and railway 

assets had been nationalised by 

the Labour government. 

He concentrated on the family’s 

separate mining interests in 

Canada and established homes 

or vast ranches round the globe 

in Jamaica, Brazil, Canada, 

Portugal, Guatemala, Honduras 

and Switzerland. 

Green settled with his bride in 

Bermuda, at the £10m family 

mansion, while her father 

groomed her to take over the 

business. Green was effectively 

shut out at that period. 

But Sir Harold died in 1983, 

and then tragically, Mary-Jean 

was diagnosed with breast cancer 


in 1988 and died two years later 

at 38. Green was effectively left in 

charge of the family business with 

their two sons. 

In 1996, much of the family’s 

Canadian huge mining 

operations, held via Luscar Ltd, 

were sold in a £300m deal. The 

Green family invested around 

10% of their proceeds in a new 

Luscar, which itself was taken 

over in 2001 in a £600m deal, 

netting the Green family perhaps 

£50m. In addition in 1996, the 

Green family also made a £60m 

profit from selling its stake in a 

small energy company. 

Green moved the management 

of his substantial business 

affairs from Bermuda to Dublin 

in 2000. Family properties in 

Bermuda and London, plus 

assets in Canada and the profits 

from his recent London deals put 

Green at £650m. 

21 £650m 

Paul Sykes 

highstone Group 

2009: £550m (+£100m) 

Paul Sykes has left property 

development behind. The 

67-year-old Yorkshire-based 

entrepreneur is now busy 

investing in forestry. 

His Highstone Foundation 

charity is supporting rainforest 

conservation and the preservation 

of wildlife habitats. He has also 

moved into forestry investment in 

New Zealand. 

Sykes, who left his Barnsley 

school at 15, started making his 

fortune by breaking up old buses 

and selling parts to the Far East. 

Later, he moved into property 

and, working with Eddie Healey, 

turned 1,500 derelict acres next 

to the M1 into the Meadowhall 

Centre. They sold Meadowhall in 

1999 for £1.2bn. 

In 2009 there were £260m net 

assets in Sykes’ Highstone Group 

and we reckon he should be worth 

around £650m. He spent £6m 

on a high profile campaign to 

preserve the pound and against 

loss of sovereignty to Europe. So 

disillusioned is Sykes with the 

state of Britain that he may even 

follow his forestry investments to 

live in New Zealand. 

23 £600m 

Richard Caring 

international clothing designs 

(holdings)/caprice holdings 

2009: £450m (+£150m) 

The notoriously driven Richard 

Caring has had another busy 

year. At Wentworth, the Surrey 

golf club he bought for £130m in 

2005, he has completed a ninemonth, 

£6.5m redesign. 

There has been a stream of 

new restaurant openings, and 

many more are on the cards: last 

spring, Caring gazumped Wolsey 

owners Chris Corbin and Jeremy 

King to sign for a new restaurant 

on Capital & Counties’ Covent 

Garden estate. 

The globe-trotting Caring also 

opened a Los Angeles version 

of private members club Soho 

House, in which he owns an 80% 

stake, and has branched into 

hotels with a project in Shanghai. 

Future projects will include 

the redevelopment of the former 

US Navy offices on Grosvenor 

Square, Mayfair, which Caring 

bagged as part of a consortium 

for £250m in 2007. 

He told a newspaper earlier 

this year: “I think I suffer from 

insecurity. I have to continually 

prove something to myself all 

the time.” 

Caring has surely done that 

time and again. His portfolio 

of restaurants defied the credit 

crunch by sharply increasing 

profits in the year to June 2009. 

Caprice Holdings, which 

runs London favourites The 

Ivy, J Sheekey and Le Caprice 

in the West End, Daphne’s in 

South Kensington and Scott’s in 

Mayfair, made a profit of £8.4m 

on £39.4m sales. 

A fashion tycoon originally, 

Caring, 62, owns International 

Clothing Designs (Holdings), 

which once dominated the supply 

of fashion garments from the Far 

East to UK retailers. 

Retailers now increasingly 

deal with suppliers direct, so the 

business is smaller than it was. 

In 2008-09, profits at the 

company fell to £227,000 on 

£65.2m sales. But this is but 

a fraction of the total, and the 

nearest figure Caring admits to is 

Richard Caring 

Mike Jatania 

desmond o'neill features 


“nine figures”. He inherited the 

business from his father and built 

it up after spending many years in 

the Far East himself. 

Caring also made a fortune in 

property deals in Hong Kong in 

the 1980s and 1990s. 

He does sell, occasionally. 

Previously, he’d bought the 

Belgo, Bierodrome and Strada 

restaurant chains for £57m in 

September 2005. 

Two years later he sold them 

for £140m. 

Clearly, money is no object then 

to Caring. Indeed, with his trophy 

assets, his £15m North London 

home and proceeds from the sale 

of his stake in fashion designer, 

Amanda Wakeley, and remaining 

stakes in other businesses such 

as the upmarket Whistles and 

a £10m stake in the quoted 

Carluccios restaurant chain – 

currently the subject of a City 

takeover bid – Caring is hugely 

asset rich. 

We raise him to £600m 

this year. 

23 £600m 

The Jatania Family 

lornamead 

2009: £380m (+£220m) 

Lornamead, the personal care 

operation, had a tough time 

in the American market in 

2008-09. But the business had a 

record 2009-10, making around 

£50m profit on its world-wide 

operations. 

Lornamead is run and 

co-owned by four brothers, led 

by chief executive Mike, 45, 

with George, 60, Vin, 55, and 

Danny, 51. 

The family, originally from 

India, came to Britain in 1969 by 

way of Uganda. 

Lornamead buys unwanted 

toiletry or beauty care brands 

from multinationals and, in 

2005, snapped up the famous 

Yardley brand for a reported 

£60m. 

Last year, it sold off part of 

Yardley for nearly £30m. 

With a large property portfolio 

in the Paddington and Elephant 

& Castle areas of London, 

the Jatanias should easily be 

worth £600m. 


estates gazette 

rich list 2010 

Pervez, tHe CaSH 

and Carry king 

25 £580m 

Sir Donald Gordon & Family 

Capital Shopping Centres/ 

Capital & Counties 

2009: £465m (+£115m) 

The demerger of quoted property 

group Liberty International into 

two separate groups leaves Sir 

Donald Gordon and his family 

with big stakes in the two new 

companies, Capital & Counties 

Properties and Capital Shopping 

Centres. 

Gordon, 80, started a South 

African life insurance operation 

in the 1950s, finally selling out 

of the South African group in 

1999. 

He also focused on British 



property through Liberty 

International. His family stakes 

in the two new Capital operations 

are worth over £450m. South 

African share sales and other 

assets add around £150m. 

“I’m hoping that I can now 

switch the focus I’ve put on 

business into opera. I want it 

to be the focus of my life,” says 

Gordon of his retirement. 

If that is the case, then opera 

in this country should be set for a 

golden age. 

He recently promised £10m 

to the Royal Opera House and 

a further £10m to the Wales 

Millennium Centre. 

As a result, we cut the Gordon 

family wealth back by that £20m 

to £580m. 

25 £580m 

Sir Anwar Pervez & Family 

Bestway (Holdings)/Palmbest 

2009: £500m (+£80m) 

Profits at West London-based 

Bestway rose in 2008-09 to 

£80.6m on sales of £2.05bn. 

It is a triumph for Sir Anwar 

Pervez, Bestway’s founder. 

Pervez, 75, a farmer’s son 

from Rawalpindi, built Bestway 

into a chain of 11 shops and 

then in 1976 he turned to cash 

and carry with his first depot in 

West London. 

It was tough going at first 

but he turned it into a business 

empire with interests in banking 

in Pakistan, as well as a major 

cement business there, plus 

property, rice milling and cash and 

carry wholesaling in the UK. 

With the £100m acquisition 

of Batleys, the UK’s oldest cash 

and carry operation in early 2005, 

Bestway now has over 50 depots 

round the country. 

In the current climate, we 

value parent company Bestway 

(Holdings) at around £750m while 

Pervez, his family and trusts have 

a £360m stake. 

A separate property operation, 

Palmbest and other assets should 

add another £220m. 

Pervez would be much richer if 

he did not give large amounts to 

charity every year. 

27 £540m 

John Magnier 

Coolmore/Sloane Capital 

2009: £560m (-£20m) 

Irish racing tycoon John Magnier 

has had a rough time of it lately. 

The Coolmore Stud cash cow that 

he has relied on for so long hit the 

buffers when Ireland went into 

economic meltdown. 

There have been redundancies 

at the global operation and, 

more significantly, prices 

charged for the services of his 

stallions crashed in Ireland and 

the US, which must have had a 

detrimental effect on Magnier’s 

fortune. His horses on the 

track have been disappointing 

this year, too. 

But Magnier, 62, and his 

business partner JP McManus 

have been quietly building a 

stake in the troubled pub group 

Mitchells & Butlers. 

The duo have been steadily 

buying shares through their 

Elpida vehicle since late 2007 

and more recently doubled their 

stake to 17.6%. With the company 

worth £1.23bn, that stake is now 

worth £220m. 

Pubs are just the latest 

investment area for the lowkey 

Magnier. With McManus, 

Magnier is perhaps best known to 

the British public for the £227m 

stake they held in premiership 

football club Manchester United 

until May 2005. 

When they sold to new United 

owner, Malcolm Glazier, the pair 

made a hefty £90m profit on 

their original investment. 

Magnier was also part of a 

consortium that bought the 

radio assets of Chrysalis Group 

for £170m, and he also made 

a tidy £23m from the sale of a 

13% stake in Devro, the Scottish 

sausage skin maker. 

With McManus and fellow 

Irish tycoon Dermot Desmond 

he has a stake in Barchester, 

a profitable nursing home 

operation (revalued at £1bn in 

2006) the Sandy Lane Hotel 

in Barbados and Global media. 

These stakes are worth £339m 

after borrowings. 

He shared in a £40m windfall 

in February 2006, selling an

option on a London office site. 

With McManus and Desmond, 

he also sold the Next Generation 

fitness chain for around £132m. 

He and MacManus plus 

another partner, Aidan Brooks, 

have a large property portfolio 

held in Sloane Capital. Magnier 

also has homes in Spain, Ireland, 

Barbados and Switzerland where 

he lives for tax purposes. 

But he is not immune to the 

downturn and, in all, his assets 

add up to around £540m. 

28 £530m 

Jim Mellon 

regent Pacific Corporate 

Finance 

2009: £500m (+£30m) 

Millionaire investor Jim Mellon 

is investing heavily in German 

property and around 70% of his 

wealth is tied up in some 40,000 

apartments there. 

Mellon, who started out as a 

fund manager in Hong Kong in 

the late 1970s, made his money 

from a range of investments 

including a £55m return on a 

firm called Charlemagne Capital 

in 2006. He has also invested 

heavily in solar power and says it 

will be “bigger than the internet 

within five years.” 

He has stakes of around £20m 

in a number of quoted companies, 

including one called Emerging 

Markets, which invests in metals 

used in solar power technology. 

Mellon, 53, is based in the Isle 

of Man, where he is one of the 

biggest property owners and, 

with 450 staff, one of the largest 

employers on the island. He 

has two homes there, four other 

homes round Europe and several 

properties in Ibiza. 

With annual earnings of 

between $5m and $10m, he can 

afford his own private jet, which 

cost $8m. More recently, he has 

made substantial profits selling 

the euro against the dollar and 

recently went short again on the 

banks. 

His Hong Kong- listed 

company Regent Pacific is cash 

rich with its main investments 

in China and commodities, 

particularly uranium. Mellon is 

now easily worth £530m. 

29 £522m 

Chris Lazari 

Lazari investments 

2009: £425m (+£97m) 

Chris Lazari, the Greek 

Cypriot-born property mogul, 

will shortly have a major new 

tenant within his London-based 

portfolio. Global agent 

CB Richard Ellis will move into 

Lazari’s 100,000 sq ft Henrietta 

House, W1, following a recent 

refurbishment. 

CBRE will be replacing 

outgoing tenant Diageo, the 

drinks firm. 

The deal is characteristic 

of Lazari’s skill in upgrading 

buildings and getting good 

tenants across its base in the 

diverse West End. 

Lazari’s portfolio was valued 

at £1.33bn in accounts to 

March 2010. 

As a result, profits at Lazari 

Investments rose in 2009-10 

from £26.7m to £41.4m. This 

55% increase was achieved on the 

back of much lower interest rates 

and a focus on cutting the group’s 

borrowings sharply by £53m 

over the year. 

Lazari’s 130 buildings are also 

filled with 424 blue-chip tenants 

drawn from the top ranks of 

British business. 

With little new build in the 

West End, Lazari can look 

forward to healthy rent rises in 

the future as demand outstrips 

supply for Grade A space. 

In late 2007, Lazari grew the 

business with the acquisition 

of Greater London House in 

Camden for £165m and the 

Met building in Percy Street, 

W1, for £107m. 

Lazari, 64, came to Britain 

in the early 1970s to work in 

the fashion business. However, 

in 1978, he diversified into the 

property field and has never 

looked back. 

Cautiously though, in the 

current climate for property, 

we value the Lazari real estate 

interests on the net assets, which 

hit £452.3m in early 2010. 

And we add another £70m to 

his portfolio for personal property 

and cash in the bank, taking 

Lazari to £522m. 

John Magnier 

Sir Donald Gordon 

30 £510m 

Freddie Linnett & The Murphy 

Family 

Charles Street Buildings 

(Leicester) 

2009: £445m (+£65m) 

Profits at Charles Street 

Buildings (Leicester) fell from 

£35.2m to £33.6m in the year 

to November 2009. Despite the 

severe downturn, net assets at 

the family-owned property group 

rose £27m to nearly £476m. 

The company spent £15.5m 

acquiring properties in the year. 

Freddie Linnett, 60, is a director 

and leading shareholder in the 

business, which was started by her 

uncles who came to Britain from 

Ireland after the second world war. 

When the uncles died, Linnett 

inherited their stakes. She married 

a top accountant in 1995. 

We value the business on the 

net assets figure. Other assets 

and nearly £88m of dividends 

from 1995 to 2009 take Linnett 

and the Leicester-based Murphy 

family to £510m after tax. 

31 £500m 

Trevor Hemmings 

northern trust group 

2009: £300m (+£200m) 

Trevor Hemmings’ Leisure Parcs 

group sold the famous Blackpool 

Tower to the local council for 

around £40m earlier this year. 

The council hopes to revive 

the seaside resort. Hemmings 

has been buying too, adding 

a 175,000 sq ft former 

BP/ Castrol facility to his 

portfolio. Northern Trust intends 

to let the commercial buildings 

and review regeneration options 

for the rest of the site. 

Hemmings, 75, started out as 

a brickie’s apprentice locally in 

Leyland. Later, he built his own 

housebuilding firm and sold it for 

£1.5m in the early 1970s to the 

late Sir Fred Pontin. 

Hemmings became his right 

hand man in the Pontins leisure 

operation. He later took over the 

business and sold it in 1989 for a 

hefty profit. 

In 2000, Hemmings bought 

Littlewoods’ pools operation from 



the Moores family for £161m. 

His main holding company, 

the Northern Trust Group, had 


In all, Hemmings is now easily 

worth £500m. 

31 £500m 

Leo Noé & Family 

F&C reit asset Management 

2009: £530m (-£30m) 

F&C Reit Asset Management 

managed to hold on to the 

lucrative management contract 

for the F&C Commercial Property 

Trust this year, and elsewhere the 

business is thriving. 

On chairman Leo Noé’s watch, 

it launched its first open-ended 

property fund for private and 

institutional investors in July. 

And the separate Devonshire UK 

Opportunities Fund, launched in 

May 2009 to take advantage of 

the downturn, is expected to start 

investing before Christmas after 

reaching its first close. 

Noé, one of the more low 

key property men in Britain, is 

known for his shrewd reading 

of the market. His expertise was 

highlighted in July 2008 when 

his company, REIT, merged with 

F&C Asset Management. 

Noé and business partner Ivor 

Smith collected £60m in cash 

and loan notes in the deal, which 

created a business with £8.5bn 

of real estate under management 

from the UK to Israel to India. 

But the downturn has caused 

some problems for Noé – 

St Katharine Docks, a major 

development opportunity 

owned jointly with AREA 

Property Partners, breached its 

loan-to-value banking covenant 

this year and negotiations are 

ongoing with debt servicer Capita. 

We can see around £64m of net 

assets in a number of companies 

owned by the Noé family such as 

Agra and Landmaster Properties, 

and the extent of their deals 

and investments indicate more 

substantial wealth. 

Early in 2006, for example, 

Noé sold its Fosse Retail Park for 

£360m, just a year after buying 

it for £307m. In 2004, three 

shopping centres in the north, 

bought in 2002-03 for £294m, 



were sold for £378.5m. Noé has 

a 55.8% stake in British-Israel 

Investments, a mall owner, which 

is in £300m takeover talks. In all, 

we value Noé, 57, at £500m. 

31 £500m 

Jack Petchey 

trefick 

2009: £450m (+£50m) 

Jack Petchey reckons the recent 

recession was the worst he has 

seen in his 85 years. 

A canny East End investor 

and property man, he has taken 

hits on several high profile 

investments such as car dealer 

Pendragon, office provider 

Workspace, and property 

companies Warner Estates and 

Rugby Estates. At Rugby he took 

a 25% hit on selling his stake. 

But Petchey has plenty to 

play to make up for such losses. 

Last year, he said that he was 

considering an £80m sale of his 

leisure business to raise cash to 

reinvest in property while values 

were low. However, a string 

of individual sales now seems 

more likely. 

In 2006 and 2007, Petchey 

sold around £225m of stakes in 

six companies including a pub 

chain, Aston Villa football club 

and Reg Vardy, the car dealer. 

Petchey has no formal 

education to pull off his deals. 

He first earned money running 

errands before working after the 

war as a taxi driver. Using his £39 

army gratuity, he built a fleet of 

taxis. He later expanded into used 

cars, property and timeshare. 

He once bought Watford 

football club from Sir Elton 

John, but long ago sold that 

stake. Based in Chigwell, Petchey 

commutes to his office in Ilford 

daily. He plans to give the bulk 

of his fortune to charity through 

the Jack Petchey Foundation, 

which has given away £65m to 

supporting youth projects in 

London and the Home Counties. 

Petchey has also helped more 

than 40 schools achieve specialist 

school status, earning himself an 

OBE. 

It will be a sizeable fortune 

he gives away. He was the sole 

shareholder in two Isle of Man 

The Duke of Bedford 


companies which were sold to the 

quoted Saville Gordon property 

group in 1998. Petchey received 

£72m in cash and £15m in 

shares for his stakes. 

Today, we can see more than 

£37m of stakes he still holds in 

quoted companies. With earlier 

proceeds and past profits, his 

quoted investments have yielded 

around £400m of wealth. 

Timeshare and property 

interests take Petchey to £500m 

in the current improving climate. 

34 £490m 

The Duke of Bedford 

Woburn abbey 

2009: £490m (No change) 

Though we can see just £11m 

net assets in the 2009 accounts 

of three family companies, 

including Woburn Enterprises, 

the Duke of Bedford surprised 

the property community in April 

2009 by purchasing the suitably 

scruffy offices of Time Out 

magazine in Tottenham Court 

Road from Land Securities 

for £14.1m. 

The 340-year-old Bedford 

Estate in London owns around 

180 buildings in Bloomsbury, 

centred on the square of the same 

name. But this is the first deal to 

make a splash for years. For the 

Bedford Estate is probably the 

quietest and most conservative of 

the inherited London Estates. 

In 2004, the Duke said he was 

“very bullish” about Bloomsbury 

and said £50m had been reserved 

to buy some modern office blocks 

to the west of Bedford Square, 

Number residing per region 

Where the money is 

South East 116 

Ireland 33 

North West 17 

West Midlands 17 

Yorkshire & the Humber 14 

Scotland 11 

East Midlands 10 

South West 10 

Overseas 5 

Wales 5 

East of England 4 

Channel Isles 4 

North East 4

ut he has waited for prices to fall 

before moving into action. 

Recently, he joined a group of 

wealthy investors who have put 

nearly £20m into buying up 

New Zealand property. Nearer 

home though, the new £200m 

Center Parcs holiday village 

on his Woburn estate is under 

construction. 

It will create 1,500 jobs in 

rural Bedfordshire. Planning 

permission was granted after a 

public inquiry, overruling a local 

authority decision. 

Bedford is also trying to 

spruce up Bloomsbury with 

better quality retailers. He is 

at least trying to continue the 

entrepreneurial activities of 

his grandfather and father. He 

inherited the title and estate from 

his father, the 14th duke, who 

died in 2003. 

Harrow and Harvardeducated 

Bedford, 48, is well 

versed in the management of the 

extraordinary 13,000 Woburn 

Abbey estate and house. He has 

various and successful business 

ventures under his control at 

Woburn, which were set up by his 

grandfather to pay a £4.5m bill 

for death duties. 

His late father left £39.1m in 

his will, but we assume that much 

of the estate had been handed 

over some years ago as part of the 

family’s tax planning. 

Although we can see just 

£12m net assets in three family 

companies, including Woburn 

Enterprises, the house and 

grounds must easily be worth 

£100m. But it is the art treasures 

inside, including 24 Canalettos, 

that are particularly valuable. 

Our art expert puts a £300m 

value on the total collection. But 

in line with our art policy we 

halve that to £150m to allow for 

any inheritance tax or the like in 

the event of a sale. 

Bedford also has his London 

estate to fall back on. Bedford 

Estates owns 170 properties in 

and around Bedford Square in 

central London. Estates Gazette 

put a £200m price tag on these 

at the top of the market. 

Allowing for any inheritance 

tax following his father’s death, 

we stick with a £490m valuation 

for Bedford. 

JP MCManuS raCeS to a Fortune 

34 £490m 

JP McManus 

Sloane Capital 

2009: £430m (+£60m) 

A former bookie, JP McManus and his business 

partner, Irish racing tycoon John Magnier, have 

been quietly building a stake in the troubled 

pub group Mitchells & Butlers. The duo have 

been steadily buying shares through their 

Elpida vehicle since late 2007 and now have a 

stake worth £220m. 

McManus, based in Geneva, is also one of the 

top racehorse owners in Ireland, with more 

than 100 horses in training and a stud in Co 

Kildare. The recent marriage of his daughter 

cost McManus around £5.5m. But he can easily 

afford the outlay. He is reckoned to have made 

£250m over the years from playing the foreign 

exchange markets. 

With Magnier, he had a £227m stake 

36 £470m 

Ronald Hobson 

Consolidated Property 

investments 

2009: £470m (No change) 

Ronald Hobson originally teamed 

up with Sir Donald Gosling after 

the second world war to build 

car parks on old bomb sites in 

London and the rest of Britain. 

They sold the parent company, 

National Parking Corporation, 

in 1998, collecting around 

in premiership football club Manchester 

United, until they sold out to United owner 

Malcolm Glazer in May 2005, netting a £90m 

profit. He shared a £125m dividend from the 

Barchester Healthcare group in 2006 and 

also shared the £132m proceeds from the sale 

of a fitness chain. 

McManus was active in the property boom 

through Sloane Capital, in partnership with 

Magnier and Aidan Brooks, the Limerick 

property developer. Sloane bought a 

prestige Paris office and retail site in July 

2007 for £439m. It was part of a world-wide 

expansion drive by Sloane which saw it buy a 

Bloomingdale’s store in New York for £35m 

and two streets of luxury shops in Los Angeles 

for £150m. Sloane also has a castle in Dublin, 

Unilever House in London and the Hilton 

Hotel at Canary Wharf. It remains particularly 

valuable. With a share of the Sandy Lane 

Hotel in Barbados and an adjacent £21m villa, 

McManus, 59, is easily worth £490m. 

£290m each. In 2004-05, they 

divested themselves of further 

firms, Consolidated Property 

Investments and later Metrose 

Property, for £189m. Hobson, 

89, should have made around 

£97m from those two deals. 

He still has stakes in some 

small property companies with 

Gosling as a partner. We can see 

£2m net assets there. But huge 

dividends from National Parking 

before its sale, plus the recent 

property company sales, keep 

Hobson at £470m this year. 



37 £450m 

Terry Bramall & Family 

keepmoat 

2009: £400m (+£50m) 

Terry Bramall has not given up 

on business despite selling his 

Keepmoat operation at the top of 

the market in 2007. 

Bramall is now financing 

developer 4Urban. Formed 

in 2007, the company’s aim is 

to form strategic partnerships 

with financiers and the public 

sector. 

Projects taken on so far include 

a £5m retail redevelopment, 

5Rise, in Bingley, and a retail and 

office complex in Harrogate. 

Bramall, 68, made his money 

with Doncaster-based Keepmoat, 

which dates back to 1931, when it 

was established by Bramall’s late 

father and a partner. 

In 1968, after a stint with 

Taylor Woodrow, Bramall 

joined what was still a modest 

operation. 

The business started to move 

forward in the 1970s when local 

authorities started to refurbish 

their housing stock. 

A lot of other building 

companies were not interested, 

seeing the work as dirty and 

complicated, but Bramall realised 

that refurbishment was much 

more profitable than new-build, 

and Keepmoat began to carve out 

a niche reputation. 



Bramall’s work was recognised 

when he was awarded the title 

Master Entrepreneur in 2004. 

His family had a 72% stake 

with trusts in the company which 

was sold to the management in a 

£783m deal backed by the Bank 

of Scotland in August 2007. 

However, allowing for tax on 

the sale proceeds and any debt 

built into sale prices, we cut that 

back to £430m. 

As one of the owners of 

Doncaster Rovers, Bramall 

has also helped underwrite the 

Championship team. Other assets 

and past dividends take him to 


37 £450m 

Jack Dellal 

allied Commercial Holdings 

2009: £450m (No change) 

“Black Jack” Dellal keeps a 

very low profile now, aside 

from occasional forays into the 

property market. 

In July 2007, Dellal showed his 

mettle when his consortium sold 

Shell-Mex House in London for 

£490m, just a month before the 

credit crunch and property crash. 

It had been bought for 

£327.5m in 2002. 

A dealmaker whose prowess is 

only matched by his astonishing 

virility, Dellal became a father 

again for the ninth time in his 

late 1970s. 

37 £450m 

Sir Donald Gosling 

Hildane Properties 

2009: £450m (No change) 

As an honorary commodore in the Royal 

Naval Reserve, Sir Donald Gosling will have 

been delighted and honoured in early 2009 to 

have been promoted to the rank of honorary 

rear admiral on his 80th birthday. 

The navy and the sea are consuming 

passions for Gosling. He is president of naval 

charity, the White Ensign Association. His 

yacht, the 245-ft Leander, was named after 

HMS Leander in which Gosling served as a 

signalman after the war. 

Richest in Yorkshire & 

the Humber 


15 Eddie Healey & Family 750 

21 Paul Sykes 650 

37 Terry Bramall & Family 450 

41 Michael Evans & Family 400 

82 Kevin McCabe & Family 180 

99 Paul Caddick & Family 150 

99 Sir Robert Ogden 150 

110 Chris Marshall & Family 136 

111 John Guthrie & Family 135 

114 Tony Bramall & Family 132 

166 John Brooksbank 89 

193 Demi Chervak & Family 70 

245 Christopher Ure & Family 45 

250 Alistair Pullan & Family 44 

He made his mark in the 

early 1970s, selling his Dalton 

Barton bank for £58m. Later, 

he went on to become a major 

property player. 

His most famous coup was 

to make £75m in a six-month 

period in 1987 by buying and 

quickly selling on Bush House in 

central London. 

Dellal’s main company, 

Allied Commercial Holdings, 

saw its losses fall in 2008-09 

from £3.6m to £2.1m on 

£3.4m sales, while its net 

assets also fell slightly to 

£54.6m. 

With asset prices continuing 

to recover this year, we keep 

87-year-old Dellal at £450m 

in the current uncertain 

economic climate. 

tyCoon WitH a Love For tHe Sea 

Gosling, of course, is one half of the duo that 

made a fortune from car parks. With partner 

Ronald Hobson, he started the National 

Parking Corporation in 1948 as post-war 

Britain started to recover. They built it up until 

1998 when they sold the business, netting 

around £290m each at the time. 

Gosling had a 40% stake in a property 

company, Consolidated Property Investments, 

which was sold in 2004 for £77m. More 

recently, Gosling and Hobson sold their 

Metrose property operation for £112m. 

So affording Leander is no problem for 

Gosling, who still has a £1m stake in a small 

property company called Hildane Properties. 

In all, with £92m net assets and after hefty 

charitable donations to the Gosling Foundation, 

he should be worth at least £450m.

40 £425m 

Tony Gallagher 

gallagher uk 

2009: £500m (-£75m) 

Midlands developer Tony 

Gallagher capitalised on renewed 

investor demand earlier this 

year, selling several retail parks 

off market over a three-month 

period for a combined value of 

more than £150m. 

With these deals in the bag, 

Gallagher, 59, pulled the £118m, 

6% yield, sale of a retail park near 

Walsall in the West Midlands to 

JP Morgan Asset Management 

in April. Instead, it will complete 

a redevelopment project at 

the Junction 9 park to provide 

65,000 sq ft of space, which has 

been let to Next, Mamas & Papas, 

Boots and TK Maxx. 

Gallagher’s vast spread of 

activity includes extensive 

residential developments such 

as a sustainable new town in 

Bedfordshire called The Wixams. 

He has a substantial investment 

programme in Europe and has 

acquired in excess of three million 

sq ft of retail space in Germany. 

The recession has inevitably 

slowed things down, but this 

diversity has helped Gallagher 

come through in good shape. 

We can see £288m of net 

assets in the 2008 and 2008-09 

accounts of five of Gallagher’s 

main companies, Countywide 

Developments, GW305, 

Gallagher UK, Wixams First 

and Ashflame. 

Gallagher also has various 

other interests in a substantial 

finance/consultancy business 

and the financial markets. We 

still value him conservatively 

at £425m. 

41 £400m 

Clarke Family 

C Le Masurier 

2009: £400m (No change) 

The Clarke family, now the largest 

private landowners on the island 

of Jersey, have large tracts of St 

Helier, retail outlets and pub sites 

across the island. Their business – 

C Le Masurier – is celebrating its 

175th birthday this year. 

It also owns property in the 

UK, Luxembourg, Germany, 

Poland and the Czech Republic. 

The death in 2001 of patriarch 

Fred Clarke led to a major 

refocusing of this secretive family 

business with the aim of raising 

asset values. 

But for now, we keep the family 

at a conservative £400m. 

41 £400m 

Michael Evans & Family 

evans Property 

2009: £350m (+£50m) 

Evans Property Group paid 

£21.3m for a prime slice of real 

estate in Leeds city centre in 

June 2009. 

The purchase of 1 Park Row 

defied the recession and showed 

that Evans had the support of 

its bankers at Barclays who 

provided £13.5m to help fund 

the purchase. Indeed, right 

in the depths of the economic 

crisis, Barclays jointly arranged a 

£175m loan facility for Evans to 

“further enhance its purchasing 

power and enable it to build on its 

successful track record”. 

The low-key Evans family, 

led by Monaco-based Michael 

Evans, 74, is heavily involved 

in development work all over 

the north of England. The late 

father of Michael Evans, refusing 

to go into the family’s tailoring 

operation, started Evans of Leeds 

as a transport firm, but moved 

into housebuilding and property. 

He was still hard at work in his 

90s. The Evans family took the 

company private in 1999 in a deal 

which valued it then at £164m. 

Recently, the firm has been 

reorganising its structure and 

no accounts have yet been filed 

for the new Evans Property 

holding company. It is owned 

by companies with the name 

Brightsea followed by initials 

(for example, Brightsea EP Ltd, 

Brightsea FP Ltd). Between 

them they had a huge £2.2bn 

net assets in 2008-9. We assume 

there may be some duplication of 

assets here and value the Evans 

business at the £350m net asset 

figure that Barclays attributes 

to the group. We add £50m for 

other assets and past dividends. 

Jack Dellal 


41 £400m 

Roy Richardson & Family 

Swiftfire 

2009: £350m (+£50m) 

The death of Don Richardson 

in September 2007 robbed the 

Midlands of one of its greatest 

developers. 

With twin brother Roy, 80, 

Don Richardson had made a 

name for building shopping 

centres, most notably Merry Hill 

in the Black Country. 

But shopping centres from 

afar as Rome or Salzburg by 

way of Broadstairs, Liverpool 

and Nuneaton have been on the 

Richardsons’ menu in recent 

times. 

Born within the shadow of 

the old Dudley steelworks, the 

twins left school at 14 and started 

trading in ex-Army vehicles with 

their father. 

Later, they moved into 

transport and property. 

The brothers sold Merry Hill 

in 1992 for a £50m profit. Since 

then, they have been involved in 

scores of flagship projects in the 

Midlands. 

The family has also taken a 

50% stake in a £600m new 

town project which will resurrect 

the site of Scotland’s iconic 

Ravenscraig steelworks. 

Another Scottish development, 

in association with construction 

group Carillion, is a retail park on 

the site of the former truck plant 

in Bathgate. 

The Richardsons’ main 

company, Swiftfire, went from 

a £2.3m profit to a £1m loss in 

2008 while the net assets fell 

slightly to £145.2m. 


net assets. 

There are also £25m of net 

assets in two more separate 

Richardson companies we 

can see, including Clubhouse 

Investments, the parent of 

Richardson Capital Property 

Investment Group. 

Yet after the acquisition of 

the European assets, and taking 

account of other deals and £54m 

of salaries in recent years, we 

reckon the Richardson family, 

now led by Roy alone, is easily 

worth a net £400m. 



tHe BeautiFuL gaMe 

41 £400m 

David Sullivan 

roldvale 

2009: £400m (No change) 

David Sullivan is desperate to relocate West 

Ham United to the 2012 Olympic Stadium 

as part of plans to revive the fortunes of the 

struggling club now under his chairmanship. 

Together with business partner David Gold, 

Sullivan bought a 50% stake in West Ham at 

the start of the year in a deal valuing the East 

London club at £105m. 

He just can’t leave football alone. The ink had 

barely dried on his sale of Birmingham City. 

Sullivan had 16 years at Birmingham and made 

around £20m from selling his stake, but he 

ploughed many millions into the Blues over the 

years. He will be expected to do the same with 

45 £385m 

Keith Miller & Family 

Miller group 

2009: £280m (+£105m) 

A fairly upbeat trading statement 

came from Miller Group, the 

Edinburgh-based builder, at the 

start of the year. It said it was 

seeing a gradual improvement in 

the housebuilding market, but 



his new club even though his other business 

ventures are having a tough time. Roldvale, his 

main company, made a £528,000 loss in 2009. 

But Sullivan, 61, can’t complain. His 

dividends and salaries over the past 12 years 

total £55m. His Sport Newspapers, publisher 

of the lurid tabloids, was sold in August 2007 

for around £50m. 

Property is where Sullivan has been active, 

though, and he has a £300m-plus portfolio. 

We can see part of it in Sullivan’s separate 

Conegate Holdings, a property company 

which saw its net assets rise from £39.5m to 

£136.8m in 2009. 

But it was soft porn, and latterly football, that 

have brought him to public prominence. He 

owns the biggest chain of licensed sex shops 

in Britain, the 90-strong Private Shops empire. 

Sullivan’s property portfolio and other assets 

should take him to £400m. 

warned that mortgage availability 

would be crucial to restoring 

stability. 

Its losses had narrowed from 

£170m in 2008 to £72.4m 

last year. Transaction volumes 

for the year were up 35%, 

and forward sales of £108m 

represented an increase of 

100% year-on-year. 

But it has been a difficult 

journey through the recession for 

Britain’s biggest privately-owned 

housebuilder. In 2008, Miller 

Group had to cut its British 

workforce from 2,000 to 1,400 

as the housing market slumped 

and its figures became a sea of red 

ink – compared with a profit of 

£81m in 2007. 

Chief executive Keith Miller, 

61, grandson of founder Sir James 

Miller, took over the helm in 1994 

and oversaw the company’s rapid 

growth before recession hit. 

In April 2008, HBOS bought 

a stake in Miller in a deal which 

valued it at around £500m. 

We now value the Miller family 

stake at perhaps £350m. Past 

dividends (£43m from 1997- 

2006) and other assets take the 

Miller family to £385m after tax. 

46 £350m 

Kevin & Michael Lagan 

Lagan Holdings 

2009: £250m (+£100m) 

The Belfast-based Lagan 

Group is active on the world 

stage building roads and airport 

facilities in places such as 

Jamaica, Bermuda and Puerto 

Rico, as well as Northern Ireland. 

The Lagan brothers, Michael 

and Kevin, who rank among 

the top construction tycoons in 

Ireland, took over the operation 

established by their father 

in 1960. They have steadily 

expanded into constructionrelated 

businesses trading within 

five groups: Lagan Holdings, 

Lagan Cement, Kingscourt 

Bricks, Lagan Homes and Lagan 

Developments. 

These are involved in road 

building, property development 

and waste management. They 

also have advanced cement 

works and prime quarrying and 

asphalt assets. 

We can see around £20m 

profit on £400m sales in various 

Lagan companies in 2008-09. 

They had £203m net assets 

between them. The valuable 

quarrying assets were reckoned 

to have a potential sale price in 

excess of £200m at the height 

of the boom. 

But on the current figures, we 

reckon the Lagan assets are worth 

perhaps £350m.

46 £350m 

Anthony Lyons 

St James Capital 

2009: £250m (+£100m) 

Three recent deals have made 

Anthony Lyons a lot richer. First, 

in April, the property entrepreneur 

sold his home in Hampstead, 

north London, for £43m to a 

private Russian investor in the 

most expensive Hampstead 

residential property sale ever. 

Second, working with Brett 

Palos (Sir Philip Green’s stepson), 

Lyons, 43, bought the O2 retail 

and leisure centre in north 

London for £92.5m in 2009, 

selling it a year later for £120m. 

Third, in February, Liberty 

International, the FTSE 100 

property company, bought full 

ownership of the Earls Court 

and Olympia complexes in west 

London from Lyons and his 

partners. It was in July 2007, 

just a month before the credit 

crunch struck, that Lyons and his 

partners sold 50% of Earls Court 

& Olympia to Liberty in a deal 

which then valued it at £380m. 

Lyons is also active in pubs and 

restaurants and plans to roll out 

more in European capitals. He is 

also director of St James Capital, 

a property investor with £23m 

net assets in 2008-09. It has 

netted around £45m profit from 

the break-up of The Brewery on 

Chiswell Street, EC1, which it 

bought in 2005. 

Lyons also owns Anthony 

Lyons Investments, which made 

a healthy£2m profit on £6.8m 

sales in 2008-09. With the 

recent deals and Earls Court & 

Olympia sale, we value Lyons at 

£350m this year. 

46 £350m 

Caspar MacDonald-Hall 

London & Cambridge 

Properties 

2009: £300m (+£50m) 

London & Cambridge Properties, 

one of Britain’s largest private 

real estate companies, saw its net 

assets fall sharply from £579m 

to around £420m in 2008-09, 

while profits rose slightly from 

£36.5m to £38.8m. 

Keith Miller 

Anthony Lyons 

Richest in Wales 


41 David Sullivan 400 

46 Steve Morgan 350 

67 Sir Stanley & Peter Thomas 225 

224 Glyn Watkin Jones & Family 54 

243 Brian Moss & Family 46 

Falling property values and 

the strength of the euro against 

sterling forced the company to 

renegotiate loans with three 

banks. It is a leading developer 

of industrial estates. Property 

man Caspar MacDonald-Hall, 

59, has a 40% stake in London & 

Cambridge as well as a number of 

other property assets. 

He also has half of Proudreed, a 

Southampton property investor, 

with £130m net assets in 2009, 

so his stake there should exceed 

£65m. Then there is a 45.5% 

stake in Ringmerit, which had 

over £126m net assets in 2009. 

In all then, there are more than 

£290m net assets attributable 

to MacDonald-Hall, who is 

regularly listed by Field magazine 

as one of the 50 best shots in 

Britain. With past dividends, 

and his proceeds from the recent 

takeover of the AIM Group, he 

should be worth £350m. 

46 £350m 

Steve Morgan 

redrow group 

2009: £350m (No change) 

Steve Morgan, 57, is the proud 

owner of Wolverhampton 

Wanderers, which is now in its 

second season in the Premier 

League. 

Morgan paid just £10 to Sir 

Jack Hayward to take over at 

Molineux in August 2007, but he 

promised to invest £30m in the 

club. Morgan can afford it. 

He started out labouring for 

his father’s small civil engineering 

company after a move to a new 

school in Liverpool proved 

a disaster. He went on to set 

himself up as a subcontractor 

and founded housebuilder 

Redrow in 1974. 

Morgan floated the company 

20 years later and then sold most 

of his stake before leaving in 

2000. He returned as chairman in 

March 2009, determined to turn 

the ship around after the mistakes 

of the boom years. 

Morgan has seen the share price 

revive in recent months, taking his 

stake to around £114m. 

Morgan sold £240m worth of 

shares when he floated Redrow in 

the 90s and afterwards when he 

left the Redrow board in 2000. 

He also had a £100m stake in 

the De Vere leisure group, which 

was the subject of a bidding battle 

in the summer of 2006. 

Morgan also recently shared 

the £75m sale proceeds on a 

Spanish development. After 

allowing for reinvestment of his 

Redrow money, Morgan is worth 


46 £350m 

David Wilson & Family 

davidsons developments 

2009: £275m (+£75m) 

David Wilson just can’t leave the 

building and property business. 

His new company, Davidsons 

Developments, made a £1.5m 

profit on £30.2m sales in 

2008-09. It has nearly £77m 

net assets and should be worth at 

least £75m. 

Davidsons is being relocated in 

premises that were once used for 

his old Wilson Bowden company. 

Wilson joined his dad’s small 

Ibstock building business in 1961 

after graduating from the Leicester 

Polytechnic School of Building. 

Wilson Bowden prospered and was 

floated on the stock market in 1987. 

It was always regarded as one of the 

top quoted housebuilders by City 

analysts, and in May 2007 Wilson, 

68, sold the company to rival 

Barratt Developments in a £2.2bn 

deal. It netted £727m for Wilson 

and his family trusts in a mix of 

£304m cash and Barratt shares. 

His remaining Barratt stake 

is now worth £19m as the 

shares have drifted downwards 

recently. The cash element of 

the deal, £98m of share sales 

and dividends over the years 

at Wilson Bowden, and the 

£75m for Davidsons, take 

the Wilson family to £350m 

after tax. He will rise higher if 

Davidsons proves as successful 

as Wilson Bowden. 



46 £350m 

Stephen Vernon 

Green Property 

2009: £280m (+£70m) 

Stephen Vernon’s Green Property 

operation unveiled a new joint 

venture company in June 2010 

with €900m of debt and equity to 

invest in distressed property assets. 

Dublin-based Green has joined 

forces with the private equity firm 

TPG Capital to target commercial 

real estate opportunities in 

Britain and Ireland. 

Green seems to be defying 

the Irish property crash too – in 

the year to June 2009 its profits 

moved up sharply to around £2m 

and it showed £420m net assets. 

Vernon, 60, went to university 

in London, and his first job after 

graduating was in the public 

sector, with the Greater London 

Council. He then moved to St 

Quintin, a long-established firm 

of chartered surveyors. He joined 

Green in 1993. 

Nine years later, Green was 

taken private via a £700m deal 

backed financially by Merrill 

Lynch and HBOS. Vernon set 

about selling £1bn of assets 

to pay down debt and give his 

backers a return on their money. 

Merrill Lynch cashed in its chips 

in 2005 as part of a refinancing of 

the company. Vernon’s personal 

stake in the business has increased 

from 2% to 32%. 

“This is my business now,” said 

Vernon. “I’m very glad we did the 

buyout. The writing was on the 

wall for us (as a public company) 

and I think predators would 

have emerged.” 

Green Property still has a strong 

portfolio of assets. Consequently, 

we value Vernon at £350m. 

52 £330m 

Nicholas and Christian Candy 

Candy & Candy 

2009: £330m (No change) 

The Candy brothers – Nick, 37, 

and Christian, 36 - are developing 

the spectacular One Hyde Park 

residential scheme of 86 flats near 

Harrods. The Qatari Royal family 

are investors in the development. 

A lavish show flat was unveiled 



Dixon anD ReGus staGe ReCoveRy 

52 

£330m 

Mark Dixon 

Regus 

2009: £382m 

(-£52m) 

in April after the Candys and 

their Qatari partners put sales on 

hold for a year due to the global 

downturn. 

Earlier this year, the legal dispute 

between Christian Candy’s CPC 

Group and Qatari Diar over the 

withdrawal of plans for Chelsea 

Barracks was discontinued after a 

confidential settlement. 

We stick with last year’s £330m 

valuation for the developer and 

interior design duo until the sales 

of more luxury homes at One 

Hyde Park are completed. 

54 £325m 

Laurence Kirschel 

Consolidated Developments 

2009: £300m (+£25m) 

Before the recession, Laurence 

Kirschel’s Consolidated 

Regus, the world’s largest serviced 

office operator, recently signed 

an agreement to provide GE’s 

workforce with space across its 

portfolio. This was positive news in 

what has been a tough market for 

the firm founded by Mark Dixon. 

Despite what he has described 

as the “fragile” nature of the UK 

recovery, Regus has accelerated its 

expansion plans as the recession 

powers a shift towards flexible 

working. It is also expanding 

overseas and now has more than 

1,000 centres in 450 cities. 

Dixon, 51, stresses that Regus 

is no longer just a serviced office 

company. It also operates meeting 

rooms and video conferencing 

suites, and offers business support 

to people who work from home. 

His stake is now worth £240m. 

A former sandwich and later 

hamburger salesman, Dixon 

formed Regus in 1989. It floated 

on the stock market in 2000. The 

shares soared initially, making 

Dixon a billionaire on paper. But 

his wealth collapsed six years ago 

when the shares went into freefall 

after hasty over-expansion. 

Dixon nursed the business back 

to health. With other assets and 

the proceeds of a £61m share sale 

before the flotation and another 

£35m last year, he is doing fine. 

But in this uncertain climate, we 

value him at £330m after tax. 

Developments drew up plans 

for a scheme in London’s Soho 

which would comprise a 35-room 

hotel, a 6,000 sq ft restaurant, three 

shops, a roof-top bar and seven 

flats. His portfolio in Soho and 

around Holborn also includes 

Tin Pan Alley, one of the last 

undeveloped sites in central 

London. 

Kirschel, 47, hopes to transform 

Tin Pan Alley into a new cultural 

quarter for London and spent 

£14.5m buying a building next 

to Centre Point to turn into an 

innovative music centre. 

We can see £204m net assets 

in Consolidated Developments’ 

2008-09 accounts and other 

operations. But these asset values 

do not take account of Kirschel’s 

substantial holdings in Soho. We 

mark him down to £325m in the 

current climate.

55 £320m 

Harry Hyams 

Walton investments 

2009: £300m (+£20m) 

Harry Hyams, one of London’s 

top developers in the 1960s and 

1970s, is still involved in business 

even at the age of 82. 

He has stakes in six small 

property companies with around 

£17m of net assets. Hyams is also 

involved in the £200m revamp of 

Newcastle city centre. This is, of 

course, small beer for Hyams, the 

son of an East End bookmaker. 

Best known for the 1970s 

Centre Point 35-storey tower 

in central London, his real 

coup was to buy a stake in the 

Oldham Estates group in 1959 for 

£50,000. When it was taken over 

in 1988 by the MEPC property 

giant, he received £150m. 

55 

£320m 

Bob Edmiston 

iM Properties 

2009: £300m (+£20m) 

eDMiston 

steeRs Way 

to RiChes 

Bob Edmiston’s IM Properties 

is determined to make the most 

of its cash-rich position in the 

current market. 

The company plans to pursue 

new development opportunities 

through direct land acquisition, 

joint ventures, and sale-andleasebacks. 

IM’s existing portfolio 

includes the 400-acre Birch 

Coppice Business Park where a 

planning application has recently 

been submitted for 2m sq ft of 

distribution space. 

Over the summer, IM released 

capital with the sales of a portfolio 

for £23m and its stake in Wolsey 

Place in Woking, Surrey, for £68m. 

An accountant by trade, who 

Hyams made a further £98m 

when MEPC itself was taken 

over in 2000. 

His estate, the net assets in the 

small Hyams companies, and his 

art should easily take the low-key 

Hyams to £320m in the current 

climate. 

55 £320m 

Charlotte Townshend 

addison Developments 

2009: £300m (+£20m) 

A new investment operation, 

Cygnet Industries, has been 

formed by Charlotte Townshend. 

In 2008-09 it showed nearly 

£20m net assets. 

In July 2008, her Ilchester 

Estates company bought the 

Yeoman Industrial Estate in 

Bournemouth for £13m. The 

estate will add to Townshend’s 

once worked for the now defunct 

Jensen sports car operation, 

Edmiston has built the IM Group 

into one of Britain’s biggest 

importers of Far Eastern cars. 

It made a healthy £32.8m 

profit on £351.6m sales in 2009 

and showed net assets of over 

£391m. We value the company at 

perhaps £320m. Its IM Properties 

subsidiary made £23.4m profit on 

£43.7m sales in 2009. It, too, has 

a strong asset base, with nearly 

£254m there. 

Since 1998, Edmiston, 64, has 

had nearly £79m in salaries from 

IM Group, but has given more than 

£120m to charity. We value him at 

£320m this year. 

Harry Hyams 

Charlotte Townshend 

already considerable portfolio. 

Townshend, 55, has 20 choice 

acres round London’s exclusive 

Holland Park, and 15,000 acres 

in Dorset, where she has her 

main home. 

We can see six farming and 

estate companies including 

Cygnet, Addison Developments, 

and Ilchester Estates, which 

together showed £39m net 

assets in 2008-09. 

Ilchester Estates carries out 

other property developments in 

Britain and also sold a complex 

of Essex offices and shops for 

£5.14m in 2005. 

With other assets, such as 

property and choice bloodstock, 

we raise our valuation of 

Townshend by the £20m net 

asset figure of Cygnet to £320m. 

58 £296m 

Sam Morrison 

Corbo 

2009: £250m (+£46m) 

Sam Morrison recently sold 

Newry’s Damolly retail park 

to newly-formed REIT Metric 

Property Investments for an 

initial payment of £28.4m. He 

also made £48m from selling a 

Co Antrim retail park. 

Morrison, Northern Ireland’s 

top developer, started by selling 

leather jackets from the boot of 

his car, progressing to renting 

his first retail shop in Ballymena. 

He expanded to four retail stores 

within a short space of time. 

By 1998 he had moved into 

property and one of his sons 

took over as MD of the retail 

business called SVM Textiles. It 

now has seven clothing stores 

across Northern Ireland, with 

four smaller sites having closed 

recently, as part of a strategy 

refocus. 

The stores concentrate on high 

end designer fashion. 

Morrison’s property company, 

Corbo, showed £296.5m net 

assets in 2008-09. He has a 

number of other shopping 

centres, including Fairhill 

Shopping Centre in Ballymena 

and a large retail warehouse 

development outside Newry. 

We value Morrison, 58, at 




60 £270m 

Sir John & Peter Beckwith 

Pacific investments & Red 

River Capital 

2009: £330m (-£60m) 

Sir John Beckwith has teamed 

with ex-Lehman banker Gerald 

Parkes to invest in property 

across Europe. 

Old Harrovian Beckwith 

and his brother Peter made 

their first fortune in property, 

netting around £80m when 

they sold their London and 

Edinburgh Trust property group 

to a Swedish group in 1990 just 

before the then property crash. 

Sir John, 63, moved into new 

areas of investment and has two 

main investment vehicles, Pacific 

Investments and Red River 

Capital. 

Pacific Investments, set up in 

1994, has controlling stakes in 

everything from warehouses in 

Asia to property managers in the 

City of London. 

Red River Capital invested 

£3m in the Thames River Capital 

hedge fund and “his return on 

the deal would make a private 



equity financier’s eyes water,” the 

Financial Times reported in July 

2006. Thames River was sold 

in April 2010 for £54m, netting 

Beckwith some £17m for his 

stake there. 

Red River Capital, Beckwith’s 

company, made a healthy 

£36.6m profit on £65.5m 

sales in 2008-09, while Pacific 

Investments made £11.7m profit 

in 2008-09. Both are owned by 

Sir John and his trusts. 

His more low-key brother, 

Peter, 65, is best known perhaps 

as the father of Tamara Beckwith, 

the It girl-about-town. He has 

invested in property and theatres. 

But the brothers have also 

invested in sports-related 

businesses, which they sold on at 

a profit of at least£50m. 

Further sales of properties 

since 2005 have also added 

several million pounds to the 

Beckwith coffers. 

Adding hotels in France, and 

Sir John’s investment in the 

Model Frontiers fashion agency, 

we cut the value of the Beckwiths 

back to £270m as the sale of Red 

River was at a much lower price 

than mooted in recent times. 

sMuRfit stays on CouRse 

59 £295m 

Sir Michael Smurfit & Family 

Ballymore 

2009: £294m (+£1m) 

Sir Michael Smurfit is having to subsidise losses at the K Club, the Ryder 

Cup golfing venue, of which he owns half. Its value has nose-dived to 

£25m in the past year. He has built a £7m mansion on the course and 

others in Spain and Monaco, the tax-haven where he is resident, and has 

postponed plans to replace his £14m 164ft yacht with a bigger one. 

Smurfit, 74, has seen the value of his remaining small stake in his 

former employer, Smurfit Kappa, rebound to £70m. He received £7.7m 

when he left the firm in 2007. But it is outside of his former day job that 

Smurfit claims to have made his most money. He has assets of about 

£205m. This includes a £40m collection of art, which features works 

by Louis Le Brocquy and Yeats. He plans to give some of it to the Irish 

National Gallery and the rest to his six children from two marriages. 

Smurfit invests widely in growing Irish private companies including 

AEP Networks, a Dublin technology firm. He became a director and 

shareholder in Ballymore International, one of Europe’s largest urban 

regeneration companies, just as the property bubble burst. 

In all, he should be worth £295m. 

Sir John Beckwith 

Peter Beckwith 

61 £266m 

William Ives & Family 

Rainham steel 

2009: £282m (-£16m) 

The man of steel is now 

supporting The Iron. Bill Ives, 

founder and owner of Rainham 

Steel, signed a three-year 

sponsorship deal in December 

2009 with Championship 

football club Scunthorpe United, 

aka The Iron. 

Ives, 67, a straight-talking 

Eastender and Conservative 

Party donor, is one of the biggest 

employers in Scunthorpe through 

his steel stockholding operation. 

But it has not been immune 

from the recession and has had to 

cut jobs when the economy fell off 

a cliff in the autumn of 2008. 

Ives started Rainham in 1973 

as a new and reusable steel 

supplier. The company then 

diversified and started to target 

builders and builders’ merchants 

in the 1980s. 

The parent company, Rainham 

Steel Holdings, made nearly £3m 

profit on £113m sales in 2008-09 

but, adding in directors’ pay to

the bottom line takes the profit to 

around £13m. This year it will be 

lucky to get into the black. 

Despite this, Rainham is 

building a huge warehouse 

facility and Ives said that the 

group would start to hire again as 

soon as the economy recovered, 

although he did not expect to 

start doing so for another two 

years. 

On its figures, Rainham is 

worth £120m. It is owned by Ives 

and his family trusts. 

Property companies and 

other assets easily take Ives to 

£266m. 

62 £250m 

Andreas Panayiotou 

ability Developments 

2009: £250m (No change) 

A new hotel opens at West 

London’s Syon Park in November. 

The £60m development on 

the Duke of Northumberland’s 

London acreage has been built 

by Andreas Panayiotou’s Ability 

Group. 

It will be managed by Hilton 

and takes Ability’s hotel portfolio 

to seven. 

Panayiotou, 44, is a former 

boxer of Cypriot parentage 

famous for selling most of his 

residential portfolio at the end 

of 2006 in anticipation of a 

property crash. 

He plans to develop a number 

of other Hilton hotels in the UK 

and Europe, with the intention 

of amassing a portfolio of over 40 

hotel properties by 2012 . 

Ability Group has invested 

more than £300m in hotel 

assets over the past two years and 

expects to invest a further £1bn. 

The total value of Panayiotou’s 

portfolio and assets is put at 

more than £600m. Ability 

Developments itself made £3.6m 

profit and showed £112m net 

assets in 2008. 

The accounts of the other 

companies which should 

show more net assets remain 

confidential so we have not seen 

any further figures to take the 

valuation to that £640m. 

Until we can see them, we are 

cautious and value Panayiotou 

at £250m. 

leWis inteRests aRe 

sPReaD faR anD WiDe 

62 

£250m 

Alan Lewis 

hartley investment trust 

2009: £225m (+£25m) 

Alan Lewis wrote in his 

chairman’s statement for 

his Hartley Investment 

Trust operation that he 

regarded the property 

crisis as “an opportunity” 

and that his group was 

ready to take advantage of 

investment opportunities 

that arise. 

Among Hartley’s 

investments is 

Leeds-based J&J Crombie, 

which is best known for its 

legendary gents’ woollen 

topcoats favoured by 

62 £250m 

Marquess of Salisbury 

Gascoyne Cecil estates 

2009: £250m (No change) 

The 7th Marquess of Salisbury 

is where he loves to be – at the 

centre of Conservative politics. 

In January 2010 he hosted a 

weekend of talks at his Hatfield 

seat aiming for a historic 

generations of city slickers. 

Lewis was not born 

into great wealth. His 

Welsh grandfather was a 

successful entrepreneur 

but his father gambled 

away the family’s money. 

Hartley Investment Trust 

showed nearly £37.4m 

net assets in its 2008-09 

accounts. 

His British property 

portfolio, principally 

old industrial sites in 

Yorkshire, is worth at least 

£100m. 

In addition, he has 

4,000 acres of prime 

development land in 

Florida, where gas has 

been discovered, and 

forestry in Russia. 

With other banking, 

hi-tech and property assets 

in Britain, America and 

Spain, Lewis, 72, is worth 

perhaps £250m in the 

current climate. 

Marquess of Salisbury 

realignment that would see 

Northern Ireland’s two main 

unionist parties, the Ulster 

Unionists and the Democratic 

Unionists, merge with the 

Conservatives. It came to naught 

but reflected Salisbury’s passion 

for the union and his love of high 

Tory politics. 

But it is, of course, ownership 

of Hatfield House that still puts 

Salisbury into this list. Completed 

in 1612, it is a treasure trove of 

hugely valuable paintings. The 

art is easily worth £125m, but we 

cut that in half to allow for any tax 

demands on any future sales. 

Hatfield also has a 3,000-acre 

park and woodland, and a further 

vast acreage of farmland. In 

addition, there is Cranborne 

Manor, the family estate in 

Dorset from where Salisbury’s 

son, Lord Cranborne, sells his 

organic sausages. 

Salisbury’s main farming 

company, Gascoyne Cecil Farms, 

made a £129,000 profit on 

£2.2m turnover in 2008-09 

when it showed £4.9m net assets. 

We can see more than 

£500,000 of net assets in smaller 

companies such as Perlpart 

Developments. Shrewdly, 

Salisbury is also developing 

the family’s London acreage 

round Leicester Square. The 

London estate, American land, 

the two stately homes with their 

surrounding 10,300 acres and the 

art collection keep Salisbury, 64, 

at £250m. 

65 £240m 

Lord Iliffe & Family 

yattendon investment trust 

2009: £220m (+£20m) 

Earlier this year, Edward Iliffe, 

65, won an appeal to build an 

octagonal eco-friendly home on 

Green Island in Poole Harbour. 

The millionaire great-grandson 

of newspaper publisher Lord 

Iliffe bought the island for 

£2.5m. His application was 

originally rejected on the grounds 

that it was too big for the island. 

Yattendon Investment Trust, 

the Iliffe family company, saw 

its profits plunge in 2009 from 

£24.6m to £1.2m on sales 

down sharply too at £97.8m. Its 



net assets came in at £240m. 

Yattendon had previously sold 

its Birmingham papers to an 

American publisher for £60m in 

1987. It still has interests in media 

and TV, including more than 40 

local newspapers. It also owns 

Channel TV, and has property 

and marina interests. 

With property, estate assets and 

past dividends, we value the Iliffe 

family at £240m. 

66 £225m 

Sir Stanley & Peter Thomas 

atlantic Property 

Developments 

2009: £225m (No change) 

Plans for a new £8m golf course 

near Cardiff were unveiled 

by Sir Stanley Thomas in 

September 2009. The 200-acre 

championship standard course 

will be designed by Welsh 

golfing legend Ian Woosnam, 

a friend of Thomas. 

Knighted in the 2006 Queen’s 

Birthday Honours for services to 

business and charities in Wales, 

Thomas can afford it. The family 

money comes originally from 

the much more mundane world 

of pies. The Thomas brothers, 

Stanley, 69, and Peter, 67, built 

up a large snack and pie business 

which they sold to GrandMet in 

1988 for £75m. The family then 

went on to build the quoted TBI 

group, involved in property and 

then airports. 

There was a near £106m 

payout for the family late in 

2004 when TBI, owner of 

Luton airport, was taken over 

in a £551m deal by the Spanish 

infrastructure company, Abertis. 

The family also has commercial 

property investments. A Spanish 

development, in which Peter had 

a 40% stake, was sold in 2005 for 

£75m. Another £40m in other 

Thomas ventures take the family 

to perhaps £225m. 

67 £220m 

Manny Davidson & Family 

Bl Davidson 

2009: £200m (-£20m) 

At 79, Manny Davidson is still 

active in the property market. His 

67 

£220m 

Christopher 

Moran 

Chesterlodge 

2009: £144m 

(+£76m) 



MoRan: staR of Wealth 

Manny Davidson Trust bought a 

portfolio of Guildford high street 

shops for £13.45m in December 

2009. 

But he lost his right-hand man 

in the family property empire in 

February 2009 when Jonathan 

Rose left to join the Pears family 

as group property director at 

the William Pears Group. Rose 

spent more than 12 years with 

the Davidson family, working 

with Manny and his son Gerald at 

Wolfe and Asda Properties. 

Manny floated the business in 

1985, before taking it private in 

a £232m deal with British Land 

in 2001 which saw it renamed BL 

Christopher Moran, who made 

his fortune in Lloyds and on the 

stock market in the 1980s and 

1990s, has made even more in 

property since then. By his own 

admission, he is “astronomically 

wealthy”. 

Chesterlodge, Moran’s main 

holding company, saw its net 

assets hit £210m in 2008-09, when 

it made a £1.7m profit on turnover 

of £7.9m. We value it at £200m in 

today’s climate. 

Moran, 62, has been helping 

the NHS with designs for a £110m 

cancer centre to be opened by 

University College Hospital in 

central London by 2012. 

He is also active in Tory 

politics and brokered a deal in 

February 2007 which made the 

Conservatives more than £30m 

from the sale of their old Smith 

Square headquarters. 

For Moran, this activity followed 

on from restoration of the 15th 

century Crosby Hall on the banks 

of the Thames in Chelsea. 

The private palace was built by 

City merchant Sir John Crosby in 

the 1460s and was later owned by 

Sir Thomas More. 

Moran bought the freehold in 

1988 for just £100,000 and has 

since spent around £50m on 

restoration. Moran, who had a 

controversial career in finance, 

should easily be worth £220m. 

Davidson. It showed £440m of 

net assets in 2005 when it made 

a £12.4m profit. The Davidson 

family’s 50% stake was worth 

£253m when it was taken over 

entirely by British Land (which 

had the other half already) in the 

summer of 2006. 

Davidson has also owned other 

choice assets. The takeover of the 

Leopold Joseph merchant bank 

in early 2004 netted Davidson 

£5m for his stake. 

Other assets such as Fungo, 

a property company, and Wolfe 

Securities, add £20m, taking 

the Davidson family to £220m 

after tax.

67 £220m 

Gerard O’Hare 

o’hare Developments 

2009: £220m (No change) 

Dr Gerard O’Hare was awarded a 

CBE in the December 2009 New 

Year’s Honours List for services to 

higher education and regeneration. 

He is a visiting professor at the 

University of Ulster. 

The entrepreneur left his 

family building firm in his native 

Newry in 1997 to work on his own 

property developments. 

A chartered surveyor by trade, 

he had previously worked on 

projects in Northern Ireland 

through the 1990s, including 

Belfast’s Waterfront. 

His Parker Green International 

company is behind some of the 

North’s most important retail 

developments and he has further 

shopping centres in the South, 

including the Quays in Newry. 

O’Hare, 52, has also been active 

overseas. He added to his US 

interests with two investments 

in the New York commuter belt 

valued at more than £125m in 

July 2007. 

The company also bought a 

shopping mall in Connecticut, 

the Millford Retail Centre, for 

£50m. O’Hare has acquired a 

mixed bag of investment and 

development assets in Central 

and Eastern Europe. 

With personal property and 

assets included, he should still be 

worth around £220m, despite 

the collapse in asset values. 

67 £220m 

Robert Rayne & Family 

Derwent london 

2009: £125m (+£95m) 

Quoted property group Derwent 

has seen its share price rise 

smartly in 2009-10 and it is now 

worth just over £1.45bn. 

The business is chaired by 

Robert Rayne, the 61-year-old 

son of property tycoon Lord 

Rayne, who died in 2003. 

His death robbed London of 

one of its shrewdest property 

developers. After war service 

with the RAF, Lord Rayne turned 

his family’s tailoring operation 

into a property business and 

pioneered development on the 

fringe of the City. 

He left £119.6m in his 

British will, which excluded 

assets held in France. 

The Rayne family’s London 

Merchant Securities merged with 

Derwent Valley in 2006 and they 

have a stake in Derwent London 

which is worth around £195m. 

In 2006, the family demerged 

its investment division into a new 

company called LMS Capital and 

the Rayne family has a stake there 

now worth £24m. 

Taking into account some hefty 

charitable donations, we value 

the Rayne family at £220m. 

71 £209m 

Alastair & Michael Powell 

Cable Properties & 

investments 

2009: £205m (+£4m) 

Cleveland Cable saw its profits 

fall sharply from £27.2m to 

£6.1m on sales up from £217m 

to £190.6m in 2008-09. The 

net assets rose from £117.8m to 

£122.1m. 

A property operation, Cable 

Properties & Investments, 

showed nearly £72m net assets in 

the same period. Between them 

the two companies showed nearly 


We value the companies 

together at that figure. Alistair, 

58, and Michael Powell, 53, 

own all the shares in both. Past 

dividends and other smaller 

companies take them to around 

£209m. 

72 £208m 

Bert & Maurice Allen 

Bewley hotels 

New entry 

Slaney Meats group, a Wexfordbased 

meat processor, owned by 

brothers Bert, 71, and Maurice 

Allen, 68, showed more than 


From its profits the Allens built 

a property portfolio through 

which they netted around £190m 

when they sold their Bewley hotel 

chain in 2007. 

The brothers reinvested some 

Sir Stanley Thomas 

Rich by star sign 

Note: there are more than 250 in total as some 

entries include two, or even three, people from the 

same family 

Gemini 33 

Capricorn 30 

Leo 29 

Taurus 28 

Cancer 24 

Sagittarius 23 

Aries 22 

Libra 20 

Virgo 19 

Pisces 19 

Aquarius 18 

Scorpio 16 

of this in German property 

and are now moving into the 

bioenergy field. They should 

easily be worth around £208m. 

73 £200m 

Martin Ainscough & Family 

ainscough strategic land 

New entry 

Martin Ainscough, 58, is now 

devoting more of his time to 

extensive charitable works. 

He and his cousin Bill, 

founder of Wainhomes, are 

funding the £6.5m Wigan Boys 

and Girls’ Club. 

Local football supremo Dave 

Whelan is also involved with 

Ainscough.Whelan, owner of 

Wigan Athletic football club and 

the DW Sports Fitness retail 

and leisure chain, won consent 

for the youth facility in May 

this year. 

Ainscough Crane Hire was 

founded in 1976 by Gerard 

Ainscough. The Wigan-based 

company was run by his three 

sons Martin, James and Brendan, 

until its sale for £255m in 

October 2007 to its managers. 

The Ainscough family had 

around 90% of the shares worth 

around £230m. After tax and 

allowing for other assets, which 

include various Ainscough 

companies, such as Ainscough 

Investments, the family should be 

worth perhaps £200m. 

They are now investing heavily 

in property through Ainscough 

Strategic Land, which looks for 

sites to hold and develop on a 

long-term basis. 



75 £198m 

Charles Kenny & Family 

Clancourt 

2009: £200m (-£2m) 

The Kenny family own most of 

Clancourt Group, owner of office 

blocks in Dublin’s Harcourt 

Street. 

The company is unlimited 

but its main subsidiary showed 

£247m net assets in its last filed 

accounts for 2005. 

Clancourt started the largest 

single speculative development 

in Dublin for many years 

– a £200m scheme near 

St Stephen’s Green. 

South Dublin-based Charles 

Kenny, 75, has been developing 

and managing prime office 

buildings in the city since the 

1960s. The group has also been 

active in Limerick where it sold 

the Parkway Shopping Centre 

in 2006 for a sum reported at 

£38m. 



73 £200m 

Michael Oglesby & Family 

Bruntwood 

2009: £295m (-£95m) 

ManChesteR tyCoon 

Michael Oglesby’s Bruntwood is still actively buying good quality sites. 

In July, it exchanged contracts to buy the City House development site in 

Leeds city centre for £5m. 

After leaving school at 16, Oglesby was an apprentice plumber to his 

father, before both realised it wasn’t working and he went to college 

to do a degree in building. In 1970, he moved from Scunthorpe to 

Manchester, forming Bruntwood five years later. Oglesby, 71, is now one 

of the most high-profile property tycoons in the North West. 

Bruntwood is easily the busiest developer in Manchester. He owns 

more than 80 office buildings in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and 

Birmingham. The main family operation, Bruntwood , saw its profits 

increase slightly £11.5m to £12.6m on £97.1m sales in the year to 

September 2009. Its net assets came in at £146.1m. In the current 

climate, we value it on the net asset figure. Other assets plus smaller 

but separate Bruntwood operations take the Oglesby family to £200m. 

With other assets, including 

The Crescent, Limerick’s largest 

shopping centre, we value the 

Kenny family at £198m in today’s 

difficult economy. 

76 £197m 

Joseph Brennan & Family 

Joseph Brennan Bakeries 

2009: £170m (+£27m) 

Profits at family-owned 

Joseph Brennan Bakeries, 

Dublin’s biggest bakery, 

approached £3.6m on sales 

of £45.7m in its last accounts 

filed for 2007. 

The Brennans also have some 

substantial property assets in 

London, including the Versace 

shop in Bond Street and the 

Hamley building in Regent Street. 

Other assets, such as Century 

Finance, take the Brennan 

family led by 68-year-old Joseph 

Brennan, to £197m in today’s 

market. 

Irvine Sellar 

Richest in Ireland 


27 John Magnier 540 

34 JP McManus 490 

46 Kevin & Michael Lagan 350 

46 Stephen Vernon 350 

58 Sam Morrison 296 

59 Sir Michael Smurfit & Family 295 

67 Gerard O’Hare 220 

72 Bert & Maurice Allen 208 

75 Charles Kenny & Family 198 

76 Joseph Brennan & Family 197 

89 Francis & Shamus Jennings 166 

93 Frank Boyd & Family 160 

93 Michael Herbert & Family 160 

106 Ken Rohan 147 

126 Andrew Creighton 120 

138 Jim McGettigan 114 

142 Martin Birrane 110 

149 Frank Burke & Family 105 

159 Patrick Doherty & Family 93 

160 Patrick Kelly 90 

160 Lord Rana 90 

167 Edward Lonergan 85 

172 Noel & Miriam O’Callaghan 80 

183 John & Ciara Byrne & Family 78 

183 Bill McCabe 78 

195 Mark & Kathleen Kavanagh 69 

198 Sean Mulryan 66 

198 Eamonn O’Rourke 66 

201 James Egan 65 

209 John Miskelly 60 

214 Jerry Conlan 59 

228 Tony Leonard 52 

77 £196m 

David Mabey & Family 

Mabey holdings, 

2009: £200m (-£4m) 

Mabey Holdings was started by 

the late Bevil Mabey (who died in 

April this year) after the second 

world war when he bought up 

spare Bailey bridges from the 

army. 

The Reading-based firm has 13 

offshoots that specialise in plant 

hire, steel fabrication, property 

and construction-related 

operations. 

One of its subsidiaries, Mabey 

Bridge, has unveiled plans 

for a £38m expansion aimed 

at making it the biggest UK 

manufacturer of wind turbine 

towers for onshore and offshore 

sites. The expansion will create 

240 jobs, mostly in Chepstow. 

David Mabey, 49, used to chair 

the family-owned operation. In 

the year to September 2009 it

went from a £217,000 loss to an 

£18.2m profit, though sales were 

down nearly £24m at £153.3m. 

With £206.4m net assets, the 

company should be worth £140m 

in the current climate. Dividends, 

which have totalled nearly £68m 

since 1996, and the separate 

Hare Hatch Holdings with nearly 

£28m net assets, would normally 

take the Mabey family to £200m 

after tax and spending. But its 

Mabey & Johnson subsidiary 

was fined £3.5m recently for 

breaching UN sanctions against 

Iraq and systematically bribing 

foreign officials with so-called 

“white man’s handshakes”. 

Accordingly, we cut the Mabey 

family back to £196m, even 

though it was the parent company 

which owned up to its subsidiary’s 

wrongdoings. 

78 £195m 

Manfred Gorvy & Family 

hanover acceptances 

2009: £170m (+£25m) 

Manfred Gorvy’s diversified 

property outfit, Hanover 

Acceptances, went from a£3.7m 

loss in 2008 to a £26m profit in 

2009, with sales rising sharply by 

£16m to £684m. 

The business, with £206m 

net assets, is owned by a 

Luxembourg-based parent called 

Quadriga Holdings SA. It should 

be worth £180m in the current 

climate. But we assume that the 

Gorvy family, well represented on 

the board, is the ultimate owner 

and value the family at £195m 

with past dividends. 

79 £190m 

Alan Murphy 

nikal investments 

2009: £180m (+£10m) 

Manchester-based developer Nikal 

remained under the radar locally 

last year but has been making 

progress with work at Humber 

Quays in Hull, while working 

up revised plans for the muchdelayed 

Altair in Altrincham. 

As the recession subsides, it is 

also gearing up for a major new 

scheme in Salford, the £25m 

Soapworks, which won planning 

consent in May. Nikal, which 

showed just £377,000 net assets 

in 2008, is bankrolled by tycoon 

Alan Murphy, 62, whose wealth 

though came from more prosaic 

sources. He worked for Carnation 

foods and Gillette before opening 

his own supermarket. 

He sold up and in 1982, 

after becoming involved in the 

wholesale paper trade, Murphy 

started AM Paper, which turned 

big reels of tissue into toilet rolls. 

Fifteen years later, in 1997, 

after AM had grown sharply on 

the back of £30m investment 

in new equipment, Murphy sold 

part of his stake for £100m, 

and two years later, the rest 

for £50m. 

With the property deals and 

personal assets, we reckon this 

fanatical Liverpool supporter 

should be worth £190m today. 

79 £190m 

Irvine & James Sellar 

sellar Properties 

2009: £165m (+£25m) 

Construction is well under way 

at the site of the Shard of Glass, 

Europe’s tallest mixed-use 

building – designed by architect 

Renzo Piano – which will soar 

1,016ft above London Bridge 

Station in 2012. 

The 87-storey tower is part of 

the £2bn London Bridge quarter 

and is the culmination of years 

of labour for developer Irvine 

Sellar, 72. Sellar, who works with 

his son James, 37, on property 

developments, has a 20% stake in 

the tower, which is backed by four 

Qatari banks. 

We can see around £134m 

net assets in a dozen Sellar 

companies. Not bad for a former 

market trader who became king 

of Carnaby Street fashion before 

selling up in 1980 and moving 

into property. In 1991 his quoted 

property group went bust and 

he lost £28m. But he has fought 

back since then. 

Through his Sellar Property 

Group, he now owns a property 

investment portfolio comprising 

hotels, offices and shopping 

centres. With the tower now 

very much a reality, we value the 

Sellars at £190m. 

MoRe is 

BetteR foR 

MoRtsteDt 

Sten Mortstedt & Family 

Cls holdings 

2009: £190m (-£4m) 

81 

£186m 

The Mortstedt family’s stake in CLS Holdings is now worth 

around £145m. Share sales of more than £93m (including 

£27m in 2006, £6m in 2008 and £22.5m in a 2009 share 

buyback) make the family very well-heeled. 

CLS – a former investor in the Shard of Glass 

development at London Bridge – has been active recently 

as a seller in the UK, France and Sweden, while also buying 

other assets in Germany. 

The low-key Mortstedt, 70, a Swedish national, has been 

on the board of CLS as chairman since 1994. 

The shares recovered after the crash but in early 2010 

they started to drift down again. We value the Mortstedt 

family at around £186m. 



dukE lOOkS BEyOnd 

hiS art trEaSurES 

82 £180m 

Kevin McCabe & Family 

Scarborough 

2009: £175m (+£5m) 

Kevin McCabe’s Scarborough has 

had a frenetic year. In February, 

it bought Modus from the 

administrators for £37m, and in 

April the group went through a 

financial restructuring. 

In July, McCabe put the 

100,000 sq ft Glasgow HQ of 

Bank of Scotland on the market 

at £40m, a 6% yield. In the same 

month, planning permission was 

granted for a three-acre former 

site in Congleton, Cheshire, 

acquired through the Modus deal. 

McCabe, 62, has significant 

leisure interests in China too, 

including a controlling stake in 

a Chinese football club called 

Chengdu Blades. 

His Scarborough Group has a 

substantial stake in the Chinese 

property company Top Spring 

Group, which is involved in 

developments in 11 major and 

fast-growing cities across China. 

McCabe has the firepower for 

this. He trained as a quantity 

surveyor, and started working for 

Bovis in 1964 at the age of 16. 



He joined the Teesland 

property group in 1971 and 

nine years later formed the 

Scarborough Property Co. He 

sold the bulk of his property 

empire to Valad, an Australian 

property group, in June 2007 

– just before the property crash 

– for £865m, which included 

debt. McCabe’s proceeds from the 

original sale should have been the 

£142.7m we can see paid out to 

his family and trusts in a special 

dividend from the Scarborough 

Group in 2007-08. 

Even after that, its new parent 

company, Scarborough Group 

International, showed £88.4m 

net assets in 2008-09. With 

the dividend and his Chinese 

investments, we value the 

McCabe family at £180m. 

82 £180m 

Stuart Wall 

Opal Property Group 

2009: £180m (No change) 

Manchester-based Opal 

Property group is the biggest 

provider of high-quality student 

accommodation in Britain. At the 

end of July it put two properties, 

one in Exeter and one in London, 

82 £180m 

The Duke of Buccleuch & Family 

Buccleuch Estates 

2009: £180m (No change) 

Buccleuch Estates, the property 

arm of the Buccleuch family, 

recovered from an £18m loss to a 

£7m loss in 2009 with sales down 

sharply at £40.6m and net assets 

down £10m at £108.3m. 

The group has been 

re-orientating its business, selling 

its estate agency and game and 

country enterprises operation, 

which included the Spratts game 

food brand. 

Meanwwhile, it is building a rural 

property management operation 

and concentrating on commercial 

property activities, renewable 

energy, tourism and sustainable 

food. This highlights the ambitions 

of the Buccleuch Group, which 

extend beyond the huge land 

Kevin McCabe 

David Coffer 

holdings of the 10th duke, 56. The 

immensely popular 9th duke, 

Europe’s largest landowner, left 

£320m in his will. 

The art treasures and antique 

furniture were valued in the will 

at £224m. But in practice with our 

treatment of aristocratic art works, 

we cut that back to take account of 

any likely tax bill should the new 

duke want to sell. 

In his case it would be 40%, so we 

reduce our art valuation accordingly 

to £134m. 

While the family’s huge land 

holdings were never very valuable 

and cost a huge amount in upkeep, 

diversification into property is 

paying dividends. In all, we still 

value the new duke at £180m. 

on the market with a £53m price 

tag. It also provides affordable 

accommodation for key workers 

such as NHS staff. 

The company, founded in 1982 

by Stuart Wall, made a loss of 

£24.6m in 2009 but, with net 

assets of £209.5m, should be 

worth perhaps £180m in the 


Wall, 59, owns it all. 

85 £175m 

David Coffer 

Coffer Group 

2009: £150m (+£25m) 

The final 50% stake in the Earls 

Court and Olympia exhibition 

centre operation held by David 

Coffer and Anthony Lyons was 

sold in early 2010 to property 

giant Liberty International. 

Coffer’s property investments 

operation, St James Capital, 

bought the centre in May 2004 for 

£245m. With a career spanning 

more than 35 years in the property 

and leisure sectors, the move was 

one of the highlights in his career. 

Three years later, the first 50% 

stake was sold to Liberty in a 

deal that valued the exhibition 

operation at £380m.

Coffer continues to lead leisure 

agent Davis Coffer Lyons and 

there are various other Coffer 

Group companies with juicy 

assets, too. In all, Coffer, 63, 

should be worth at least £175m. 

85 £175m 

Terence Cole 

Marcol 

2009: £175m (No change) 

London property entrepreneurs 

Mark Steinberg and Terence 

Cole teamed up with a private 

equity company in late 2009 to 

buy Median, Germany’s biggest 

rehabilitation care provider, 

which operates 27 acute clinics 

with around 6,000 beds in 19 

locations across the country. 

It was a typically astute move 

by the pair who run Marcol, 

a London-based company 

set up in 1978 to acquire real 

estate throughout the UK and 

Europe. It comprises at least 40 

companies that develop and own 

property across Europe. 

Steinberg and Tory party donor 

Cole, 78, have grown a large 

portfolio with investments in the 

care home, residential, industrial, 

retail and office sectors. 

The group also includes 

Industrial Securities, which 

specialises in business parks, 

warehouses and distribution 

space. 

The pair have been shrewd in 

their dealings and sold off large 

parts of their portfolios while 

retaining some assets to work 

up in value. 

With 360 directorships listed at 

Companies House, Cole’s holdings 

are diverse. The largest company 

we can see is Compco Holdings, 

which showed nearly £143m 

net assets in 2008-09. Cole has 

a 40% stake in its parent. But 

his other assets take him to a 

conservative £175m. 

88 £168m 

Lord Foster 

Foster holdings 

2009: £170m (-£2m) 

Architectural group Foster & 

Partners has been hit hard by the 

global slump in construction on 

SErial dirECtOr with 

375 FirMS tO hiS naME 

Earth and is hoping for better 

luck on the Moon. 

It is part of a group hoping to 

win a contract from the European 

Space Agency to test materials for 

building settlements on the lunar 

surface. The mission, to develop a 

“more permanent presence on the 

Moon”, is part of the Aurora space 

programme. 

Born in Stockport in 1935, 

young Norman Foster performed 

well at school but left at 16 to 

work in the Manchester City 

Treasurer’s office. 

He did his national service in 

the RAF and when demobbed 

in 1961 went to the University 

of Manchester’s School of 

Architecture & City Planning. 

£175m 

Mark Steinberg 

Marcol 

2009: £175m (No change) 

Mark Steinberg, Terrence Cole’s partner, runs Marcol, the 

London-based property company the pair set up in 1978. 

Steinberg, 51, is also a serial director with more than 

375 companies to his name. The largest firm we can see 

at Companies House is Compco Holdings, which showed 

nearly £143m net assets in 2008-09. 

Steinberg has a 40% stake in its parent. But his 

other directorships should easily keep him at a very 

conservative £175m. 

85 

Lord Foster 

In 1967, he set up his own 

practice which later became 

Foster & Partners. Now regarded 

as one of the world’s top 

architects, he is best known for 

projects such as Hong Kong’s 

new airport, the redesigned 

Reichstag in Berlin, the 

Hearst Tower in New York and 

the Gherkin in the City. 

Foster had an 85% stake until 

he sold a 40% share to 3i, the 

private equity giant, in May 2007. 

The deal valued the business then 

at around £300m. Foster should 

have received around £120m and 

be left with a stake worth £135m 

at the time. 

Though the company made a 

£38.5m profit on £152.1m sales 

in 2008-09. With past salaries 

and property assets he should 

be worth £170m after tax. We 

knock off the £2m he recently 

donated to Yale University’s 

School of Architecture to fund a 

professorship in his name. 

89 £166m 

Francis & Shamus Jennings 

Cusp 

2009: £146m (+£20m) 

One of Northern Ireland’s leading 

companies, the Rotary Group, 

was taken over by Australian firm 

Hastie Group in a deal worth 

almost £100m in February 

2008. But Ballyrogan Holdings 

(Rotary’s holding company at 

the time of the sale) is still owned 

by the Jennings family. Shamus 

Jennings, 56, is now chairman. 

Ballyrogan made a £1m profit 

and showed nearly £43m net 

assets in the year to September 

2009. The Jennings family also 

owns the Cusp property group, 

which recently spent £75m on 

buying a retail park at Kendal 

as part of a wave of spending by 

Ulster investors on the mainland. 

Cusp, a successful developer, 

is working on the £100m St 

Anne’s Square development in 

Belfast. Cusp reckons its property 

portfolio is worth £500m. It 

showed £95.2m net assets in 

2009, and we value it at £80m 

in the current depressed climate. 

After tax on the Rotary proceeds 

and past dividends, the Jennings 

family should be worth £166m. 



90 £165m 

Henry Moser & Family 

Jerrold holdings 

2009: £165m (No change) 

Co-founded by low-key Henry 

Moser in 1973, Jerrold Holdings 

specialises in secured lending to 

both residential and commercial 

customers. Moser, 61, left school 

at 16 and worked on stalls as a 

market trader. 

Jerrold Holdings saw its profits 

rise slightly from £68.7m to £69m 

on sales of nearly £149.5m in the 

year to June 2009. Barclays Private 

Equity invested £113.5m for a 

30% stake in September 2006. 

Cautiously, we value the 

business at £200m in the current 

climate. That values the Moser 

family stake at £140m. Past 

dividends should add £25m. 

Richest in the North West 


11 John Whittaker 1,060 

19 Peter Jones & Family 673 

31 Trevor Hemmings 500 

73 Martin Ainscough & Family 200 

73 Michael Oglesby & Family 200 

82 Stuart Wall 180 

90 Henry Moser & Family 165 

93 Brian Scowcroft & Family 160 

117 John Hindle & Family 130 

123 John Seddon & Family 126 

140 Peter Dawson & Family 112 

142 William Ainscough & Family 110 

172 Melvyn & Delia Grodner 80 

186 David Russell 75 

201 Philip Davies & Family 65 

215 John Finlan & Family 58 

245 James Spencer & Family 45 

90 £165m 

Gary Widdowson 

kenninghall holdings 

2009: £160m (+£5m) 

Gary Widdowson spent £25m 

on a 2,000 acre Norfolk estate in 

September 2008. He can afford 

it. His father founded GD Metal 

Recycling, with one depot in 

north London. 

But it was Gary, 52, who 

became the scrap metal king of 

London. In February 2006, he 

sold the renamed Metal & Waste 

Recycling to Barclays for an 



undisclosed sum, but reckoned 

to be up to £120m. Widdowson 

kept a 22% stake in the company, 

which processes about 700,000 

tonnes of scrap metal and made 

£11.8m profit on a turnover of 

£189m in 2009. 

Widdowson has diversified into 

property through Kenninghall 

Holdings, with around £15.7m 

of net assets in 2009. He owns a 

private dock on the Thames and 

another waste company, Total 

Waste Management. He has 

also accumulated a war chest for 

property investments. 

Essex-based Widdowson should 

easily be worth £165m in the 


92 £162m 

Eliasz Englander & Family 

Citywise 

2009: £160m (+£2m) 

Englander, 78, has 138 

directorships and a complex web 

of companies. Through Citywise, 

the Englander family owns 

Holborn Links with over £131m 

net assets in 2008, when it made 

an £8.4m profit . 

The family also has several 

other separate, smaller 

companies with net assets 

totalling at least £100m. 

In all, and allowing for 

overlapping stakes, the Englander 

family is easily worth £162m. 

93 £160m 

Sir Euan Anstruther-Gough- 

Calthorpe & Family 

Calthorpe Estates 

2009: £160m (No change) 

Calthorpe Holdings plunged into 

a £12.85m loss in 2008-09 when 

its net assets also fell sharply from 

£21.6m to £6.5m. 

The company has been involved 

in an ambitious development 

programme in the Calthorpe 

estate, which covers 1,550 acres of 

leafy Edgbaston. 

This includes the awardwinning 

£40m Calthorpe 

House, the £110m Edgbaston 

Galleries development and a 

£100m University Science Park 

plan for the former BBC site at 

Pebble Mill. 

Sir Euan Anstruther- 

Gough-Calthorpe 


It had to sell off assets and 

change its strategy to conserve 

cash during the severe property 

downturn. But there was some 

relief in March this year when it 

secured food retailer, Morrisons, 

as a tenant for its Galleries 

development. 

The estate dates back to 

1717 but it was in 1985 that 

Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe 

inherited his title from his late 

grandfather and the estate was 

part of his inheritance. The estate 

would now be worth perhaps 

£80m. His trusts made around 

£40m profit in 1999 by selling 

off 300 acres in Hampshire for 

development. 

Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, 

44, also has interests in America 

and property in Europe. We still 

value him at £160m. 

93 £160m 

John Berkley & Family 

the Berkeley leisure Group 

2009: £150m (+£10m) 

John Berkley chairs the Berkeley 

Leisure Group, a largely familyowned 

mobile home operator 

and property developer based in 

Yeovil. 

In 2008, its profits fell sharply 

from £18m to £5.2m on sales 

of £15.9m (the 2007 figure had 

been inflated by the sale of an 

asset). 

The company has £56.8m 

worth of freehold properties but 

states in its 2008 annual report 

that they are worth around 

£100m more than the book 

value. 

The shares are largely owned by 

Berkley, 76, and his family, who 

take little out of the business. We 

value them at £160m. 

93 £160m 

Frank Boyd & Family 

killultagh Estates 

2009: £115m (+£45m) 

William Ewart Properties is one 

of the largest property companies 

in Northern Ireland. In March 

2010, the company appointed 

Franc Warwick to find a buyer 

for its Victoria Place, Fulham 

Broadway and Hammersmith

Broadway shopping centres in 

London, with a £300m price tag. 

Victoria Place, at Victoria 

railway station, has been sold to 

Network Rail for £95m. 

William Ewart’s net assets 

though fell from £282m to 

£238.1m in 2008, when it made 

a £3.8m profit after an £8m loss 

the previous year. 

The company was formed in 

2002 when Frank Boyd and 

Andrew Creighton paid £90m 

for the Northern Ireland and 

British properties of a southern 

property group called Dunloe 

Ewart. They each own 50%. 

Boyd, 56, started out as 

an electrician and owned an 

electrical contracting business 

in Belfast. 

He began his career as a 

property developer and investor 

in student housing before 

moving on to acquiring nursing 

home sites and office market 

opportunities. 

One of his other companies, 

Killultagh Estates, is owned 

by his trusts, and has 

developed into one of the 

leading property companies 

in Northern Ireland. 

It showed its financial muscle 

in September 2005 when 

it snapped up the Fareham 

Shopping Centre in Hampshire 

for £110m. 

Killultagh Estates had £51.4m 


accounts. We can see another 

£12m of net assets in other Boyd 

companies. 

In all, while we can see £182m 

of net assets attributable to Boyd 

and his family, we cautiously 

value the family at £160m in the 


93 £160m 

Michael Herbert & Family 

lebreh 

2009: £145m (+£15m) 

Herbert, voted Northern Ireland’s 

top property man in 2006, is also 

a restaurant tycoon. 

Herbel Restaurants, based 

in Belfast, holds the largest 

Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise 

in Europe and also acts as a 

franchise for Haagan-Dazs ice 

cream. 

Founded by Herbert in 1981, 

Herbel prospered through The 

Troubles as few rival fast food 

chains dared venture into Belfast 

and other Northern Ireland 

towns. 

The business has also opened in 

the Irish Republic and Scotland. 

Herbel made a £4.1m loss on 

£64.7m sales in 2008, when it 

had net assets of nearly £80m, 

and we still value the business at 

£60m. 

Herbert, 53, has also branched 

out into property development 

in Belfast and Scotland in a big 

way. His Lebreh operation had 

£111.2m net assets in its 2008 

accounts. It should be worth 

£110m. 

In all, Herbert and his family 

are easily worth £160m in the 


93 £160m 

Brian Scowcroft & Family 

alard Properties 

2009: £160m (No change) 

Brian Scowcroft’s business 

interests seem to be faring pretty 

well. He has over 100 tenants 

occupying around 1.5m sq feet of 

new or refurbished buildings at 

his Kingmoor Park on the site of 

an old RAF base. 

Even so, the net assets of 

the Kingmoor Park Properties 

operation fell £14m in 

2008-09 to around £20m. 

He has ploughed around £7m 

of his own money into the 

400-acre Kingmoor site and, 

with it, helped create more than 

1,300 jobs. 

It is the flagship in Scowcroft’s 

business park portfolio, which 

includes sites in Stockport and 

Leigh, as well as an operation in 

Wrexham. 

Before his property work, 

Scowcroft, 54, was boss of 

Swinton Insurance. 

It was founded in the front 

room of his father’s Manchester 

house in 1957 and became one 

of the largest car insurance 

companies in Britain. 

In 1988, the family started 

selling stakes in the firm to Sun 

Alliance. By the early 1990s, 

the Scowcroft family had made 

around £150m from the sale. Brian Scowcroft 

Scowcroft, a qualified 

chartered accountant, went 

into industrial sites as he had 

the capital to acquire the land 

cheaply. 

In all, with the success of 

Kingmoor Park, the earlier 

Swinton proceeds and personal 

assets, we value the Scowcroft 

family, which includes his 

low-key sister, Janet Lefton, 52, 

at around £160m. 

98 £152m 

John Lynch & Family 

John lynch (Builders) 

2009: £152m (No change) 

John Lynch, 61, chairs the 

family-owned John Lynch 

(Builders), an Ayr-based 

property-to-construction group 

which has been built up over the 

past 39 years. 

The group had £11m net 

assets in December 2008. 

But under Lynch’s shrewd 

management, significant 

land holdings of around 280 

acres of development land in 

Scotland built up over the years 

are currently worth around 

£100m. 

Other assets such as farms, 

investments and properties 

take the Lynch family to around 

£152m in the current economic 

climate. 

99 £150m 

Paul Caddick & Family 

Caddick Group 

2009: £90m (+£60m) 

Paul Caddick founded 

Yorkshire-based Caddick 

Group in 1979 and it has 

evolved into a high-quality 

property-to-construction 

operation. 

The group was involved in 

the planned 1m sq ft Trinity 

Leeds shopping destination 

but, in November 2009, its 25% 

stake was sold to its partner, 

Land Securities. 

Caddick had bought the stake 

in 2007 for £75m. 

Caddick is expanding fast 

in retirement homes through 

its Oakbridge Retirement 

Villages joint venture, which 



plans to build three retirement 

villages in the UK each year. 

The group also shares 

ownership of the Headingley 

Carnegie Stadium home of Leeds 

Rhinos and Leeds Carnegie 

(formerly Leeds Tykes) rugby 

teams and Yorkshire County 

Cricket Club. 

But the lack of England test 

matches at Headingley until 

2012 is likely to hit its finances 

hard. 

In the year to August 2009, 

Caddick Group made a £2.8m 

loss on £64.6m sales while net 

assets came in at £42.5m. 

The Caddick family – led by 

60-year-old Paul Caddick – and 

trusts own more than 90% of 

the shares. 

Other private assets and sale 

proceeds take the Caddick family 

to around £150m. 

99 £150m 

Charles Clowes 

Clowes developments 

2009: £130m (+£20m) 

East Midlands entrepreneur 

Charles Clowes bought Wilson 

Bowden Developments’ 

290-acre industrial and 

distribution portfolio for the 

knock-down price of £46m 

in late 2008. 

Clowes Developments, 

established more than 40 years 

ago, has an impressive record of 

commercial, retail and residential 

development. 

These include industrial 

parks, industrial land in Corby, 

Birmingham, Wednesfield, Castle 

Donnington and the Dove Valley 

Park in Derbyshire. 

Its investment properties 

include three in central London – 

in Harley Street, Eaton Place and 

Edgware Road. 

Clowes owns all the shares 

in the company which made 

£1.9m profit on £11.4m sales in 

2008-09. 

It has nearly £59m net assets 

but reports in the property press 

suggest that Clowes is looking to 

sell up for £300m. 

We cannot accept that 

valuation and, in the current 

climate, we settle for £150m for 

70-year-old Clowes. 



a MOdEl MOGul 

99 £150m 

Nick Leslau 

Prestbury investments 

2009: £130m (+£20m) 

Nick Leslau managed to float his Max Property Group 

on the stock market in May 2009 valued at £220m. It was 

the first flotation in London of the year and raised £20m 

more than planned. 

Max intends to exploit the weakness in the UK property 

market by picking up bargains. The company is now worth 

£224m, valuing Leslau’s stake at £20.4m. 

The son of a jeweller, Leslau grew up in a modest 

three-bedroom house in Cricklewood, north London. 

In his 20s, he was a part-time model and appeared as an 

extra in pop videos. 

After training as a chartered surveyor, he teamed up 

with Nigel Wray to build Burford Group into a £1 billion 

business. 

In 1997, he started his Prestbury operation, which 

he co-owns with Wray. Leslau correctly anticipated the 

property slump, and the pair sold off properties well before 

the start of the credit crunch. 

Leslau redeployed the money elsewhere in budget 

hotels, private healthcare and theme parks, all of which 

hold up well in recessions. 

These assets have been secured on long leases with 

regular upward rent reviews. 

Prestbury Investment Holdings had £65m net assets 

in 2009, and Leslau has a near 52% stake. In the current 

climate, we value it at £100m. 

The profits from past deals, his Max stake, hefty 

dividends of more than £40m since 2000, and his personal 

property assets, easily take Leslau, 51, to £150m, even in 

today’s still difficult market. 

99 £150m 

David Gabbay & Family 

O&h Capital 

2009: £250m (-£100m) 

Gabbay and partner Eli 

Shahmoon have had a tough time 

recently but still have substantial 

assets in their O&H property 

operation. 

O&H Holdings saw its net 

assets fall sharply from £478m to 

£255.5m in 2008-09. 

The parent company has been 

reorganised but we assume that 

the Gabbay and Shahmoon 

families own half. In the current 

climate, we value the business on 

the net assets. In all, we reckon 

Gabbay, 66, and his family must 

be worth around £150m with 

past salaries (more than £30m 

from 2001-08). 

99 £150m 

Eli Shahmoon & Family 

O&h Capital 

2009: £250m (-£100m) 

Eli Shahmoon, 43, is the 

partner of David Gabbay 

in the London-based 

property-to-construction group, 

O&H Holdings, which showed 

around £255.5m net assets in its 

2008-09 accounts. 

O&H capitalised on renewed 

demand from the institutions 

at the end of last year with the 

sale of an office block on Conduit 

Street, W1, to Threadneedle for 

£24.1m – a 6.38% yield. 

The Shahmoon family 

owns half of the business. 

Past salaries, dividends and 

other assets should take the 

Shahmoons to £150m. 

Rich by decade born 

Note: there are more than 250 in total as some 

entries include two, or even three, people from 

the same family 

1920s 11 

1930s 65 

1940s 83 

1950s 77 

1960s 38 

1970s 4 

1980s 1 

1990s 1

Sir Robert Ogden received a crushing blow in 2009 when his race 

horse Exotic Dancer died at Aintree, but he has another stable star 

in the shape of Voy Por Ustedes. 

Ogden, a long time racehorse owner, made his fortune 

through coal. But his long association with the industry ended 

in 2006 when he sold his coal washing and processing business 

– A Ogden & Sons – for £24.5m. He has a number of property 

businesses and assets which underwrite Ogden’s passion 

105 £148m 

Nick Capstick-Dale 

uk real Estate 

2009: £122m (+£26m) 

Property investor Nick 

Capstick-Dale made a smart 

move by investing early in the 

area surrounding London’s 

Kings Cross. He spent nearly 

£4m in June 2006 buying 

The Lighthouse building at 

the junction of Gray’s Inn Road 

in London. 

It is the first building that 

anyone leaving King’s Cross sees 

and work finally started on the 

site in the summer of 2010 with a 

completely new building behind 

the old facade. 

It follows on from Capstick- 

Dale’s new Covent Garden-style 

leisure-to-retail complex which 

he built in the heart of the area. 

With the Eurostar trains now 

using the St Pancras international 

terminal and a huge regeneration 

underway, he is in the right area 

at the right time. 

Capstick-Dale, 48, learnt about 

property working for an estate 

agency for four years. In 1986, he 

started trading in property and, 

in 1989, three months before the 

property crash, he sold all his 

properties. 

A year later he was buying 

back some of his assets at a 40% 

discount. 

Since then, through his main 

company, UK Real Estate, 

based in London, he has been 

assembling an impressive 

long-term portfolio, now with 

around £150m net assets. 

Capstick-Dale has very low 

borrowings and has been able to 

buy sites in the downturn at huge 

discounts. 

106 £147m 

Ken Rohan 

airspace investments 

2009: £165m (-£18m) 

Profits at Irish property company 

Airspace Investments fell sharply 

in 2008 from £26.3m to £7.1m 

when it showed £125m net 

assets. In May 2009, owner Ken 

Rohan, a 66-year-old veteran 

property man from Wicklow, gave 

each of his three children a 14.8% 

stake in the company. 

Rohan is involved in the 

industrial sector, concentrating 

on the north side of Dublin as 

well as a range of other interests 

in Ireland, Britain and Barbados. 

Rohan also has a strong UK 

property portfolio. 

He worked in the London Stock 

Exchange before returning to 

Ireland to join the Rohan Group, 

which was set up in the 1960s by 

his brother, John. Ken Rohan 

became managing director of the 

group in the 1970s. 

hOrSES arE hiS PridE 

99 £150m 

Sir Robert Ogden 

Ogden Group, 

2009: £115m (+£35m) 

for horseflesh (he was a big purchaser at the Tattersalls, 

Newmarket, bloodstock auctions in late 2009). 

Ogden now runs a number of companies from his 

Yorkshire base, including Condor Aviation, Ogden Properties 

and Nevison Properties, with more than £68m net assets 

between them in 2008. But with many other private interests 

and the fine collection of horses, the 74-year-old Ogden is 

easily worth £150m. 

Nick Capstick-Dale 

We can see another £3m net 

assets attributable to Rohan in 

other smaller companies. 

In all, with other assets and 

recent dividends, he should be 

worth £147m in the current 

climate. 

107 £145m 

Graham Harris 

london & City Group holdings 

2009: £117m (+£28m) 

Graham Harris owns London 

& City Group Holdings, a 

London-based property operation, 

where he is also a director. 

The company specialises in the 

fast-moving and ever-changing 

London lettings market and the 

super-prime market in France in 

Paris and around the Alps. 

In 2008-09, London & 

City made £689,000 profit 

on £48.6m sales, but its 

net assets jumped from 

£138.8m to £143.3m. 

The company reports strong 

demand for its French assets 

and its London commercial 

properties and expects that its 

rental income will grow to £50m 

over the next three years. It has 

no funding problems, despite the 

banking crisis. 


net asset figure. With other 

assets, Harris, 63, should easily 

be worth £145m. 



rOnSOn FlyinG hiGh with hErOn 

107 

£145m 

Gerald Ronson & Family 

heron 

2009: £180m (-£35m) 

Gerald Ronson’s £500m Heron Tower in the 

City has now reached its full 46 storeys, and in 

July secured its first tenant. 

Ronson, 71, put in £44m of his own money, 

and the Oman government backed him in 

late 2006 to finance what he calls a “six-star” 

scheme. After seven years in construction, the 

794 ft structure will be ready in 2011. Even so, 

Ronson is cautious in his plans. 

Next to the tower he is developing the 

24-storey Heron Plaza. But he is now looking 

to turn that into a 5-star hotel development 

rather than yet more offices. This is why 

Ronson is regarded in property circles with 

awe for his ability to do a deal, spot a bargain or 

make a turn. 

In the 1970s and 1980s Ronson built his 

Heron property empire and a £600m fortune. 

109 £140m 

Clinton McCarthy & Family 

Churchill retirement living 

2009: £115m (+£25m) 

Specialist house builder Churchill 

Retirement Living predicts a 

shortfall of 62,500 retirement 

homes by 2020. As a result, it is 

defying the downturn by buying 

60 new sites. The Hampshirebased 

operation, which in the 

year to May 2010 is expected to 



Then he became embroiled in the 1986 

Guinness scandal. Ronson served six months 

of a 12-month sentence in Ford Open Prison 

after being convicted of secret share buying 

agreements in connection with Guinness’s 

£2.8bn bid for the Distillers drinks company. 

At the same time, Heron nearly went 

bankrupt, a victim of the early 1990s property 

downturn. But Ronson emerged from prison 

and rebuilt the operation – something he 

makes much of in his 2009 autobiography. 

Heron International, the parent company, 

made a £22m profit and showed £434.5m 

net assets in 2008. Ronson earned a £12.9m 

salary in 2007. Outside Heron, Ronson has the 

Snax 24 petrol retailing business which made 

£1.9m profit on £197.2m sales in 2008, when 

it showed nearly £43m net assets. With strong 

cash reserves, it is easily worth £60m. 

Ronson revealed recently that over the 

past 25 to 30 years he has given away £35m to 

charities. On the back of this huge generosity 

we clip him back to £145m. 

make a £4.5m profit, is run by 

brothers Spencer and Clinton 

McCarthy, 46. 

They learnt all about the 

retirement home market from 

their father, John McCarthy. He 

set up McCarthy & Stone, which 

was floated on the stock market 

in 1982. 

He grew the business but left 

in 2004 after backing a first 

rebuffed bid for the operation by 

his sons. McCarthy stood down 

as chairman and sold his stake for 

£74.4m. His sons are very much 

in the driving seat at Churchill 

Retirement, which has recently 

been valued at about £120m. 

With the earlier sale proceeds 

and other assets, we value the 

McCarthy family at £140m. 

110 £136m 

Chris Marshall & Family 

Marshall holdings 

2009: £130m (+£6m) 

Profits fell in 2008 from £16.3m 

to £5m on sales down from 

£114.8m to £107.2m at Chris 

Marshall’s Leeds-based company, 

Marshall Holdings. 

Credited with being the most 

successful speculative developer 

in the region, Marshall, 71, runs 

the company started by his great 

grandfather in 1901 in a very 

low-key manner. 

Not that he needs publicity 

for when he does a deal the rest 

of the market sits up and takes 

notice. Marshall reckons that 

with a solid balance sheet and 

a good relationship with the 

banks, Marshall Holdings is well 

positioned to take advantage of 

any upturn. 

Despite the economic climate, 

Marshall Holdings’ net assets 

rose from £153.7m to just under 

£160m in 2008, demonstrating 

its resilience. It is easily worth 

£130m. 

We add £6m for past dividends 

to the Marshall family. 

111 £135m 

Anthony Brotherton-Ratcliffe 

& Family 

Croudace holdings and 

Maybrook 

2009: £125m (+£10m) 

Croudace Homes recovered in 

2009, moving from a £28.4m 

loss into a £1.5m profit. The 

Caterham-based company has 

more than £77.3m net assets. 

The planned £100m sale of the 

business had been abandoned in 

May 2008. 

The potential buyer, Hyde 

Housing Association, wanted 

to cut its price in the light of the 

credit crunch and subsequent 

collapse in the housing market.

FaMily BiG in MidlandS 

Horton Estates made £6.3m 

profit on £15.3m sales in the year 

to September 2009, but the net 

assets fell sharply from £149.8m 

to £116.2m. 

However, in the period from 

1996-2009, the family had £36m 

of dividends before tax. 

Peter Horton, 41, now 

leads the Horton family on the 

board of Hortons’ Estates as 

deputy chairman, following 

the retirement of Michael 

Croudace Homes is but 

one part of the property-tohousebuilding 

operation run by 

the Brotherton-Ratcliffe family. 

Croudace was actually founded 

in 1946 by Oliver Croudace 

and initially involved in minor 

contracting works. 

Jack Brotherton-Ratcliffe, 

who served in the RAF with 

distinction during the second 

world war, arrived as a partner 

and bought out the business 

entirely in 1950. He died in 

2009, aged 90. 

But the business still remains 

in family hands and is now run by 

his son Anthony, 60. 

Aside from Croudace Homes 

Group, the family also own 

Croudace Properties Group and 

Maybrook Properties, which are 

faring well. 

Between them, the two made 

around £8.3m profit in 2008 

when they showed over £89m 

net assets. 

In the light of the failed sale, 

we value the three businesses 

at around £120m. 

Other assets, including 

£35m of dividends from 

111 

£135m 

Peter Horton & Family 

hortons’ Estates 

2009: £160m (-£25m) 

Horton as chairman in 2008. 

The family-owned company 

remains one of the Midland’s 

largest property investment and 

development companies with a 

portfolio across the retail, leisure, 

office and industrial sectors. 

We value the company at 

£115m, slightly below the net 

asset figure, adding more than 

£20m for past dividends and 

other assets after tax to the 

Horton family. 

1993-2005, take the family to 

around £135m after tax. 

111 £135m 

John Guthrie & Family 

Broadland Properties 

2009: £120m (+£15m) 

A chartered surveyor by training, 

John Guthrie chairs Broadland 

Properties, the Scarborough 

property operation. 

The business, which was 

started in 1950, saw its profits fall 

to just £2.2m on £27.8m sales in 

the year to September 2009. But 

we value Broadland at £120m, 

slightly below its £127m net 

assets. 

Guthrie was the biggest 

winner from the May 2005 sale 

of the Merchant Retail business 

to Hong Kong billionaire, Li 

Ka-Shing, for £222m cash. 

Guthrie, 74, picked up 10% of 

the company “many years ago” 

when the shares were trading at 

just 9p. The takeover price valued 

each share at 197p, so Guthrie 

made a profit of around £22.3m 

on the deal. 

Other assets, such as White 

Rose Finance (£5m net assets) 

should take the Guthrie family to 


114 £132m 

Tony Bramall & Family 

Bramall Properties 

2009: £92m (+£40m) 

Tony Bramall spent £18.5m in 

February 2009 acquiring a Leeds 

office block using his own money 

and no debt. It was seen as a cashrich 

buyer taking advantage of 

falling property prices. 

Bramall’s money comes from 

the car trade. After training as 

an accountant and working in a 

Sheffield estate agency, he began 

his life-long association with the 

car trade in 1963 when he joined 

his father’s Sheffield-based car 

dealer, later taking over the reins. 

The company was floated in 

1978, and nine years later Bramall 

agreed his first takeover by Avis, 

collecting £45m for the family 

stake. 

But retirement did not beckon 

then and in 1990 Bramall put 

£1.5m into his second car 

venture, called CD Bramall. 

In January 2004, he sold the 

Harrogate-based operation to 

the much larger Pendragon in a 

£230m takeover, netting £76m 

for his stake. 

He raised eyebrows in the 

car trade in April 2006 with 

his third foray by paying £56m 

to acquire a stake in Lookers, 

Britain’s second biggest quoted 

car dealership. 

The move effectively scuppered 

rival Pendragon’s £245m bid 

for Lookers, which Bramall had 

opposed. That stake is now worth 

£46m. 

Bramall, 74, also had another 

car dealership, Bramall & Jones, 

that was sold for around £24m in 

March 2010. Bramall’s proceeds 

should have been £18m. 

We can also see another £34m 

of net assets in the 2009 accounts 

of Bramall Properties and 

Winterquay, two property and 

farming ventures. 

In all, the Bramall family is 

easily worth around £132m 

after tax and reinvestment of 

sale proceeds. 



115 £131m 

Julia Davey 

Angel Group 

2009: £131m (No change) 

Julia Davey was an estate 

agent before she branched out 

into the renovation and sale 

of apartments. After 10 years 

of hard work, she built the 

Angel Group, a London-based 

property operation, which has 

started to move into government 

accommodation contracts and, 

in parallel, the acquisition of 

properties and developments. 

Currently, the Angel Group 

is involved in major projects in 

London and other developments 

in Eastern Europe, Cyprus, and 

Israel. It is also building up a 

chain of smart boutique hotels 

and top level wedding venues. 

The group made a £2.9m 

profit on £31.5m sales in 

2008-09. 

It has £64.3m net assets and, 

with other companies such as the 

£7m Angelic Interiors, Davey’s 

business assets should be worth 


We add another £51m for her 

property and personal assets. 

With a planning application 

for a landmark 42-storey tower 

in London Docklands, known 



115 

David Pearl 

Structadene 

2009: £147m (-£16m) 

as Number One, at an advanced 

stage, we value Davey, 53, at 


117 £130m 

Steve & Clive Boultbee 

Brooks 

Boultbee 

2009: £200m (-£70m) 

Steve and Clive Boultbee Brooks 

sold off three Swedish shopping 

centres in June 2010 for £125m. 

The funds will be reinvested in 

central and northern Europe. 

The brothers – Steve, 49, a 

mechanical engineer and intrepid 

polar explorer, and Clive, 47, a 

chartered surveyor – grew up on 

a farm in Staffordshire, though 

their father was a stockbroker. 

They sold their cars in 1987 for 

£5,000 to take on the property 

world. They started by buying 

and redeveloping industrial space 

in Shoreditch, on the fringes 

of the City. In the 1990s, they 

developed office and industrial 

space in the Midlands. After 

narrowly surviving the property 

crash, they turned to retail. 

It is in the Nordic region that 

their company, Boultbee, has 

done really well in recent years. In 

2008, it sold Helsinki’s Kamppi 

shopping centre for around 

peARl’S StRAteGy pAyS off 

£131m 

David Pearl left school at 15 and spent four years packing cardigans into 

boxes to earn his living. He switched to property on the advice of an estate 

agent friend and, after two days, decided he liked the business. 

Last year, his Structadene business saw its profits rise from £4.5m to 

£23.6m thanks to a strategy of selling off assets. He became a frequent 

seller at auction and intends to reduce the size of the portfolio by as much as 

a third over the next five years to reduce Structadene’s £838m of debt. 

The company’s net assets came in at £127m, down again on the 

previous year. We value Structadene on the net asset figure. Pearl, 65, 

owns it all. 

We add £4m for his stakes in smaller companies such as the Good Vibes 

gym chain and his past salaries. 

£390m. The brothers have more 

than 80 companies, the biggest 

being Boultbee Construction with 

£126m net assets in 2008. when 

it made a big loss of over £43m. 

Smaller companies add another 


The banking crisis in late 

2008 forced the Boultbee Brooks 

to replace £80m of facilities 

previously provided by the failed 

Lehman Brothers. Cautiously, we 

value the pair at £130m, allowing 

for any debt in the business. 

117 £130m 

Cyril Dennis & Family 

Rumford Investments 

2009: £130m (No change) 

In March 2009, Dennis spent 

more than £23m acquiring the 

403-bedroom Le Méridien Beach 

Plaza hotel in Monte Carlo. 

In nearby Antibes, he is 

converting the former Le 

Provençal Hotel into 60 

apartments after it had been left 

empty by its previous owner for 

34 years. 

Dennis, 66, has a good pedigree 

in shrewd property deals. He sold 

a 3.3 acre site on the Isle of Dogs 

for £47m in September 2006. 

Nine years previously, he bought 

the site for just £2m.

Dennis has also secured 

approval for a development at 

Peruvian Wharf in the London 

Docklands at the fourth attempt. 

He has owned the site, which 

was recently touted as a possible 

location for the UK’s first giant 

casino, since 1999. A £67m 

development in Liverpool was also 

completed in 2006 by Dennis. 

He began his development 

work as the half owner of an 

Essex housebuilder, which he 

sold in 1987. After a spell advising 

the Berisford Group, he built up 

his own property business with a 

portfolio spread across the UK. 

In 1994, Dennis sold 75% of the 

portfolio to Legal & General for 

£116m, netting a profit of £50m 

in the process. 

Today, we can see around 50 

small companies, including 

Rumford Investments, held by 

the Dennis family and trusts. 

They have around £50m net 

assets. With the developments in 

the pipeline and the profit from 

the Isle of Dogs sale, we keep the 

Dennis family at £130m. 

Richest in the South West 


18 Prince Charles 680 

55 Harry Hyams 320 

55 Charlotte Townshend 320 

93 John Berkley & Family 160 

109 Clinton McCarthy & Family 140 

117 Steve & Clive Boultbee Brooks 130 

121 Sir Richard Sutton & Family 129 

140 Jonathan Hitchins & Family 112 

193 Nicholas Porter 70 

219 Dan McCauley 56 

228 Mark Kay 52 

117 £130m 

John Dunsdon & Family 

Coldunell 

2009: £130m (No change) 

Esher-based property company 

Coldunell saw its profits slump 

in 2008-09 from £5.8m to 

£2.8m on sales of £10.7m. 

Its net assets also fell from 

£125.2m to £112.2m. 

The business is run by John 

Dunsdon, 58, and owned by his 

family and trusts. Dunsdon had 

a surveying background but 

learned more from his property 

dealer father, who founded 

Coldunell in 1959. 

Dunsdon is renowned as one 

of the shrewdest operators in 

the property auctions market. 

He began his career attending 

auctions at the Fur Trade House 

in the City of London, the 

birthplace of modern auctions, 

before it moved to the Connaught 

Rooms in Bloomsbury in the 

early 1970s. 

We value the company below 

its net assets at £100m in today’s 

climate, adding £30m for 

other assets. 

117 £130m 

John Hindle & Family 

Brookhouse properties 

2009: £90m (+£40m) 

Brookhouse, a Sale-based 

industrial and residential 

developer, has worked on 

schemes from London Docklands 

to Glasgow. 

It is run by veteran property 

man John Hindle, 76, and has 

been in business since 1932. 

The company reports that it 

has a £240m property portfolio, 

net assets of £139m and a rent 

roll of £14m. But this is difficult 

to firm up as the parent company, 

Brookhouse Group, is owned by a 

Luxembourg-based trust. 

Nevertheless, it made a £4.3m 

profit and showed nearly £82m 

net assets in 2009. 

We assume it is owned by the 

Hindle family and, taking into 

account other company assets, we 

value the family on the £130m 

net asset figure given on the 

company website. 

121 £129m 

Sir Richard Sutton & Family 

Sir Richard Sutton’s Settled 

estates 

2009: £115m (+£14m) 

Profits at 73-year-old Sir Richard 

Sutton’s Settled Estates rose 

sharply in 2008-09 from £2.8m 

to £3.6m and sales were up 

slightly at £13.2m. 

Sutton inherited the title from 

his father in 1981 and runs the 

property-to-farming group. 

The Suttons have valuable 

Steve Boultbee Brooks 

Clive Boultbee Brooks 

PÄl Hansen PÄl Hansen 

acreage in Lincolnshire, 

Somerset, London’s Park Lane 

and the United States. 

Sutton will also play a crucial 

role in Grimsby Town Football 

Club’s plans for a new £15m 

stadium as it will be built on land 

he currently owns. 

We value the estate on its 

£123.6 net assets. adding £5m 

for past dividends and other 

assets. In 2008-09, the company 

gave the Conservative Party 

£2,800. 

122 £127m 

Mathias & Miriam Kraus 

pall Mall Investments (london) 

2009: £100m (+£27m) 

Mathias and Miriam Kraus, both 

68, own Pall Mall Investments 

(London), a North London-based 

property group, which made a 

£908,000 profit in 2008-09, 

and has net assets which fell from 

£155.4m to £125.6m. 

But with the property 

downturn easing, we value the 

business on the net asset figure. 

We add £1.4m for past dividends 

to the Kraus family. 

123 £126m 

John Seddon & Family 

Seddon Group 

2009: £85m (+£41m) 

Seddon Property Services landed 

a £19.5m maintenance contract 

for a social housing provider in 

February 2010. 

This explains why the company 

is on a roll, doubling its turnover 

and taking on 400 more staff 

since 2004. 

It is part of the Cheshirebased 

Seddon Group which 

was founded in 1897 by two 

Lancashire bricklayers. 

The modern Seddon Group 

was created in 1957 and it is 

now run by the third and fourth 

generations of the family. 

It is also involved in property 

development and golf club 

management, while Inspired 

Developments is the group’s 

regeneration division. 

The first non-family member 

now chairs the company but John 

Seddon, 75, is here as the senior 



family member representing the 

family and trusts which own the 

company. 

In 2009, the Seddon Group 

made an £8m profit on £253m 

sales. We value the company on 

its £85m net assets figure. 

The Seddon family also own 

Seddon Properties, which showed 

£41.5m net assets and turned in 


2009. 

With other assets, the wider 

Seddon family should easily be 

worth £126m. 

124 £125m 

Michael & Robert Slowe 

J leon 

2009: £95m (+£30m) 

Cousins Michael, 75, and Robert 

Slowe, 73, are directors of J 

Leon, a family-owned property 

investment and holding company. 

Based in London, the company 

and family are very low key. In 

2009-10, the firm made a £4.3m 

profit on £6.7m sales and showed 

record net assets of £177m. 

With low borrowings and 

a strong balance sheet, the 

company is easily worth £120m 

in today’s market. 

We add £5m for dividends 

and other assets to the wider 

Slowe family. 

125 £122m 

Michael Shanly 

Michael Shanly 

2009: £82m (+£40m) 

In January 2010, the Michael 

Shanly Charitable Trust stepped 

in to ensure that an outdoor 

activities centre costing £3m 

could be developed in Marlow, 

the Thames-side town. 

The charity also helped the 

local Age Concern charity with a 

new kitchen. 

The Thames Valley and 

Buckinghamshire is fertile 

territory for Shanly, 64, who 

founded the upmarket Michael 

Shanly housebuilding operation 

in 1970. 

He chairs and owns at least 

13 significant but separate 

building or development 




His main operation is Sorbon 

Investments, which made a 


2008. It has £60.8m net assets. 

But other Shanly companies, 

including Sorbon Homes, add 

around £79m further net assets 

in 2008. 

We value the businesses 

slightly below the total net asset 

figure at £110m, and add £12m 

for Shanly’s past salaries and 

other assets. 

126 £120m 

Andrew Creighton 

William ewart properties 

2009: £90m (+£30m) 

A former plumber, Andrew 

Creighton has become one of 

Northern Ireland’s leading 

developers, with a 50% stake in 

William Ewart Properties. 

With partner Frank 

Boyd, a former electrician, 

Creighton came to prominence 

in 2002 through one of the 

biggest property deals in 

Belfast’s history. 

The pair spent £90m 

buying out the Northern 

Ireland property holdings of 

Dublin-based Dunloe Ewart, 

gaining around 12 properties, 

including Lanyon Place, the 

Howden Sirocco site, Windsor 

House, and three London-based 

properties, along with an area 

around Cathedral Way which 

has been touted as a new retail 

extension. 

This formed the basis of 

William Ewart which, in 2008, 

showed £232.4m net assets and 

a £3.8m profit. 

The company began marketing 

its three London shopping 

centres for £300m earlier this 

year and has sold one – next to 

Victoria Station – to Network 

Rail for £95m. 

We can see other companies 

owned by Creighton, including 

Hazelhaw Properties with 

£1.8m net assets in 2009, 

and Dorgan Properties with 

£1.1m net assets. In all, more 

than £125m of net assets are 

attributable to him. 

But cautiously, we value 

Creighton, 49, at £120m in 

today’s climate. 

pRopeRty 

tyCoon 

WItH ARt 

At HeARt 

126 £120m 

David Roberts 

edinburgh House estates 

2009: £105m (+£15m) 

David Roberts sold the majority of his UK portfolio in 2004 

and headed to Germany. Aside from property, Roberts 

is best known as the man behind the philanthropic David 

Roberts Art Foundation in London. 

A former chief executive of Bourne End Properties, 

he now runs Edinburgh House Estates which, despite its 

name, is a London-based property operation. Its parent, 

Edinburgh House Estates (Holdings), made a £1.3m profit 

on turnover of £52.9m in 2008, when its net assets fell 

from £165m to £141.2m. Roberts has a near 78% stake 

worth £110m in the current climate. His art collection 

and other assets, such as a stake in Bawtry Properties, 

should take Roberts, 54, to £120m easily. 

126 £120m 

Fawn & India Rose James & 

Family 

Soho estates 

2009: £120m (No change) 

Fawn James inherited the bulk 

of the property fortune owned by 

her grandfather, Paul Raymond, 

who started out on his path 

to riches through top-shelf 

magazines and Soho clip joints. 

Raymond’s property business 

grew as he moved into upmarket 

Kensington and Notting Hill, 

but he never failed to buy up any 

building in Soho that came on the 

market.

Soho Estates Holdings, the 

main Raymond company, 

made £16m profit on £26.3m 

sales in 2008. It has £372.8m 

net assets. 

In addition, there are £27.3m 

net assets in the magazine 

business, Paul Raymond 

Publications. 

Raymond was always 

determined that Fawn and India 

Rose James, the daughters of 

his late daughter Debbie, would 

inherit his estate. His will left 

£75m to his granddaughters. 

But with the huge asset base in 

Soho, most commentators think 

there is a lot more tucked away for 

the family. 

Cautiously, however, we still 

value the granddaughters and 

family at £120m until we can 

see more. 

Fawn, 24, having finished a 

degree in social anthropology at 

St Andrews University, became 

a director of the Raymond 

companies in 2007, but India 

Rose is still too young to join 

the business. 

126 £120m 

Gerard Versteegh & Family 

Gerard Versteegh Holdings 

2009: £120m (No change) 

Gerard Versteegh has been 

involved in the London property 

market since his mid-20s. 

The 50-year-old low-key 

Swede started managing 

properties for Scandinavian 

companies in the UK through 

his London-based property 

consultancy, Commercial Estates 

Management. 

Today, we can see some 

asset-rich companies where 

he is a director, led by Gestrix, 

which showed £191m net assets 

in 2006. 

Gestrix showed only modified 

accounts in 2007, but £12.7m 

profit. It also shows only modified 

accounts now, but its parent had 

£4m assets in 2009. 

Another dissolved Versteegh 

company – Anglo Scandanavian 

Estates – showed more than 


In the current climate, we 

keep the Versteegh family at 


VeteRAn 

StIll In tHe 

deAl MIx 

130 £119m 

Elliott Bernerd 

Chelsfield 

2009: £219m (-£100m) 

Chelsfield Partners, the property company of Elliott 

Bernerd and another property veteran, Sir Stuart Lipton, 

lost £101.3m in 2008. Chelsfield, with a raft of heavyweight 

backers, also disclosed that at 31 December 2008 it was in 

breach of certain financial covenants on £155.7m of loans. 

But the slight improvement in the property world 

since the accounts were audited in September 2009 has 

eased the pressure and the loans do not need to be repaid 

immediately. It was the heavyweight backing of Qatar 

which enabled Elliott Bernerd, 65, to beat off competition 

to land the American embassy site in London’s Grosvenor 

Square in early 2009. When the Americans leave for a new 

embassy south of the river, the old site will be redeveloped 

in a £500m scheme. 

In March, Chelsfield teamed up with London & Regional 

to buy a 50% stake in Elizabeth House in SE1 for £85m, 

and in June it worked with Olayan Group to buy £580m 

of Knightbridge assets. Bernerd, who has been fighting 

cancer, previously ran another Chelsfield operation, which 

he founded in 1986, floated on the stock market in 1993 and 

then took private in May 2004, pocketing £45m from selling 

part of his stake. He reinvested the rest, worth around 

£56m, in the company. Five months later, Bernerd sold the 

business, turning his £56m into £82m. He kept the rights to 

the name Chelsfield and naturally started again. 

Bernerd also has the separate Chelsfield Investments 

International, which is involved in large projects in Italy 

and Gibraltar. In December 2005, he also took a one-third 

stake in a £400m European property fund and acquired a 

minority stake in 47 cinemas in Poland. 

But in the current climate and after the hefty losses 

at Chelsfield Partners, we cut Bernerd back to £120m, 

lopping off a further £1m for his generous donation to 

the Saving Faces charity. 

130 £119m 

Jeff Smith 

proudreed 

2009: £65m (+£54m) 

Smith’s main wealth is in a 

property company, Proudreed, 

which he owns jointly with 

Caspar Macdonald-Hall. 

The firm made £12.8m profit 

on £31.8m sales in 2009 and 

has more than £130m net assets. 

Smith’s stake there should be 

worth £65m. 

We add £5m for other assets 

such as his Hampshire stud farm 

and string of racehorses. 

Smith also had a £24m stake 

in AIM engineering, which 

makes aircraft seats and safety 

systems. Profits soared to £15.1m 

in 2009. AIM was subject to a 

management buy-out in June 

2010. In all, 64-year-old Smith is 

worth £119m. 

132 £118m 

Bill Gredley & Family 

Unex Corporation 

2009: £95m (+£23m) 

Bill Gredley is well liked by the 

pensioners in his neck of Suffolk. 

Every Christmas for the past 

seven years, he has treated 700 

pensioners to a three-course 

lunch. He also takes several 

hundred to Great Yarmouth on 

an annual summer day. 

But it is racing where he has 

made his name in the wider 

world. His silks – yellow, black 

and yellow striped sleeves, 

white cap – are among the most 

familiar on the turf, and were 

carried to victoryin both the Oaks 

and St Leger by his famous horse 

User Friendly. 

Gredley, 77, is also a shrewd 

property developer. His Unex 

Group operation showed a 

£10.6m loss in 2008-09 when its 

net assets fell from £116.9m to 

£102.7m. We value the company, 

owned by Gredley and his family 

trusts, on the net assets. 

Gredley’s racing interests, 

a £13m dividend in 2002-03 

and smaller companies we can 

see with net assets of £2m, take 

him and his family to around 

£118m after tax. 



132 £118m 

Anthony Khalastchi & Family 

flodrive Holdings 

2009: £105m (+£13m) 

Property investor Tony 

Khalastchi sold two DIY store 

sites in February 2010 for a 

combined total of £17.88m. 

In October 2009, he sold eight 

properties at auction – most of 

which were in London – at prices 

he says he could not have fetched 

two years ago. “In all my years 

in property I have never seen 

anything like this,” he said. 

“The last few weeks have been 

crazy. I can get more than my 

money back on the well-let, 

well-located London properties 

that I bought at auction at the 

height of the market.” 

And in July it was revealed that 

Khalastchi, 49, was bidding to 

buy Joseph Ackerman’s £90m 

New York portfolio of banks and 

offices. His family’s two property 

groups, Flodrive and Strandpark 

Properties, showed £103.4m net 

assets in their 2008-09 accounts. 

In December 2003, Khalastchi, 

along with the low-key Pears 

family, bought the 252-strong 

Punch Pubs’ portfolio for £57m. 

In October 2004, they sold 38 of 

the pubs, netting £15.2m. 

136 



We value the businesses at the 

net asset figure, adding £15m for 

other Khalastchi family assets. 

132 £118m 

David Kirch 

Channel Hotels & properties 

2009: £118m (No change) 

Jersey-based property investor 

David Kirch has often shown a 

good sense of timing. Early in 2008 

he sold a portfolio of properties to 

Irish investors for £48m. 

In 2006 he was reputed to 

have made £2m in two months 

dealing in the shares of UK Coal. 

It shows that as a pensioner 

himself, Kirch has not retired 

from what he likes best – 

investing in companies. 

We did see £16.5m-worth of 

stakes in quoted companies held 

by his company, Channel Hotels 

& Properties, but these are no 

longer recorded, which may mean 

a sale. But that is just the tip of 

the Kirch fortune. 

In 2004, he took over Property 

Acquisition & Management, an 

investment trust with a £200m 

property portfolio, in a £69.5m 

deal. Such moves are typical for 

the shrewd Kirch, who has a nose 

for an undervalued asset. 

He made his fortune in London 

RICHeS BUIlt on RUBBeR 

Sir Tom Farmer 

Morston Assets 

2009: £110m (+£5m) 

residential property in the 1960s, 

selling his last properties in 1988 

for £30m. We have not seen 

any accounts recently but after 

that deal, the net assets rose to 

nearly £85m. 

Kirch has been involved in a 

bewildering array of investments 

and takeovers, ranging from 

leisure to health care. But even 

with recent deal-making and 

asset sales, 74-year-old Kirch 

cannot be immune from the steep 

fall in asset values. As a result, we 

keep him at £120m. 

132 £118m 

Stuart Monk & Family 

Jomast 

2009: £99m (+£19m) 

Stockton-based Jomast saw its 

profits come in at £3.9m on 

£13m sales in 2008-09 when its 

net assets rose from £116.5m to 

£121.1m. 

The company, run by Stuart 

Monk, 61, a leading local developer, 

recently submitted a planning 

application to Stockton Council 

to bring back the famous Globe 

Theatre as a top live performance 

and entertainment venue with an 

audience capacity of 2,500. 

It is already working hard 

to transform the waterfront 

£115m 

Sir Tom Farmer recently made £8.5m by selling a stake in 

KBC Holdings, a managed office business. He is best known 

in Scotland for owning 90% of Hibs, the Edinburgh football 

team, but it is tyres that made Farmer his first fortune. He 

founded the Kwik Fit chain of garages in 1971, later selling 

the company to Ford in 1999 for £1bn. 

Farmer netted £78m for his stake. Yet he was savvy 

enough to retain the freeholds on many Kwik Fit 

properties, generating £1m a year in rents. Farmer has 

not neglected business and recently sold choice Edinburgh 

properties for £2.4m. 

He cast a slide rule over UK Coal, before abandoning 

plans for a bid. Meanwhile, his development activities 

continue apace. In February 2009, he bought a Newcastle 

business park for a cut-price £20.25m. 

We can see half a dozen small property companies 

controlled by Farmer or his trusts with around £17.5m of 

net assets. In the current climate, Farmer, 70, should now 

be worth £115m after tax.

at Hartlepool Marina after a 

£100m development was given 

the green light in June 2008. 

Planning permission has been 

granted on plans submitted 

by Jomast to redevelop a 

4.65 hectare site at Jackson 

Dock. Trincomalee Wharf 

will include a luxury four-star 

hotel, restaurants, shops, office 

accommodation and waterside 

apartments. 

The prestigious 470,000 sq 

ft scheme will link the marina 

with the town centre and is seen 

by many as the final piece of the 

jigsaw for Hartlepool Marina. 

Jomast is also focusing on 

the Newcastle office market 

with plans for a 30,000 sq ft 

development to the north of the 

city centre. We value Jomast 

slightly below the reported net 

assets at £115m. Monk and his 

family trusts own it all. We add 

another £3m for other assets and 

stakes in separate companies, 

including Bandoffice. 

136 £115m 

Heinrich Feldman & Family 

Inremco 26 

2009: £105m (+£10m) 

Feldman is a low-key London 

property owner and trader with 

more than 50 directorships to 

his name. His main holding 

company is Inremco 26, which 

was incorporated in 1983. It 

made a £2.7m profit on £17.2m 

sales in 2008-09 when its net 

assets were £107m. We can also 

see Feldman stakes in a host of 

smaller property firms worth 


With other assets, we reckon 

Feldman, 75, is easily worth 

£115m in today’s climate. 

138 £114m 

Jim McGettigan 

McGettigan 

2009: £195m (-£81m) 

Jim McGettigan, the veteran 

Donegal hotelier, opened an 

£80m hotel in Dubai in May. 

The Bonnington Jumeirah 

Lakes Towers hotel and 

apartment complex has more 

than 200 bedrooms and 250 

Richest in the North East 


71 Alastair & Michael Powell 209 

132 Stuart Monk & Family 118 

191 Jeremy Middleton 72 

208 William Rankin & Family 61 

flats. McGettigan owns the 

Bonnington Group in London 

and property interests via his 

McGettigan company in Dublin. 

He sold The Parliament Hotel 

in Dublin for around £16m and 

the Bonnington Hotel in London 

for £74m. 

McGettigan started his career 

as a first-class waiter on the 

Queen Elizabeth. His business 

empire began when he returned 

from London with wife Patsy in 

1964 and purchased a pub on 

Dublin’s Queen Street. From 

that one pub he has built the 

McGettigan Group, which 

includes Olten Investments and 

Regan Developments, and the 

£112m Regency Hotel Group. 

In 2005, McGettigan trumped 

retail giants Tesco among others 

to purchase the art deco former 

Gillette headquarters in west 

London. The Bonnington Group 

went from a £21m profit to a 

£5.8m loss in 2009 and showed 

£21.4m net assets. 

In all, McGettigan, 73, should 

be worth £114m after tax in 

today’s difficult market. 

139 £113m 

Eric Gadsden 

We Black 

2009: £113m (No change) 

Eric Gadsden’s Chesham-based 

company, WE Black, went 

from a £16m profit in 2007 to 

a £4.5m loss on £15.9m sales 

in 2008. The developer still 

has a rock-solid balance sheet, 

though its net assets fell £5m 

to £90.5m. It should be worth 

Rich in the Channel Isles 


5 Sir David & Sir Frederick 1,800 

Barclay 

41 Clarke Family 400 

132 David Kirch 118 

232 Malcolm Hall 50 

£70m in today’s difficult climate. 

Gadsden, as owner, took little 

out of the company in either 

dividends or salaries. He has past 

stakes or current ones in quoted 

companies worth around £4m, 

including a £3.5m holding in 

Michelmersh Brick, a quoted 

brick maker he chairs. 

There are another £41m of net 

assets in Three Rivers Property 

Investments and Church Cottage 

Investments. With his racing 

interests added, Gadsden, 65, 

should be worth at least £113m in 

this difficult market. 

140 £112m 

Peter Dawson & Family 

Consolidated property 

Wilmslow 

2009: £78m (+£34m) 

Property developer Peter Dawson 

runs Consolidated Property 

Wilmslow , an Alderley Edge 

developer. Consolidated saw its 

net assets rise from £49.6m to 

£50.9m in 2008-09. 

We value the business, owned 

by Dawson and his family trusts, 

on the net asset figure. Dawson 

is also a director of the separate 

Gemsupa, which showed £58.5m 

net assets in the same period. 

It is worth its net assets and is 

owned by the Jensal Settlement. 

Dawson, 58, was the settler and 

trustee of this trust. As a result, 

we assume that the Dawson 

family is the ultimate beneficiary. 

Taking into account other assets, 

we value the family at £112m. 

140 £112m 

Jonathan Hitchins & Family 

Robert Hitchins 

2009: £90m (+£22m) 

A new Cheltenham Office Park 

creating 1,000 jobs is planned by 

the Robert Hitchins Group. The 

Cheltenham-based developer 

is building business parks, new 

villages and other developments 

in Wales and the South West. 

But it is not immune from 

the downturn and, in 2008-09, 

profits at the Robert Hitchins 

Group fell from £8.2m to £1.4m 

on sales which were also down 

£12m at £26.4m. 



HAppy WItH 

tHeIR lot 

Started more than 45 years 

ago by the late Robert Hitchins, 

who bought up large tracts of 

Gloucestershire very cheaply 

after the second world war, the 

company has developed more 

than 14,000 houses and over 

1,500,000 sq ft of commercial 

property. 

It has nearly £87m net assets 

and a strong balance sheet but, in 

the current climate, we value it at 

that level. 

We add another £25m after 

tax to the Hitchins family for 

other assets, including a £40m 

dividend paid out in 2003-04. 

142 £110m 

William Ainscough & Family 

langtree Group 

2009: £120m (-£10m) 

Bill Ainscough’s Langtree 

Group recently invited tenders 

for its £40m stadium project 

with St Helens Rugby League 

Club and Tesco, due for 

completion in early 2011. In 

1973, he founded the Wainhomes 

housebuilding business. 

After merging with two other 

builders in 1989, he floated 

the enlarged group five years 

later. Fed up with stock market 

indifference to the company, 

Ainscough took Wainhomes 



private in 1999. Within two 

years, he had sold the company, 

netting £44m for his stake. His 

family owned most of Langtree 

Group with nearly £71m of net 

assets in 2008-09. 

It now owns and manages 

4m sq ft of commercial 

property accommodating more 

than 800 tenants. The portfolio 

produces a rental income of 

around £15m a year. 

But his housing ambitions 

have not ended. Ainscough, 62, 

bought the old Wain Homes 

south western operation and the 

renamed Wain Group, which 

operates in the South West. It 

made a £5.3m loss on £61m 

sales in 2008-09. 

Wain Group has £29m assets 

and is worth that sum. 

With a private jet, a yacht 

and a flotilla of classic cars, 

Ainscough and his family is 

worth at least £110m. 

142 £110m 

Martin Birrane 

peer Group 

2009: £109m (+£1m) 

Martin Birrane is keen to get 

his Lola racing car operation on 

the grid for Formula One. He 

was beaten to a slot for the 2010 

season but is looking to get Lola 

142 £110m 

Robert Bourne & Sally Green 

Happybadge projects 

2009: £110m (No change) 

Property entrepreneur Robert Bourne made his first fortune with the 

Local London property group, which was floated on the stock market 

in 1986 worth £6m. 

Three years later, it was sold for £110m in a takeover. The Bourne 

family made £16m. 

Since then Bourne, 60, has built up and sold stakes in companies 

such as Ex-Lands and Clubhaus. 

He was a bidder for the London Dome and now owns Happybadge 

Projects. Its net assets came in at £61.6m in 2009, when it made a 

£1.4m profit. 

Bourne has a £10m flat in Mayfair which he bought as an 

investment in 2002. His Bourne Capital investment operation also 

sold a luxury Park Lane block for £100m in 2006. 

His wife, Sally Green, 56, is chief executive of Old Vic Productions 

and co-producer of Billy Elliot The Musical. 

We value Happybadge at £63m and add £47m for other Bourne and 

Green assets. 

back into the sport as a team for 

the first time since 1997. 

It was after that year’s 

disastrous campaign that Birrane 

bought Lola from the receiver. 

Lola Group made an £821,000 

loss on £21.4m sales in 2008-09 

from its activities making chassis 

for racing cars. 

The company is developing 

new markets and diversifying 

into different industries. 

It now supplies drone aircraft, 

space vehicle parts, antennae, 

radar and communication 

systems, aircraft parts, and 

structures for powerboats and 

sailing yachts. 

As a result, Lola now has 

a strong order book and the 

financial performance is 

improving. 

An Irish property magnate 

from Co Mayo, Birrane started 

dealing in property in the 1960s 

through his Peer Group. 

In 2008-09, its net assets fell 

sharply from £97.9m to £70.5m, 

and we value Peer at £90m in 

this climate. 

Birrane, 75, also owns the 

Mondello Park racing track 

in Co Kildare which, after 

significant investment, hosts 

international race meetings. 

With other interests, including 

Lola, Birrane should be worth 

at least £110m.

142 £110m 

Robin Clark & Family 

taylor Clark 

2009: £86m (+£24m) 

Taylor Clark, the London-based 

property, farming, hotels and 

investment group, turned in a 

loss of £11.5m on £13.6m sales 

in 2008-09. 

The effects of the economic 

crisis would have been much 

worse on the group but for 

its strong cash reserves and 

the defensive nature of its 

investments. 

The business is largely owned 

by the Clark family led by Robin 

Clark, the 72-year-old son of 

a prominent 1960s property 

developer. 

We value it on its its £153.4m 

net assets. 

The Underwood Trust, a 

charity, has a 19.5% stake, which 

leaves the Clark family’s stake 

worth around £110m. 

142 £110m 

Eric Grove 

Catesby 

2009: £108m (+£2m) 

Eric Grove’s Catesby Property 

Group is developing Firstpoint 

– a £200m business and retail 

park near the M18 in Doncaster. 

Catesby specialises in such 

brownfield sites and had around 

£15m of net assets in 2007 when 

it turned in a useful £9m profit 

on £40.4m of sales. The company 

is also developing a £29m 

student housing-led mixed use 

scheme in Camden Lock, NW1. 

The son of a West Midlands 

blacksmith, Grove started 

Canberra, a Midlands 

housebuilder in 1968, 

specialising in high-quality 

houses. He sold the business to 

Alfred McAlpine in 1988 mainly 

for McAlpine shares, which in 

turn netted him £40m. 

He has become a serious 

property developer with retail 

parks in the Midlands, residential 

developments in Jersey and a 

stake in a property investment 

operation. 

Recently, he has sold well 

over 1.2m sq ft of warehousing 

and distribution centres. In the 

current market, Catesby should 

be worth £30m. With other 

stakes, cash and assets, Grove, 80, 

is worth around £110m today. 

142 £110m 

Jack Morris & Family 

Business design Centre 

2009: £95m (+£15m) 

In 2008-09, the Business Design 

Centre Group made a record 

£7.7m profit on £19.9m sales. Its 

net assets fell to £95.5m and we 

value the business on that figure. 

Jack Morris’s late father, Sam, 

was originally an “oyster-opener” 

in a City fish restaurant, but later 

built his business, City Industrial, 

into a leading shopfitting group 

in Britain and worldwide. 

Sam Morris’s shrewd move 

came in 1981 when he rescued 

the old Royal Agricultural Hall 

in Islington and turned the huge 

derelict “Aggie” into the Business 

Design Centre at a cost of £12m. 

The Morris family also owned 

Earls Court and Olympia which 

they sold in 2004, making 

around £25m from the sale after 

debt had been stripped out. 

In all, after allowing for tax on 

that deal, the wider Morris family 

should be worth £110m. 

148 £107m 

Simon Karimzadeh & Family 

eskar International 

2009: £107m (No change) 

In October 2006, Simon 

Karimzadeh snapped up a 

£1.13bn European property 

portfolio sold by a Swiss hedge 

fund. Karimzadeh’s late father 

started Eskar International, 

a London-based property 

trading-to-processing group, 

more than 40 years ago. 

Its activities spanned leather 

tanneries in the Middle and 

Far East, and dried fruit and 

nut processing plants, as well 

as trade in iron and steel in the 

1970s and 1980s. 

Since then, it has focused on 

property. 

Karimzadeh, 48, was in the 

news in the property pages in 

2004 over his efforts to buy 

Grade I Listed Apethorpe 

Hall in Northamptonshire for 

£3.1m. 

He was gazumped by the 

government in the shape of the 

culture department. 

The Karimzadeh family owns 

all of Eskar, which showed 

nearly £286m net assets in 

2008-09. We still value Eskar at 

£100m, adding £7m for other 

assets to the Karimzadeh family. 

149 £105m 

Frank Burke & Family 

Bdl 

2009: £105m (No change) 

Cabretta Holdings, a Londonbased 

construction company, 

made £1.4m profit on £46.4m 

sales in 2009. 

It has £10.1m of net assets and 

is the parent for the BDL Group, 

run by 62-year-old Irishman 

Frank Burke. 

Burke’s family also owns 

Farmglade, a property company 

with around £21m net assets 

in 2009. In this climate, we cut 

Burke back to £105m. 

150 £104m 

Albert Hay & Family 

Capital & City 

2009: £92m (+£12m) 

Chartered surveyor, Albert 

Hay, 63, and his family own 

the Mayfair Property Group, 

Capital & City PLC, plus 57.5% 

of its sister group Capital & City 

Properties. 

Earlier this year, Capital & City 

found a keen buyer for a block on 

Charlotte Street. 

The building, which includes 

three restaurants, was sold 

to Standard Life Investments 

in March for £19.1m, a 5.6% 

yield. 

Capital & City also had three 

other West End buildings on the 

market. 

Three of the Hay family’s 

companies had £92.4m net 

assets in 2009. The family 

stake is worth £64m in the 

current climate. Other assets 

and property investments add 

another £40m, taking the Hay 

family to around £104m. 



151 £103m 

Rashid & Aziz Tayub 

Crown Crest 

New entry 

The Tayub family owns the Crown 

Crest distribution and property 

operation based in Leicester. It 

was started in 1977 by Rashid 

Tayub after the family came to 

Leicester from Malawi, East 

Africa. It is now run by his brother, 

Aziz, the managing director. 

The three separate Tayub 

companies we can see, led by 

Crown Crest Group, made a total 

of nearly £17m profit on £257.6m 

sales in 2008-09. With nearly 

£72m net assets, they are worth 

perhaps £100m in today’s climate. 

Collectively, we value the family, 

led by Aziz, 55, and Rashid, 62, 

at £103m with past salaries and 

other assets, as the Tayubs take 

little out of the businesses. 

152 £100m 

Anton Bilton & Family 

Raven 

2009: £90m (+£10m) 

Raven Russia, the property group 

co-founded by deputy chairman 

Anton Bilton, floated on AIM 

in 2005 after raising £153m. 

In August, it moved to the main 

market to raise its profile. 

It has a completed portfolio of 

around 11m sq ft of warehouses in 

Russia, which were valued at the 

end of last year at $879m. Raven 

Russia’s market value is now 

around £266m. In June 2009, 

the company swallowed its former 

parent company, Raven Mount. 

Bilton, 46, had an £11m stake 

in Raven Mount, while his Raven 

Russia stake is now worth around 

£30m. Property is in Bilton’s 

blood. He is the grandson of the 

late Percy Bilton, whose own 

quoted property group was taken 

over by rival Slough Estates in 

November 1998 for £270m. 

The Bilton family’s 29.4% 

stake was held via Glenhazel 

Investment Trust and was worth 

£79.4m. With the wider family 

wealth added to Anton Bilton’s 

own assets, including a stake in 

Chelsea’s KX Gym, the Bilton 

family is worth £100m. 



RitBLat 

SnapS up 

diStReSSed 

aSSetS 

152 £100m 

Sir John Ritblat & Family 

British Land 

2009: £90m (+£10m) 

The Ritblat family’s Delancey property operation has been 

snapping up distressed assets of late. Banks are handing 

over huge swathes of property to Delancey to manage, 

drawing on Sir John Ritblat’s expertise in the property 

market. 

He was chairman of British Land from 1970 to 2006, 

when he retired. But Ritblat’s retirement lasted just two 

weeks and he resurfaced in early January 2007 when 

he joined forces with younger son Jamie, to spearhead a 

£2.6bn property investment fund. 

Ritblat, 75, sold most of his stake in British Land for 

£57m just before he retired, but retained a £10m stake. 

Delancey made a £9.3m profit on £24m sales in 2008-09. 

The Ritblats should easily be worth £100m. 

152 £100m 

Simon Clarke & Family 

St Modwen 

2009: £120m (-£20m) 

Property group St Modwen, 

which has started work for the 

proposed £750m development of 

the old Rover site in Birmingham, 

suffered a £101.6m loss in the year 

to November 2009 as it cut the 

value of its properties. 

St Modwen has developed 

a reputation as a regeneration 

specialist. It was co-founded by Sir 

Stan Clarke, who died in 2004. He 

left £138.9m in his will. His son 

Simon, 45, sits on the St Modwen 

board looking after the Clarke 

family interests. The family stake 

is now worth £59m. 

The family also owned a stake 

in Northern Racing, the biggest 

racecourse owner after the Jockey 

Club. It was sold in May 2007 to 

the Reuben brothers for £65.9m. 

Past sale proceeds and other 

assets add £35m, taking the 

family to £100m. 

152 £100m 

Andrew Rosenfeld 

Minerva 

2009: £100m (No change) 

Andrew Rosenfeld, the former 

chief executive of the quoted 

property group Minerva, keeps a 

low profile from his Geneva base 

where he has set up Air Capital 

– AIR are his initials – funded 

initially by his own £100m 

fortune. The fund is investing in 

distressed property. 

Rosenfeld, 48, has devoted 

much of his time to charitable 

works. We value him on the 

£100m he has for investments. 

156 £95m 

Sir David Garrard 

Minerva 

2009: £95m (No change) 

Sir David Garrard, the son of an 

upholsterer from Stamford Hill, 

went into property after leaving 

school at 16. In 1955 he joined an 

estate agency and never looked 

back. 

He rose to prominence in the 

late 1980s at a company called 

Land Investors, which was sold 

to the Berger family for around 

£180m. 

With Andrew Rosenfeld he 

launched Minerva, which floated 

on the stock market in 1996. It 

became a stock market star with 

big developments in the City and 

Croydon. 

In March 2005, Garrard, 71, 

stood down as chairman and left 

the business. His family trusts 

sold £37m worth of shares at the 

time. Other assets take him to 

around £95m.

156 £95m 

Tony Pidgley 

Berkeley 

New entry 

Housebuilder Berkeley is riding 

the recession in pretty good 

shape. But in spite of a strong 

balance sheet, cost-cutting 

and a return to buying land for 

future sales, the Cobham-based 

operation has not been immune 

from what chairman Tony Pidgley 

describes as the “most turbulent 

market ever”. It is valued at just 

over £1.1bn, less than half its 

value in mid-2007. 

Pidgley, 63, made his reputation 

in the early 1990s when he sold his 

land bank at the top of the market, 

and cherry-picked the best sites 

back for a fraction of their price. 

The former Barnado’s boy has 

a stake in Berkeley now worth 

£57m. He sold £21m worth of 

shares in 2009. But previous 

salaries, dividends and his share 

of bonuses take him to £95m. 

156 £95m 

Dick Watson & Family 

Keepmoat 

2009: £85m (+£10m) 

Regeneration specialist Keepmoat 

was sold in 2007 to a management 

team in a £783m deal. Scots-born 

Dick Watson, 68, who was a 

director, had an 18.26% stake. 

Allowing for any tax on the sale 

proceeds, we value Watson’s stake 

at £90m. Past dividends take the 

Watson family to £95m. 

159 £93m 

Patrick Doherty & Family 

Harcourt developments 

2009: £200m (-£107m) 

Donegal developer Patrick 

Doherty’s most high-profile work 

is the £700m redevelopment of 

the Harland & Wolff shipyard, 

where the Titanic was built. 

Doherty has given most of 

Harcourt to his children. In 2008, 

it lost £20.9m, but it has nearly 

£128m net assets. Doherty, 68, 

also has hotel, transport and 

property assets in the Caribbean. 

He is worth around £93m. 

160 £90m 

John Hitchcox 

Yoo 

New entry 

The son of an architect who also 

kept a smallholding in Sussex, 

John Hitchcox is now a leading 

property entrepreneur. 

He began buying, renovating 

and selling homes in the UK in 

the early 1980s. He co-founded 

Manhattan Loft Corporation in 

the 1990s, selling out to partner 

Harry Handelsman. He then 

formed a development and design 

group called Yoo with designer 

Phillipe Stark in 1999. 

Hitchcox, 49, owns about 

two-thirds of the company, which 

is working on about £3bn of 

developments in locations ranging 

from New York and Sydney to 

Buenos Aires and Hong Kong. 

Before the recession the 

business was worth around 

£170m but its value fell and in 

2008, with its design business 

alone valued at £64m. That is 

around half the overall business 

which should be worth in total 

around £120m. Hitchcox also 

has £9.5m of personal property 

assets and a stake in a London 

estate agency. In all, we reckon 

Hitchcox is worth £90m. 

160 £90m 

Ray Horney 

Real estate Opportunities 

2009: £80m (+£10m) 

Real Estate Opportunities is 

planning to spin off its Battersea 

power station site in London 

and float it as a separate listed 

business. 

The idea behind the proposed 

move is to attract more investors 

to the Battersea project by not 

having the asset directly linked 

with REO’s distressed Irish 

property portfolio. 

REO bought the iconic 30-acre 

site for €595m at the end of 2006 

and, last year, lodged the largest 

ever multi-purpose planning 

application for retail, leisure, 

business and residential use in 

London’s history. 

REO is chaired by 74-year-old 

Ray Horney, whose early career 

Anton Bilton 

Andrew Rosenfeld 

was renting washing machines. 

He later moved into white goods 

retailing and sold his business for 

£21m in 1985. Five years later, 

Horney took a stake in St James 

Beach Hotels. In 1993, he made 

another £27m when it was sold. 

In addition, Horney has 

£2m-worth of share stakes in 

quoted property companies, 

including China Real Estate and 

Nordic Land. We value him at 

around £90m. 

160 £90m 

Patrick Kelly 

Kelland Homes 

New entry 

Patrick Kelly and fellow Irish 

developer Sean Mulryan own 

a group called Markland 

Holdings which owns property 

in Ireland, the UK , the US , the 

Czech Republic , Hungary and 

Germany. It had more than £91m 


Kelly, 68, also owns half of 

Dublin housebuilder Kelland 

Homes, which showed more than 

£52m net assets in 2008. Other 

interests include Rockbriar, 

another housebuilder, and a stake 

in Choice Hotels, Ireland’s largest 

hotel group. Despite the turmoil 

of the Irish housing market, 

Kelly’s wide assets base should 

give him a £90m valuation. 

160 £90m 

The Marquess of 

Northampton 

the Canonbury academy 

New entry 

The Marquess of Northampton’s 

Tandridge and Chesham Estates 

in Surrey are under offer for 

£25m. The sale will be a handy 

windfall for Northampton, who 

lives quietly these days at Castle 

Ashby in Northamptonshire, one 

of his two main Midland estates 

which span 25,000 acres. 

His London estate around 

Canonbury has several buildings 

including the old Tower Theatre 

and the Canonbury Academy, 

which showed £1.8m net assets 

in 2008-09. With the likely 

£25m sale proceeds, we value 

Northampton, 64, at £90m. 



160 £90m 

Lord Rana & Family 

andras House 

New entry 

Rana’s Andras House propertyto-hotels 

group is benefiting from 

the current peace settlement in 

Northern Ireland. 

The group, owned by the Rana 

family, made £1.7m profit on 

£15m sales in 2008-09. Its net 

assets came in at just under £80m. 

We value the business at around 

£70m in the current climate. 

We add another £20m for 

private assets, property and other 

businesses such as the Ashoka 

Restaurant and Belfast Plaza. 

160 £90m 

The Duke of Roxburghe 

Sunlaws development 

2009: £80m (+£10m) 

The Duke of Roxburghe, 56, has 

been faced with frustrating delays 

to a wind farm scheme on his 

land and local protests against 

the project, which has yet to win 

planning consent. 

One paper reckoned that 

Roxburghe could make around 

£14m from the project over the 

next 25 years. It is a sign of how 

active the duke, who is fighting 

throat cancer, has become on the 

business front. 

His company, Roxburghe 

Estates, is planning a joint venture 

to turn his Roxburghe Hotel into a 

5-star resort. The five-year project 

will require £20m investment. 

Aside from his land and racing 

interests are valuable fishing rights. 

Sunlaws Development Co had 

£772,000 net assets in 2008-09. 

Roxburghe also has stakes 

in golf, property and racing 

companies. In all, with land values 

increasing, we raise him to £90m. 

166 £89m 

John Brooksbank 

Blackshaw 

2009: £72m (+£17m) 

Brooksbank’s current property 

portfolio consists of residential 

houses, retail commercial and 

industrial property, hotels, pubs, 



caravan parks, marinas, farms 

and a golf course. We can see 

£27.3m of net assets in the 2009 

accounts of Blackshaw Holdings, 

one of Brooksbank’s main 

companies, and a further £9.5m 

of net assets in other companies, 

including ADW Properties. In 

all, his business assets are worth 

£81m. We add £8m to 54-yearold 

Brooksbank for other assets. 

167 £85m 

Con Folkes & Family 

Folkes 

2009: £85m (No change) 

Folkes Holdings, one of the 

largest private property groups in 

the Midlands, recovered in 2009, 

turning a £12.5m loss into a 

£3.7m profit on £28m sales. 

The family-owned operation 

can trace its roots back to 1697 as 

a blacksmith making swords and 

chain mail. 

It is run by Con Folkes, 57, who 

in 1981 became the then youngest 

chairman of a quoted company. It 

was taken private in 2002. With 

£53.3m net assets, it should be 

worth £55m. We add £30m for 

other assets to the Folkes family. 

167 £85m 

Edward Lonergan 

deramore 

2009: £65m (+£20m) 

Edward Lonergan’s Deramore 

saw its profits fall from £20.7m 

to £9.7m in 2008-09, but with 

net assets of more than £88m, 

Deramore would easily be worth 

£80m in today’s market. 

Richest in Scotland 


45 Keith Miller & Family 385 

82 The Duke of Buccleuch 180 

& Family 

98 John Lynch& Family 152 

136 Sir Tom Farmer 115 

156 Dick Watson& Family 95 

160 The Duke of Roxburghe 90 

167 Sir John Mactaggart & Family 85 

171 Shaf Rasul 80 

186 John Muir & Family 75 

232 David Stevenson& Family 50 

245 Ben Brodie 45 

Duke of Roxburghe 

Sir John Mactaggart 

He also has £3.5m of assets in 

two other property companies, 

Lochinver and Deramore (L). We 

value Lonergan, 60, at £85m. 

167 £85m 

Sir John Mactaggart & Family 

Mactaggart Heritable 

2009: £70m (+£15m) 

Mactaggart Heritable, the 

Glasgow-based property group, 

saw its net assets fall slightly in 

2009 to £78.5m. But it reduced 

its losses sharply from £6.3m to 

£0.6m. 

Mactaggart Heritable owns a 

string of high-priced commercial 

properties, mostly in London and 

New York. 

We value the business at £75m 

in the current climate, adding 

£10m for past dividends to the 

MacTaggart family. 

170 £82m 

Bill Morris & Family 

Morris & Co (Shrewsbury) 

2009: £65m (+£17m) 

Five generations of Morris family 

members have developed a 

business with interests in property, 

supermarkets and care homes. 

Bill Morris, 72, the current 

boss, runs an operation which 

made £692,000 profit on 

£23.9m sales in 2008-09. It has 

nearly £83m of net assets. 

We value the business at £80m 

in this climate. The Morris family 

take little out of the company and 

we value them at £82m. 

171 £81m 

John Chamberlain & Family 

Chamberlain 

2009: £78m (+£3m) 

Headed by John Chamberlain, 

66, the Chamberlain Group has 

a diverse property portfolio. The 

family owns 99% of the shares in 

the business, which had £72.1m 

net assets at the end of 2009. 

There is another £1.3m for 

the separate Home Counties 

Investments operation. With 

personal assets of £8m added, 

the Chamberlain family is worth 

around £81m.

172 £80m 

Kip Bertram & Family 

Rysa Lodge Residential 

properties 

2009: £70m (+£10m) 

Kip Bertram started Bertram 

Books in a disused Norwich 

chicken shed. It became the 

UK’s largest independent book 

wholesaler. In 1999, the business 

merged with Cypher, a public 

library supplier, in a £54m deal. 

The move effectively valued the 

Bertram family stake at £35m. 

Kip Bertram, 66, is no longer 

in the book trade, having moved 

into property development, 

particularly in London. 

As a result, the family’s asset 

wealth is now around £80m. 

172 £80m 

Bakir Cola & Family 

Cola Holdings 

2009: £80m (No change) 

In 2009, Iraqi-born Bakir Cola 

spent £30m buying a building 

adjacent to his Westbury Hotel in 

London’s upmarket Mayfair. 

Property experts reckon that 

Cola bought Washington House 

to extend the 5-star Westbury, the 

only hotel that fronts onto Bond 

Street. 

It reopened in 2008 after a 

£25m refurbishment. Cola, 68, 

bought the 246-room hotel in 1999 

for around £90m. He also has the 

550-room Kensington Close Hotel. 

Cola runs and owns Cola 

Holdings, which made £3.7m 

profit on £43.5m turnover in the 

year to September 2009. It has 

£28.8m net assets. Cola took a 

£48m dividend in 2006. 

Proceeds from the £50m sale 

of the Harrington Hall hotel to 

Spanish hotel giant NH Hotels 

should take Cola to £80m. 

172 £80m 

Danny Desmond 

Bride Hall 

2009: £78m (+£2m) 

Danny Desmond, 70, started the 

Bride Hall property group in 1984 

and sold 50% of the company to 

Great Portland Estates for £10m 

in 1987. He bought that stake 

back in the 1992 recession for a 

much lower figure. 

Until late in 2004, he owned 

all of Bride Hall, but sold a 25% 

stake to the quoted Warner 

Estates for an undisclosed sum. 

Bride Hall is active in building a 

new Lichfield retail park. 

Bride Hall Holdings and other 

Desmond firms have more than 

£12m net assets between them. 

We value Desmond at £80m. 

172 £80m 

Peter Gadsby 

ark Capital 

2009: £65m (+£15m) 

Gadsby, a Midlands developer, 

is best known for leading a 

rescue consortium which took 

over Derby County Football 

Club in 2006, investing 

£28m in securing its future. 

However, he made his fortune in 

housebuilding originally. 

Gadsby, 62, sold his 77% 

stake in Birch, the Derby-based 

property and construction group, 

to Edinburgh-based Miller Group 

in 2000 for a reported £35m. 

He now has various property 

interests worth at least £35m. 

His main holding company, 

Ark Capital, showed £6.5m net 

assets in 2008-09, with cash 

balances in excess of £20m. 

Other investments and private 

property take Gadsby to £80m. 

172 £80m 

Nicholas & Peter Gould 

Regis 

New entry 

Brothers Nicholas, 52, and 

Peter Gould, 51, run a number 

of property companies based in 

Southend under the umbrella of 

the Regis Group, which has been 

investing in residential property 

for more than 50 years. 

Its portfolio consisted entirely 

of properties that were subject to 

regulated tenancies until the early 

1980s, when Regis successfully 

diversified into property 

development. 

Regis made a £3.2m loss 

on £7.2m turnover in the five 

months to March 2009. But it has Peter Gadsby 

more than £80m of net assets. 

The Goulds and trusts own all 

the Regis Group and we value the 

brothers at £80m. 

172 £80m 

Melvyn & Delia Grodner 

atmore 

2009: £80m (No change) 

Melvyn, 66, and Delia Grodner, 

57, own Atmore Properties, which 

made a £3.9m profit on £12m 

sales in 2008-09. But its net assets 

fell from £67.6m to £54.5m. 

We value the Liverpool-based 

business on the net assets. 

But we can see three small but 

separate businesses with a further 

£16m of net assets in 2008-09. 

With other property and past 

salaries, the Grodners are easily 

worth £80m after tax. 

172 £80m 

Bruce Jarvis & Family 

Ravensale 

2009: £70m (+£10m) 

Bruce Jarvis’s main company is 

Ravensale which, in 2008-09, 

showed £26.6m net assets. 

Jarvis’s Pearcroft operation is 

also a shareholder in European 

Land & Property, which is the 

company behind Paddington 

Basin. The business showed 

£15.1m net assets in its 2008 

accounts. In all, Jarvis, 62, should 

be worth £80m. 

172 £80m 

Noel & Miriam O’Callaghan 

Gold table 

New entry 

Noel, 60, and Miriam 

O’Callaghan, 51, have a sizeable 

property portfolio in Ireland. 

We can see five companies led 

by Brodnax, which made £4.8m 

profit on £17.4m sales in 2001, 

its last filed accounts before it 

became an unlimited company. 

In all, these companies had 

around £27m of net assets. 

The low-key O’Callaghans are 

now active in Prague housing 

developments. With property 

and hotels added, they are easily 




172 £80m 

The Duke of Richmond & 

Gordon & Family 

Goodwood estates 

New entry 

The entrepreneurial Earl of 

March, heir to the Duke of 

Richmond & Gordon, has done 

wonders at the 12,000-acre 

Goodwood estate in West Sussex. 

In 2008, the Goodwood Estate 

Co pushed up profits from £2m 

to more than £3.4m on £48.9m 

sales. It has net assets of around 

£44.6m. But with land prices 

rising, and taking into account an 

incomparable art collection, the 

family wealth should total £80m. 

172 £80m 

Charles Yeates 

WS Yeates 

2009: £70m (+£10m) 

Loughborough-based WS Yeates 

is involved in property and fine 

art. In 2009, the company showed 

£26.3m net assets. Yeates, 74, has 

overseas property assets and art. 

We value him at £80m. 

183 £78m 

John & Ciara Byrne & Family 

Carlisle trust 

New entry 

Ninety-year-old John Byrne has 

been building up his Dublinbased 

property empire since the 

1960s. He is a leading supplier of 

office space to the public sector 

and his rental income here is 

holding up well. 

Last year, his companies earned 

more than €5.7m on nine leases 

he has with the state. His interests 

are held mainly through the 

Carlisle Trust. But the value of its 

investment properties has fallen 

significantly, down 38% to €91m 

in 2008. Other assets should take 

the Byrne family to £78m. 

183 £78m 

Bill McCabe 

LnC property 

2009: £87m (-£9m) 

Bill McCabe’s Oyster Capital 



RaSuL MaKeS HiS 

MaRK in SCOtLand 

Partners’ private equity operation 

invested in Capital D, the 

residential property investment 

company that buys and renovates 

upmarket Dublin houses. 

While Capital D went into a 

loss of €13.5m last year because 

of slumping property prices, 

McCabe should not be too badly 

affected. 

He made significant profits in 

Germany when his LNC property 

company bought an abandoned 

waterfront leisure complex in the 

German City of Bremen for around 

£40m in 2004. It has since been 

converted into a shopping, leisure 

and hotel complex worth in the 

region of £180m. 

In 2007, McCabe’s stake in a Co 

Kildare waste company, Advanced 

Environmental Solutions, tripled 

in value to £11.5m when it was 

taken over in a £46m deal. 

McCabe, 53, made £47m 

from judicious sales of stakes in 

SmartForce. LNC grew out of 

McCabe’s €117m purchase of a 

mixed property portfolio from 

Scottish Life in 1999. He is now 


172 £80m 

Shaf Rasul 

e-net 

New entry 

In 1999, Shaf Rasul created 

the Edinburgh-based E-net 

Computers, which has become 

Europe’s biggest distributor of 

optical storage products. 

The company has £12m of 

net assets and is easily worth 

around £30m. 

In addition, 40-year-old 

Rasul is making his mark on the 

Scottish property front with his 

industrial estate venture called 

E-Net Park. 

Recently, he sold his letting 

business Excelet and paid £3m 

for the former Martin & Frost 

furniture store in Edinburgh, 

which he intends to turn into 

hi-tech apartments. 

We can see a further £6m of net 

assets in other Rasul companies, 

but his private property 

investments take him to £80m 

comfortably. 

185 £76m 

John Marston & Family 

Marston properties 

2009: £75m (+£1m) 

Marston Properties Holdings 

made £1.2m profit on £4.3m 

sales in 2008-09. 

It has £56m net assets but we 

value it at £50m in today’s difficult 

economic climate. That values the 

family stake at around £37m. 

Marston Hotels also paid out 

a £12.1m dividend in 2001 and 

£5m in 2002 before being sold, 

netting the family £50m. Allowing 

for tax on sale proceeds, we value 

the Marston family at £76m. 

186 £75m 

Debbie Dove 

Spey & dove 

New entry 

A former north London local estate 

agent, Debbie Dove, 49, started 

out by taking a holiday job there in 

the late 1970s. Within three years 

she was branch manager and she

eventually bought the business. 

Dove later built up her own luxury 

property portfolio in the area and 

offered interior design services. 

Her portfolio has been valued at 

up to £80m. Cautiously, we settle 

for £75m. Dove is the former wife 

of top divorce lawyer, Raymond 

“Jaws” Tooth. 

186 £75m 

John Muir & Family 

Muir Group 

2009: £50m (+£25m) 

The latest 2008-09 accounts for 

property-to-housebuilding Muir 

Group, show a drop in profit from 

£10.3m to £1.1m, with sales 

down £16m at £76.3m. Yet the 

group, run by 74-year-old John 

Muir, has a solid balance sheet and 

£64m net assets. We value Muir 

Group at £45m, adding another 

£20m for the net assets of the 

separate company, Muir Holdings. 

Past salaries and dividends take 

Muir and his family to £75m. 

186 £75m 

David Russell 

property alliance 

2009: £75m (No change) 

The Russell empire includes 

developments in Manchester, 

Oxford, Chorley and Blackburn. 

His Property Alliance operation 

has an investment portfolio valued 

at £240m. After borrowings are 

stripped out, it showed £54.5m 

net assets in its 2008-09 accounts. 

With other assets, such as the sale 

of the Pinnacle office building in 

2005 for £16m, Russell, 54, is 

worth £75m. 

186 £75m 

Duncan Sinclair & Family 

Mountview estates 

2009: £76m (-£1m) 

Despite the poor financial 

climate, London-based 

residential investor Mountview 

Estates doubled its pretax profit 

to £29.3m in 2009. It has seen 

its share price steady in 2010 and 

it is now worth nearly £155m. 

The company is chaired by 

accountant Duncan Sinclair, 63, 

Five youngest 

Age Name Wealth (£m) 

19 India-Rose James 120 

24 Fawn James 120 

36 Christian Candy 330 

37 James Sellar 190 

37 Nicholas Candy 330 

and the Sinclair family’s stake 

is worth around £70m. We add 

another £5m for stakes in smaller 

private companies such as Ossian 

Investors and Sinclair Estates. 

190 £73m 

Michael Slade 

Helical Bar 

2009: £72m (+£1m) 

Michael Slade, 64, has always 

been good at calling the market. 

So it was interesting to hear his 

Helical Bar operation say in 

August that it was seeing further 

evidence that the recovery in 

property values was stalling. 

The company, which had been 

out spending earlier in the year, 

said it would look to buy only 

properties offering “exceptional 

growth or income potential”. 

With this in mind, Helical is 

working on plans for a major 

City development, after buying 

up 1 Mitre Square, EC3, and an 

adjoining site in June. 

Slade’s stake in Helical Bar 

has not been immune from the 

market crash, but it has recovered 

and is now worth £44m. 

He also made a £1.3m gain 

from exercising share options in 

2004, £4m in 2005 and £4.4m 

in 2006. A special dividend for 

Helical Bar shareholders totalling 

£107m in late 2004 resulted in a 

further £12m going to Slade. 

Past salaries, stakes in other 

venturesand his own property 

assets, should easily take Slade to 

around £73m after tax. 

191 £72m 

Michael Heller & Family 

London & associated 

properties 

2009: £67m (+£5m) 

Listed retail specialist London 

& Associated Properties said in 

August that its rental income had 

Michael Slade 

Duke of Richmond 

risen slightly in the first half of 

the year, to £8.6m. 

Controlled by the Hellers since 

the early 1970s, it sold the former 

King’s Road antiques market 

Antiquarius for £17.82m, a 

5.74% yield, earlier this year to 

freeholder Cadogan. The Heller’s 

stake in the firm is worth £21m. 

The Heller family also have 

a majority stake in the quoted 

Bisichi Mining which, together 

with other holdings and property 

interests, takes them to around 

£72m. 

191 £72m 

Jeremy Middleton 

Homeserve 

New entry 

Homeserve, the quoted 

household repair services group, 

has seen its shares soar in 2010. 

The Walsall-based company 

was co-founded by Jeremy 

Middleton, 50, in 1993. 

It is now worth more than 

£1.5bn. Middleton retains a 

£57m stake. 

He has other assets, 

including a property company – 

Cortonwood 1 – with £3.6m net 

assets. In all, he is worth £72m. 

193 £70m 

Demi Chervak & Family 

High point 

2009: £52m (+£18m) 

High Point saw its net assets rise 

from £35.2m to £41.3m in the 

year to July 2009. Chervak, 56, 

and his family own it all. 


net assets, adding £27m for the 

net assets of another five Chervak 


With other assets, the Chervak 

family should easily be worth 

around £70m. 

193 £70m 

Nicholas Porter 

unite 

New entry 

Nick Porter, founder of Unite, 

left the board in May 2010 and is 

now building his Capital Values 

Group. It is working on the huge 



Kings Cross Central project 

in London to develop student 

homes. 

Porter, 41, retains a £1m stake 

in Unite, but since 2004, he 

has sold at least £70m worth of 

shares. With other assets, he is 


195 £69m 

Mark & Kathleen Kavanagh 

Hardwicke 

2009: £69m (No change) 

Mark Kavanagh’s Hardwicke 

was one of the early developers 

involved in Dublin’s International 

Financial Services Centre. 

Kavanagh, 65, and his wife 

Kathleen, 49, have two main 

companies – Hardwicke and 

Kopian, with £53.5m of net 

assets between them in their 

2005-06 accounts – the last 

published. 

The former Wicklow-based 

couple now live in Switzerland. 

We value them at £69m. 

196 £67m 

Roger Wickens & Family 

Store property 

2009: £89m (-£22m) 

In 2008-09, Store Property’s 

profits fell from £4.2m to £3.6m 

on sales of £10.8m, but its net 

assets fell sharply in value from 

£100.3m to £55m. 

With a solid balance sheet, the 

Sussex-based company should be 

worth the net asset figure. 

We add £9m to the Wickens 

family for past dividends and the 

£2.8m net assets of the separate 

Kingmere. 

196 £67m 

Woon Wing Yip & Family 

W. Wing Yip properties 

2009: £72m (-£5m) 

Wing Yip stores, complete with 

Chinese cookery schools, are 

more like community centres 

than traditional cash-and-carry 

outlets. 

It works. In the year to 

September 2009, W Wing Yip 

Brothers Trading made £5.2m 

profit on £97.1m sales. It has 



£27.9m net assets. The family 

also has a property portfolio 

held in the separate W Wing 

Yip & Brothers Property & 

Investments, with nearly £21m 


The two firms should be worth 

£55m. Minority stakes in smaller 

operations add £12m to the Yip 

family. 

198 £66m 

Rupert Mucklow & Family 

a&J Mucklow 

2009: £60m (+£6m) 

Midlands-based property 

outfit Mucklow suffered in the 

property downturn. Its shares 

fell sharply in 2008-09, but they 

have recovered recently and the 

Mucklow family stake is now 

worth £64m. Past salaries and 

dividends add £2m. 

198 £66m 

Sean Mulryan 

Ballymore properties 

2009: £280m (-£214m) 

Mulryan has been hit hard by the 

Irish property crash. Ballymore 

International Developments 

made a £61m loss in 2008. 

Mulryan owns 51%. 

His other assets include 

a 49.5% stake in Markland 

Holdings, with £91.2m net assets 

in 2008. Mulryan also has a 

half-share in a Kildare shopping 

centre. 

A sports fanatic, he has 60 

racehorses and a 230-acre stud. 

But an extensive UK portfolio 

helps keep Mulryan, 56, in this 

list at £66m. 

198 £66m 

Eamonn O’Rourke 

ORM 

New entry 

Dublin-based O’Rourke built up 

Cash & Carry Kitchens in Cork. 

Its parent, ORM, made a £5.2m 

profit on £19.3m sales in 2008. 

It has £45m net assets. 

O’Rourke, 62, has some 

property firms, including AFA 

Investments. In all, he is easily 

worth £66m. 

Rupert Mucklow 

201 £65m 

Philip Davies & Family 

philip J davies 

New entry 

Philip Davies left the merchant 

navy in 1945 to join his family 

clothing business. After five years 

he branched out on his own. By 

1970, he realised that making 

clothing was not as profitable as 

property investment and built a 

portfolio mainly in the North. 

Davies, 89, has a private 

company, Philip J Davies, which 

saw net assets hit £21.5m in 

2009-10 when it made an 

£713,000 profit. His private 

property partnerships take his 

total assets to £65m. 

201 £65m 

James Egan 

Broomford Holdings 

2009: £48m (+£17m) 

Irishman James Egan owns and 

runs London-based property 

operation Broomford Holdings. 

It showed £49.2m net assets in 

its 2008-09 accounts. We can 

see another £16.4m net assets in 

the 2008-09 accounts of three 

separate Broomford companies. 

Egan bought Noel Edmonds’ 

West Country home. It was 

reported to have been sold for 

around £10m. We value Egan, 

69, at around £65m. 

201 £65m 

Jim Leavesley & Family 

evans property Holdings 

2009: £66m (-£1m) 

The Leavesley family wealth comes 

mainly from property, particularly 

the Midlands group, St Modwen. 

The recent stock market turmoil 

has hit the shares and the family 

stake is now worth £32m. 

But Leavesley, 70, has also 

been involved in another large 

property group, Evans Property 

Holdings. The family’s stake 

should be worth £20m in today’s 

market. 

With other assets, such as a pig 

operation and a small property 

firm, the Leavesley family should 

be worth £65m.

201 £65m 

Andrew & Sharon Turner 

Central trust 

2009: £65m (No change) 

Early this year, Central Trust 

secured an extra £90m of 

funding from RBS and National 

Bank of Australia to re-enter the 

secured lending market. 

But the Norwich-based financial 

broker was hit hard by the financial 

crisis in 2008-09. It made a 

£12.5m loss on £49.5m sales in 

2009 but it still has £87.6m net 

assets. Andrew Turner, 52, set up 

Central Trust in 1987 and built it 

into one of the largest independent 

finance brokers offering loans 

to UK homeowners. It is easily 

worth £65m. Other assets take 

Turner and his wife Sharon, 53, 

also a director, to £65m. 

205 £62m 

Giles Mackay 

Hometrack 

New entry 

A barrister turned property 

entrepreneur, Mackay bought 

Ford UK’s residential assets 

for £60m in 1993 and later 

set up PXS, the largest 

independent player in the 

part-exchange market. Mackay 

started Hometrack.com which 

established a property index 

based on information on sales 

in specific post codes. He had an 

86% stake in the parent company. 

In 2008-09, Hometrack made 

a £1.8m loss on £9.9m sales. It 

is easily worth £20m. We can 

see another £22.2m of net assets 

owned by Mackay in two other 

firms. Mackay, 48, is worth £62m. 

205 £62m 

Cavan Pickering & Family 

pickering properties 

2009: £50m (+£12m) 

The family-owned Pickering 

Properties operation got a good 

price when it sold a City office 

block for £19m – a 5% yield – this 

summer to Invista Real Estate 

Investment Management. 

The company made £3.5m 

profit on £9m turnover in 

Rich in the East Midlands 


30 Freddie Linnett & the 510 

Murphy Family 

46 David Wilson & Family 350 

99 Charles Clowes 150 

151 Rashid & Aziz Tayub 103 

172 Peter Gadsby 80 

172 Charles Yeates 80 

205 Cavan Pickering & Family 62 

222 Douglas Woolf & Family 55 

228 George Akins & Family 52 

232 Robert Jolly & Family 50 

2008-09, but reported £27.6m 

of net assets. Cavan Pickering, 

74, built and ran three hotels 

in Nottingham, including the 

Welbeck, sold in 2002 for £6.5m. 

Other assets take the wider 

Pickering family to £62m. 

205 £62m 

Simon & Paul Upward 

Ocobase 

2009: £57m (+£5m) 

Croydon based Ocobase saw its 

2008-09 profits fall from £5.2m 

to £3.1m on turnover of £5.3m. 

Its net assets, though, were down 

just £1m at £66.8m. With low 

borrowings, it is worth £55m. We 

add another £7m for other assets. 

208 £61m 

William Rankin & Family 

Hanro 

2009: £96m (-£35m) 

William Rankin, 79, chairs 

Newcastle developer Hanro. 

In 2008, Hanro’s profits fell 

from £3.8m to £847,000. The 

company revalued its properties, 

resulting in a sharp fall in the net 

asset figure from £103m to nearly 

£65m. We value the business at 

£55m,and add another £6m to 

the wider Rankin family for other 

assets and past dividends. 

209 £60m 

Paul Bassi 

Bond Wolfe 

New entry 

Paul Bassi has been having a 

pretty good year: he was made 

a CBE in January and soon 

Woon Wing Yip 

Paul Bassi 

Midland Regional newspapeRs 

afterwards was able to report that 

his Real Estate Investors business 

had swung back into the black. 

Bassi, 48, is chief executive 

of the AIM-listed firm, where 

he holds a 16.8% stake worth 

£5.2m. The company posted a 

pretax profit of £4.3m for 2009, 

up from a loss of £15.7m the 

previous year. Bassi also chairs 

property firm Bond Wolfe. 

We can see £18m of net assets 

in various Bond Wolfe firms 

attributable to Bassi. Personal 

assets push Bassi to £60m. 

209 £60m 

David Gradel & Family 

uK estates 

New entry 

UK Estates had nearly £49m of 

net assets in its 2008-09 accounts, 

down £1m. However, the Gradel 

family has significant wealth 

outside UK Estates, including 

large property portfolios in 

Glasgow, Leeds and Birmingham, 

and is valued at £60m today. 

209 £60m 

Alan & Edward Lee 

princeton investments 

New entry 

Earlier this year, receivers were 

called in on a series of regional 

office investments in which the 

Lee family were involved with 

HBOS during the boom but, in the 

same month, the Lees’ Princeton 

Investments purchased a £12m 

block in Soho for redevelopment. 

The brothers’ father, Arnold, 

built up Imry and sold out for 

£20m just before the 1987 crash. 

Princeton showed a £113,000 

profit on £350,000 sales in 

2009. They still have a valuable 

portfolio and are very active so we 

stick with our £60m valuation. 

209 £60m 

John Miskelly 

MtS 

New entry 

Downpatrick has received a major 

boost with the announcement of 

plans for a new, £14m deluxe hotel 

by entrepreneur John Miskelly. 



He also owns pubs, a nursing 

home operation and Miskelly 

Construction. We can see £2.5m 

net assets in the 2009 accounts of 

various companies but Miskelly, 47, 

is worth perhaps £60m today. 

209 £60m 

Raymond Mould 

London & Stamford 

2009: £60m (No change) 

Property company London & 

Stamford became a real estate 

investment trust recently to take 

advantage of tax savings. 

The Guernsey-based investor, 

led by industry veterans Raymond 

Mould and Patrick Vaughan, will 

pay £55m to buy its founder out of 

its management contract. It floated 

on the stock market in 2007 valued 

at £248m. It is now worth £567m 

as investors back Mould’s ability to 

find bargains at rock bottom prices. 

Mould collected £53m from 

the takeovers of Arlington and, 

later, Pillar Property, his earlier 

property ventures. He has a 

near £9m stake in London & 

Stamford. We reckon Mould, 69, 

is worth £60m after tax. 

214 £59m 

Gerry Conlan 

Quando 

2009: £98m (-£39m) 

Jerry Conlan sold 400 acres in 

Naas for ¤340m in 2006 and 

invested his share in a healthcare 

business. He was among the 

group of investors who bought a 

10% stake in ailing Anglo Irish 

Bank in 2008, borrowing 75% of 

the purchase price from the bank 

itself. The bank was nationalised 

a few months later. Conlan, 45, 

has bought properties in Boston, 

Wicklow and Dublin. But with 

values down he is worth £59m. 

215 £58m 

John Finlan & Family 

Morbaine properties 

New entry 

The Finlan family owns Morbaine 

Properties, a private group based in 

Widnes. Started in 1963, Morbaine 

made a £588,000 profit on sales of 



£17.4m in 2008-09. Its net assets 

came in at £53.4m. Most of the 

shares in Morbaine are held in trust 

but we assume the Finlan family 

owns them. Boss John Finlan, 

69, is here representing the wider 

Finlan clan. We value the company 

on the net assets. Other assets take 

the family to £58m. 

215 £58m 

John Nike & Family 

nike Land Securities 

New entry 

Nike Land Securities, run and 

owned by John Nike, made a 

£3.6m loss on turnover of £65m 

in 2008-09, but still has nearly 

£24m of net assets. Nike, 75, 

owns all the business with his 

family and trusts. 

Nike has sold tracts of land 

to Dell and Hewlett-Packard, 

raising more than £40m. With 

other assets, he is worth £58m. 

215 £58m 

Amanda Yates & Family 

Yates property 

2009: £50m (+£8m) 

Amanda Yates, 61, is a director 

of Yates Property Holdings. The 

firm’s 2008-09 accounts show 

net assets of nearly £58m. It is 

owned by the Yates family, who 

we value on this figure. 

218 £57m 

Solomon Potel & Family 

Fairholme estates 

2009: £52m (+£5m) 

Fairholme Estates, a property 

developer and building contractor, 

is owned by Solomon Potel, 77. In 

the year to August 2009, it made 

£3m profit on £4.4m turnover. 

It has more than £55m net assets 

and we value the business on this 

figure. Other assets take the family 

to £57m. 

Rich in East of England 


132 Bill Gredley & Family 118 

172 Kip Bertram & Family 80 

201 Andrew & Sharon Turner 65 

219 Robin Tomkins & Family 56 

Dan McCauley 

Raymond Mould 

219 £56m 

Dan McCauley 

Rotolok 

New entry 

With a 25.4% stake, McCauley 

is the biggest shareholder in 

property outfit Sutton Harbour. He 

also owns Rotolok where profits 

came in at £3.9m on turnover of 

£21.8m in 2008-09. 

With £23m net assets, it is 

worth around £36m. McCauley 

also owns Drake’s Island in 

Plymouth. Other assets take 

McCauley, 74, to around £56m. 

219 £56m 

David Metter 

innisfree Group 

New entry 

Metter, 58, has a 72% stake in 

Innisfree, which made a £6.9m 

profit on a £15.9m turnover 

in 2008-09. Even in today’s 

climate, it should easily be worth 

£75m, valuing Metter’s stake at 

around £54m. Past salaries and 

dividends take him to £56m. 

219 £56m 

Robin Tomkins & Family 

Grainger trust 

New entry 

In 2006, Robin Tomkins, 84, 

sold off the Triangle shopping 

complex at Frinton on Sea, Essex. 

It was sold by Tomkins Frincon 

Securities, which showed £2.2m 

net assets in 2008-09. 

Tomkins started as an estate 

agent in Essex but built up a 

profitable property business 

which was taken over by Grainger 

Trust for £61m in October 1994. 

With the 2006 sale and the net 

assets in Frincon, we value the 

Tomkins family at £56m. 

222 £55m 

Elizabeth Abbott & Family 

abbott Bros 

2009: £45m (+£10m) 

Abbott Bros Holdings, a property 

investment company, made a 

£1.9m profit and had £44.2m net 

assets in 2008-09. In late 2009, it

was wound up when it was stated 

that the company’s assets were 

£45.9m and its liabilities just 

£773,000. The company assets 

are worth £45.2m. Past dividends 

and other assets should take the 

Abbott family to £55m. 

222 £55m 

Douglas Woolf & Family 

Romulus 

2009: £60m (-£5m) 

Romulus Holdings, a Leicesterbased 

property group, is owned 

by Douglas Woolf, 73, and his 

family trusts. It showed £49.9m 

net assets in 2008-09 when 

it made £897,000 profit on 

£10.9m turnover. The company 

should easily be worth £50m in 

this climate. We add £5m, taking 

the Woolf family to £55m. 

224 £54m 

Glyn Watkin Jones & Family 

Watkin Jones 

New entry 

Construction and development 

group Watkin Jones saw turnover 

fall slightly in the year to 

September 2009 from £113m to 

£95.9m. Profits were down from 

£15.3m to £12.3m. 

The group is heavily involved 

in the growing student housing 

market. In January, it bought a site 

in Hoxton, one of London’s largest 

student housing development 

sites, from Goldcrest Land for 

£10.9m. And in April it sold 

two student housing blocks in 

Liverpool and Loughborough to 

Gatehouse Bank for £29.2m. 

The Watkin Jones family 

also has a small company called 

Heritage Holdings (North Wales) 

which made an £8.5m profit on 

the sale of a property in 2005. We 

value them at £54m. 

225 £53m 

Melvyn Cooper & Family 

Mountcharm 

New entry 

Mel Cooper and his family own 

and run Mountcharm, a Barnetproperty 

investment company. 

Cooper, 69, shrewdly sold 90% 

of its portfolio in 2006 at the top 

of the market and concentrated 

on development. 

Mountcharm’s net assets 

exceeded £39.1m at the end of 

2008. Other smaller company 

assets add £4m. In May 2006, 

Cooper bought a building in Tel 

Aviv. He sold it two years later for 

around double the price. We value 

the Cooper family at £53m. 

225 £53m 

Fred Pritchard & Family 

pritchard 

2009: £48m (+£5m) 

Pritchard, 67, owns Hednesfordbased 

Pritchard Holdings, a 

property group with £50m of 

net assets in 2009, when it made 

a £1m loss on £7.1m sales. It 

is worth its net assets. Smaller 

property operations add another 

£3m to Pritchard’s wealth. 

225 £53m 

Andrew Ruhan & Family 

Bridgehouse Capital 

New entry 

Richest women 

Developers of Birmingham’s 

£500m, 2m sq ft mixed-use Arena 

Central are seeking a planning 

extension until 2020 as the 

market has been in the doldrums. 

Andrew Ruhan’s Bridgehouse 

Capital is one of the scheme’s 

partners. Ruhan is also busy 

elsewhere in property. In 2008, 

his Bridgehouse operation sold 

three hotels to Hand Picked 

Hotels for £30m. 

Ruhan, 48, has always been a 

pioneer in the property field. In 

1998, he put all his money into 

buying the former Financial Times 

printworks in London’s Docklands. 

He turned the building into one of 

the UK’s first telehouses through 

his company, Global Switch. 

In early 2000, Elliott Bernerd’s 

Chelsfield and a Canadian 

investor paid nearly £88m to 

take a 66% stake, leaving Ruhan 

with a third of the equity. In 

2002, he sold his remaining stake 

in Global for an undisclosed sum. 

Since then Ruhan has been 

buying hi-tech businesses in the 

US, including Navisite. He also 

chairs Global Marine Systems, Fred Pritchard 


9 Baroness Howard de Walden 1,400 

30 Freddie Linnett 510 

55 Charlotte Townshend 320 

115 Julia Davey 131 

122 Miriam Kraus 127 

126 Fawn & India Rose James 120 

172 Delia Grodner 80 

172 Miriam O’Callaghan 80 

183 Ciara Byrne 78 

186 Debbie Dove 75 

201 Sharon Turner 65 

215 Amanda Yates 58 

222 Elizabeth Abbott 55 

232 Linda Ashley 50 

232 Janet Knight 50 

242 Anne Scrutton 47 

which in 2008 made £4.6m profit 

on £85.2m sales. With £132.5m 

net assets, it is a £200m company. 

We reckon that Ruhan has at least 

a £30m stake there. Other stakes 

in Coltham Developments and 

Stockdale Properties add £3m of 

net assets to Ruhan’s wealth. In all, 

he should easily be worth £53m. 

228 £52m 

George Akins & Family 

SJC 14 

New entry 

The Akins family sold its betting 

shops in 2003 for £14m to 

concentrate on casino, nightclub 

and property operations. Its main 

Nottingham-based firms, SJC 14 

and SJC 15, had more than £37m 

net assets in their 2009 accounts. 

With other assets, the family is 


228 £52m 

Richard Higgins & Family 

Higgins 

New entry 

London’s role in staging the 2012 

Olympic Games is a boon for the 

Higgins Group. East London’s 

redevelopment in preparation for 

the games has proved a fillip for 

the family-owned construction 

and property group. 

The company has also benefited 

from demand for new housing 

along the M11 corridor and in 

the Thames Gateway. The Essexbased 

operation saw its profits 



come in at £1m on £224.8m sales 

in 2008-09. We value it on its 

£50m net assets, adding £2m for 

other assets to the Higgins family. 

228 £52m 

Mark Kay 

ROK 

2009: £48m (+£4m) 

Mark Kay, who founded 

Rockeagle, was a prominent 

South West developer. In 2001, 

he sold the business to the local 

EBC construction firm in a 

£14.7m deal and it was renamed 

ROK Property Solutions. 

Kay joined the board but left 

in 2005 when he sold his stake 

for £14.3m. He sued for unpaid 

bonuses and ROK agreed to pay 

£1.25m, a figure we add to our 

calculations. Kay also has around 

£30.9m of net assets in firms 

such as Eagle One Investment 

Holdings in 2008-09. With other 

assets, Kay, 50, is a £52m man. 

228 £52m 

Tony Leonard 

Clarendon 

New entry 

Irish developer Tony Leonard, 

58, owns half of Clarendon 

Properties, a fast-growing Dublin 

property group. In early 2007, 

Clarendon and other investors 

made a £48m profit on the sale 

of 16 shops in London’s Covent 

Garden area, bought three years 

earlier for £79m. 

But Clarendon, which also 

owns the Powerscourt centre in 

Dublin, is increasingly focusing 

on the US. It has £95.8m net 

assets in 2007-08. Leonard’s 

sale proceeds and 50% stake in 

Clarendon are worth £52m in all. 

232 £50m 

Linda Ashley 

Current design 

New entry 

Swedish-born Ashley, 44, is 

the ex-wife of Mike Ashley, the 

sportswear billionaire who also 

owns Newcastle United. 

A property developer, she has 

stakes in several small businesses, 



including Watford-based Current 

Design and, with her divorce 

settlement, is worth at least £50m. 

232 £50m 

David Dangoor & Family 

Monopro 

New entry 

David Dangoor, 61, is managing 

director of Monopro, a property 

company based in London. The 

Dangoor family has at least 73% 

of the shares. In the year to June 

2009, Monopro made a £1.4m 

profit on nearly £3.6m sales. 

With nearly £56.3m net assets, it 

is worth that sum. That makes the 

family stake worth £48m. But a 

number of other companies add 

perhaps £4m, taking the Dangoor 


232 £50m 

Malcolm Hall 

nobel 

New entry 

Malcolm Hall is a property 

developer based in Jersey. His 

main company, Nobel Property 

Developments, showed £12m 


accounts. But we can see at least 

another £3.7m of net assets in 

further companies such as MSJ 

Properties and Steelux Holdings. 

Aside from his £3m Jersey 

mansion, Hall, 74, also has homes 

in London and Florida. His total 

wealth was put at around £50m 

in late 2005 during a widely 

reported court case involving Hall 

and his stepdaughter over money. 

We value him at that figure. 

232 £50m 

Robert Jolly & Family 

Limes 

2009: £46m (+£4m) 

Lincoln-based Limes 

Developments is owned by Robert 

Jolly, 73, and his family. In 2009 

it made £3.1m profit on £4.2m 

sales, but its net assets rose from 

£42.8m to £43.6m. The Jolly 

family also owns the separate 

Limes Estates with £6.4m net 

assets. In the current economic 

climate, we value them at £50m. 

Malcolm Hall 

232 £50m 

Jerry & Janet Knight 

Lexadon 

2009: £50m (No change) 

Lexadon, a London-based property 

operation, was active in Clapham 

and Brixton in the 1980s, buying 

up and converting homes bought 

at auction from Lambeth council. 

In 2000, Lexadon started work 

on bigger developments. It 

retained many of the properties 

and its net assets came in at 

£26.7m in 2008-09. Other assets 

take the Knights to £50m. 

232 £50m 

Roger Raymond & Family 

neeB 

2009: £50m (No change) 

Roger Raymond, 56, runs the 

family-owned NEEB Holdings, 

based in Colchester. Founded in 

1959, NEEB, the parent company, 

showed over £26.3m net assets 

in its 2008-09 accounts, but its 

assets could be worth around 

£30m as they are in the accounts 

at cost. Other assets, including a 

family property partnership, take 

the Raymond family to £50m. 

232 £50m 

John & Stephen Rosefield 

endeavour 

2009: £60m (-£10m) 

John, 66, and Stephen Rosefield, 

57, are directors of Endeavour, 

a London property group. The 

Rosefield family and family trusts 

own Endeavour, which made 

£1.5m profit on £6.9m sales 

in 2008-09. Its net assets fell 

to £32.2m. But its subsidiary, 

Estates & Agency Holdings, shows 

£69.1m net assets, so we value 

the Rosefield family at £50m. 

232 £50m 

David Stevenson & Family 

ashleybank investments 

2009: £50m (No change) 

Stevenson, 68, transformed 

his father’s dye company in the 

Scottish Borders into Edinburgh 

Woollen Mill, a clothes retailer.

In 1997, Grampian Holdings 

took over EWM, paying £69m, 

netting the Stevenson family 

around £33m. In 2005, the 

Stevenson family made another 

£6m when its former stablemate, 

the Malcolm Group, was taken 

private. The family put its wealth 

into Ashleybank Investments, 

which invests in residential. 

Ashleybank had around 

£41.2m of net assets in 2008-09. 

With other assets, the Stevenson 

family is worth around £50m. 

240 £48m 

Peter Rich & Family 

Rich investments 

New entry 

Assets at property company, Rich 

Investments, came in at £51.1m 

in 2008-09. It is owned by Peter 

Rich, 56, and family trusts. We 

value the company under the 

net asset figure at £46m, adding 

£2m to the Rich family for 

property, taking it to £48m. 

240 £48m 

Richard Ross & Family 

Regentsmead 

2009: £48m (No change) 

Richard Ross chairs 

Regentsmead, a property and 

financial group created in 1934 

by his entrepreneurial immigrant 

father and run by Ross, 68, for 

more than 20 years. We have 

discounted net assets to £48m 

on profits of £2m in 2008-9, and 

value the Ross family at that level. 

242 £47m 

Charles & Anne Scrutton 

Scrutton 

New entry 

Founded in 1962, Scrutton Estates 

is a property company based in the 

east end of London. It is owned 

and run by Charles, 65, and Anne 

Scrutton, 62. In 2008-09, the 

business made over £1.6m profit 

on £2.2m sales. But its net asset 

figure rose to £44.5m. 

In the current climate, it is 

worth the net asset figure. Other 

assets should take the Scruttons 

to around £47m. 

243 £46m 

John Elkington 

penhurst 

2009: £48m (-£2m) 

John Elkington, 47, owns Kentbased 

Penhurst Properties. It has 

net assets of £27m in 2010. Other 

assets and past dividends and share 

buy-backs in the past five years 

take Elkington to around £46m. 

243 £46m 

Brian Moss & Family 

Gat 

New entry 

Brian Moss runs Gat Holdings, 

a South Wales-based property 

group. It made £1.6m profit on 

£3.4m sales in 2008-09 when its 

net assets rose slightly to £30.7m. 

It should easily be worth £30m. 

The business is owned by the Moss 

family and trusts. Moss, 74, also 

founded Nuaire Holdings, which 

sold for £38m in 2004. The Moss 

family is worth around £46m. 

245 £45m 

James Barham 

Bayfordbury estates 

New entry 

James Barham stepped down as 

chairman of Bayfordbury Holdings 

in 2004 after selling the business 

to Fairview. Analysts reckoned the 

sale price would be around £60m, 

which accorded with Bayfordbury’s 

2003-04 net assets of £55m. 

Hertford-based Barham, 73, 

now concentrates on his other 

companies, Bayfordbury Estates 

and PAJ Properties, with nearly 

£1.1m net assets between them in 

2009. With other assets and past 

dividends, Barham is easily worth 

£45m after tax. 

245 £45m 

Ben Brodie 

Carrick Capital 

2009: £45m (No change) 

Ben Brodie founded Carrick Care 

Homes in 1986. Brodie owned 

it all until its sale to Bupa, the 

healthcare giant, in 2004 for more 

than £40m. Brodie, 58, is now 

John Elkington 

involved in property development 

through Bothwell Bridge Estates 

with £343,000 net assets in 

2008-09. We value him at £45m. 

245 £45m 

Charles Lousada & Family 

Lousada 

New entry 

Charles Lousada, 72, founded 

his property company, Lousada, 

in 1969. It made a £1.4m profit 

in the year to September 2009. 

With £44.4m net assets it is 

worth that sum. Other assets add 

£1m to the Lousada family. 

245 £45m 

James Spencer & Family 

Spencer Commercial property 

New entry 

Spencer Commercial is a property 

group based on Merseyside. Run 

by chairman James Spencer, 76, 

it made a £744,000 profit on 

£14.1m sales in 2008-09. But the 

company has £45m of net assets. 

Cautiously, we value the business 

and the Spencer family at £45m. 

245 £45m 

Christopher Ure & Family 

atC properties 

2009: £47m (-£2m) 

ATC Properties is owned by 

Christopher Ure, 48, and his family 

trusts. It had £40.5m net assets in 

its 2008-09 accounts when it made 

£2m profit on £4.8m sales and we 

value the business at £40m. Past 

dividends and other assets should 

take the Ures to £45m easily. 

250 £44m 

Alistair Pullan & Family 

J pullan 

New entry 

Alistair Pullan, 51, runs 

J Pullan & Sons, a Leeds-based 

property-to construction group. 

In 2009, it made £3.2m profit 

and had £41.2m of net assets. 

It is worth that sum. The family 

also own Horus, with £1.8m net 

assets. Dividends take the Pullan 




Alphabetical index New entrants are shown in brown 

Name 2010 Wealth in Wealth in Change 

rank 2010 (£m) 2009 (£m) (£m) 

Abbott, Elizabeth & Family 222 55 45 10 

Ainscough, Martin & Family 72 200 — — 

Ainscough, William & Family 141 110 120 -10 

Akins, George & Family 228 52 — — 

Allen, Bert & Maurice 71 208 — — 

Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, 

Sir Euan & Family 

92 160 160 0 

Ashley, Linda 232 50 — — 

Barclay, Sir David & Sir Frederick 5 1,800 1,000 800 

Barham, James 245 45 — — 

Bassi, Paul 209 60 — — 

Beckwith, Sir John & Peter 59 270 330 -60 

Bedford, The Duke of 34 490 490 0 

Berkley, John & Family 92 160 150 10 

Bernerd, Elliott 129 119 219 -100 

Bertram, Kip & Family 171 80 70 10 

Bilton, Anton & Family 151 100 90 10 

Birrane, Martin 141 110 109 1 

Boultbee Brooks, Steve & Clive 116 130 200 -70 

Bourne & Green, Robert & Sally 141 110 110 0 

Boyd, Frank & Family 92 160 115 45 

Bramall, Terry & Family 37 450 400 50 

Bramall, Tony & Family 113 132 92 40 

Brennan, Joseph & Family 75 197 170 27 

Brodie, Ben 245 45 45 0 

Brooksbank, John 165 89 72 17 

Brotherton-Ratcliffe, 

Anthony & Family 

110 135 125 10 

Buccleuch, The Duke of & Family 81 180 180 0 

Burke, Frank & Family 148 105 105 0 

Byrne, John & Ciara & Family 182 78 — — 

Caddick, Paul & Family 98 150 90 60 

Cadogan, Earl & Family 3 2,500 2,000 500 

Candy, Nicholas & Christian 52 330 330 49 

Capstick-Dale, Nick 104 148 122 26 

Caring, Richard 23 600 450 150 

Caudwell, John 9 1,400 — — 

Chamberlain, John & Family 170 81 78 3 

Charles, Prince 18 680 520 160 

Chervak, Demi & Family 192 70 52 18 

Clark, Robin & Family 141 110 86 24 

Clarke Family 41 400 400 0 

Clarke, Simon & Family 151 100 120 -20 

Clowes, Charles 98 150 130 20 

Coffer, David 84 175 150 25 

Cola, Bakir & Family 171 80 80 0 

Cole, Terence 84 175 175 0 

Conlan, Gerry 214 59 98 -39 

Cooper, Melvyn & Family 225 53 — — 

Creighton, Andrew 125 120 90 30 

Dangoor, David & Family 232 50 — — 

Davey, Julia 114 131 131 0 

Davidson, Manny & Family 66 220 200 20 

Davies, Philip & Family 201 65 — — 

Dawson, Peter & Family 139 112 78 34 

Dellal, Jack 37 450 450 0 

Dennis, Cyril & Family 116 130 130 0 

Desmond, Danny 171 80 78 2 

Dixon, Mark 52 330 382 -52 

Doherty, Patrick & Family 158 93 200 -107 

Dove, Debbie 185 75 — — 

Dunsdon, John & Family 116 130 130 0 

Edmiston, Bob 54 320 300 20 

Egan, James 201 65 48 17 





Elkington, John 243 46 48 -2 

Englander, Eliasz & Family 91 162 160 2 

Evans, Michael & Family 41 400 350 50 

Farmer, Sir Tom 135 115 110 5 

Feldman, Heinrich & Family 135 115 105 10 

Finlan, John & Family 215 58 — — 

Folkes, Con & Family 166 85 85 0 

Foster, Lord 87 168 170 -2 

Freshwater, Benzion & Family 16 732 495 237 

Gabbay, David & Family 98 150 250 -100 

Gadsby, Peter 171 80 65 15 

Gadsden, Eric 138 113 113 0 

Gallagher, Tony 40 425 500 -75 

Garrard, Sir David 155 95 95 0 

Gordon, Sir Donald & Family 25 580 465 115 

Gorvy, Manfred & Family 77 195 170 25 

Gosling, Sir Donald 37 450 450 0 

Gould, Nicholas & Peter 171 80 — — 

Gradel, David & Family 209 60 — — 

Gredley, Bill & Family 131 118 95 23 

Green, Peter 21 650 500 150 

Grodner, Melvyn & Delia 171 80 80 0 

Grove, Eric 141 110 108 2 

Guthrie, John & Family 110 135 120 15 

Hall, Malcolm 232 50 — — 

Harris, Graham 106 145 117 28 

Hay, Albert & Family 149 104 92 12 

Healey, Eddie & Family 15 750 750 0 

Heller, Michael & Family 190 72 67 5 

Hemmings, Trevor 31 500 300 200 

Herbert, Michael & Family 92 160 145 15 

Higgins, Richard & Family 228 52 — — 

Hindle, John & Family 116 130 90 40 

Hines, Gerald 14 800 800 0 

Hitchcox, John 159 90 — — 

Hitchins, Jonathan & Family 139 112 90 22 

Hobson, Ronald 36 470 470 0 

Horney, Ray 159 90 80 10 

Horton, Peter & Family 110 135 160 -25 

Howard de Walden, 

Baroness & Family 

9 1,400 1,070 330 

Hunt, Jon 20 660 660 0 

Hyams, Harry 54 320 300 20 

Iliffe, Lord & Family 64 240 220 20 

Ives, William & Family 60 266 282 -16 

James, Fawn & India Rose 

& Family 

125 120 120 0 

Jarvis, Bruce & Family 171 80 70 10 

Jatania, The Family 23 600 380 220 

Jennings, Francis & Shamus 88 166 146 20 

Jolly, Robert & Family 232 50 46 4 

Jones, Peter & Family 19 673 556 117 

Karimzadeh, Simon & Family 147 107 107 0 

Kavanagh, Mark & Kathleen 195 69 69 0 

Kay, Mark 228 52 48 4 

Kelly, Patrick 159 90 — — 

Kenny, Charles & Family 74 198 200 -2 

Khalastchi, Anthony & Family 131 118 105 13 

Kirch, David 131 118 118 0 

Kirschel, Laurence 53 325 300 25 

Knight, Jerry & Janet 232 50 50 0 

Kraus, Mathias & Miriam 121 127 100 27 

Lagan, Kevin & Michael 46 350 250 100 

Lazari, Chris 29 522 425 97

Alphabetical index New entrants are shown in brown 



Leavesley, Jim & Family 201 65 66 -1 

Lee, Alan Edward & 209 60 — — 

Leonard, Tony 228 52 — — 

Leslau, Nick 98 150 130 20 

Lewis, Alan 61 250 225 25 

Lewis, Bernard & Family 13 920 920 0 

Linnett, Freddie & The Murphy 

Family 

30 510 445 65 

Livingstone, Ian & Richard 6 1,650 1,400 250 

Lonergan, Edward 166 85 65 20 

Lousada, Charles & Family 245 45 — — 

Lynch, John & Family 97 152 152 0 

Lyons, Anthony 46 350 250 100 

Mabey, David & Family 76 196 200 -4 

MacDonald-Hall, Caspar 46 350 300 50 

Mackay, Giles 205 62 — — 

Mactaggart, Sir John & Family 166 85 70 15 

Magnier, John 27 540 560 -20 

Marshall, Chris & Family 109 136 130 6 

Marston, John & Family 184 76 75 1 

McCabe, Bill 182 78 87 -9 

McCabe, Kevin & Family 81 180 175 5 

McCarthy, Clinton & Family 108 140 115 25 

McCauley, Dan 219 56 — — 

McGettigan, Jim 137 114 195 -81 

McManus, JP 34 490 430 60 

Mellon, Jim 28 530 500 30 

Metter, David 219 56 — — 

Middleton, Jeremy 190 72 — — 

Miller, Keith & Family 45 385 280 105 

Miskelly, John 209 60 — — 

Monk, Stuart & Family 131 118 99 19 

Moran, Christopher 66 220 144 76 

Morgan, Steve 46 350 350 0 

Morris, Bill & Family 169 82 65 17 

Morris, Jack & Family 141 110 95 15 

Morrison, Sam 57 296 250 46 

Mortstedt, Sten & Family 80 186 190 -4 

Moser, Henry & Family 89 165 165 0 

Moss, Brian & Family 243 46 — — 

Mould, Raymond 209 60 60 0 

Mucklow, Rupert & Family 198 66 60 6 

Muir, John & Family 185 75 50 25 

Mulryan, Sean 198 66 280 -214 

Murphy, Alan 78 190 180 10 

Nike, John & Family 215 58 — — 

Noé, Leo & Family 31 500 530 -30 

Northampton, The Marquess of 159 90 — — 

O'Callaghan, Noel & Miriam 171 80 — — 

Ogden, Sir Robert 98 150 115 35 

Oglesby, Michael & Family 72 200 295 -95 

O'Hare, Gerard 66 220 220 0 

O'Rourke, Eamonn 198 66 — — 

Panayiotou, Andreas 61 250 250 0 

Pearl, David 114 131 147 -16 

Pears, Mark & Family 7 1,600 1,500 100 

Pervez, Sir Anwar & Family 25 580 500 80 

Petchey, Jack 31 500 450 50 

Pickering, Cavan & Family 205 62 50 12 

Pidgley, Tony 155 95 — — 

Porter, Nicholas 192 70 — — 

Portman, Viscount & Family 12 1,000 950 50 

Potel, Solomon & Family 218 57 52 5 

Powell, Alastair & Michael 70 209 205 4 



Pritchard, Fred & Family 225 53 48 5 

Pullan, Alistair & Family 250 44 — — 

Rana, Lord & Family 159 90 — — 

Rankin, William & Family 208 61 96 -35 

Rasul, Shaf 171 80 — — 

Raymond, Roger & Family 232 50 50 0 

Rayne, Robert & Family 66 220 125 95 

Reuben, David & Simon 2 5,432 3,300 2,132 

Rich, Peter & Family 240 48 — — 

Richardson, Roy & Family 41 400 350 50 

Richmond, The Duke of & 

Gordon & Family 

171 80 — — 

Ritblat, Sir John & Family 151 100 90 10 

Roberts, David 125 120 105 15 

Rohan, Ken 105 147 165 -18 

Ronson, Gerald & Family 106 145 180 -35 

Rosefield, John & Stephen 232 50 60 -10 

Rosenfeld, Andrew 151 100 100 0 

Ross, Richard & Family 240 48 48 0 

Roxburghe, The Duke of 159 90 80 10 

Ruhan, Andrew & Family 225 53 — — 

Russell, David 185 75 75 0 

Salisbury, Marquess of 61 250 250 0 

Scowcroft, Brian & Family 92 160 160 0 

Scrutton, Charles & Anne 242 47 — — 

Seddon, John & Family 122 126 85 41 

Sellar, Irvine & James 78 190 165 25 

Shahmoon, Eli & Family 98 150 250 -100 

Shanly, Michael 124 122 82 40 

Sinclair, Duncan & Family 185 75 76 -1 

Slade, Michael 189 73 72 1 

Slowe, Michael & Robert 123 125 95 30 

Smith, Jeff 129 119 65 54 

Smurfit, Sir Michael & Family 58 295 294 1 

Spencer, James & Family 245 45 — — 

Steinberg, Mark 84 175 175 0 

Stevenson, David & Family 232 50 50 0 

Sugar, Lord 17 730 730 0 

Sullivan, David 41 400 400 0 

Sutton, Sir Richard & Family 120 129 115 14 

Sykes, Paul 21 650 550 100 

Tayub, Rashid & Aziz 150 103 — — 

Thomas, Sir Stanley & Peter 65 225 225 0 

Tomkins, Robin & Family 219 56 — — 

Townshend, Charlotte 54 320 300 20 

Turner, Andrew & Sharon 201 65 65 0 

Upward, Simon & Paul 205 62 57 5 

Ure, Christopher & Family 245 45 47 -2 

Vernon, Stephen 46 350 280 70 

Versteegh, Gerard & Family 125 120 120 0 

Wall, Stuart 81 180 180 0 

Watkin Jones, Glyn & Family 224 54 — — 

Watson, Dick & Family 155 95 85 10 

Westminster, The Duke of 1 6,800 6,500 300 

Whittaker, John 11 1,060 1,360 -300 

Wickens, Roger & Family 196 67 89 -22 

Widdowson, Gary 89 165 160 5 

Wilson, David & Family 46 350 275 75 

Wing, Woon Yip & Family 196 67 72 -5 

Woolf, Douglas & Family 222 55 60 -5 

Yates, Amanda & Family 215 58 50 8 

Yeates, Charles 171 80 70 10 

Zabludowicz, Poju 8 1,500 — — 

Zakay, Eddie & Sol 4 1,900 1,500 400 



Rules of engagement 



1 Valuations for quoted property companies 

are usually based on their share price 

as at early September 2010. For private 

companies we have based valuations 

largely on their latest net asset figure. 

After the credit crunch and property crash, 

we have been cautious in our private 

company valuations. 

Where accounts are not up-to-date, we 

have discounted their net asset figure by 

10% or more (depending on the strength 

of their balance sheet) in arriving at our 

valuation. 

2 We have also been influenced by levels 

of borrowings, the strength of the balance 

sheet and credit ratings in arriving at our 

figures. Where private companies pay large 

salaries to their owner-directors, we have 

added a proportion of the salary to our profit 

and wealth calculation. 

3 Though there may be some concern 

that we have not cut our valuations deeply 

enough to reflect the economic crisis of late 

2008 and early 2009, we take comfort from 

the fact that private companies are much 

more conservative in their balance sheets 

and that the net asset figure may not reflect 

the true position. 

Second, many of the property tycoons 

who have private property companies 

also have large assets elsewhere that 

we do not know about. Finally, the rate of 

decline in values and economic activity 

may have now stabilised, which helps to 

underpin our values. 

4 We have counted family trusts as part 

of family shareholdings in making our 

assessments of company ownerships. 

5 Only those who have made all or a 

significant part of their fortunes in property 

investment, trading or related areas, such 

as estate agency, qualify for this list. Where 

construction magnates have a significant 

property element, we have included or 

excluded them on a case-by-case basis. 

Where retail tycoons such as Sir Philip Green 

of Arcadia have used property trades to help 

them on their way to fortunes, we have not 

included them. 

The Queen is not included as she does 

not have full control of the Crown Estate 

in the normal meaning of the word. Most 

landowners are also excluded, unless – like 

the Duke of Westminster – their wealth 

derives from urban property holdings. 

Inevitably we will have missed people who 

feel they should have been included. We ask 

them to send in their details for next year to 

Philipberesford@aol.com. 

Any other comments also gratefully received 

here. 

All our calculations for valuations are 

ballpark figures, which may be challenged 

by those listed. We will adjust valuations next 

year for any who feel that we have been too 

wide of the mark. 

Dr Philip Beresford and Dominic Price

2010 Estates Gazette Rich List - Estatesgazette.com

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