Wednesday 29 April 2015

The Sunday Times Rich List - imported wealth




Every year for the last 26 years, The Sunday Times produces a list of the wealthiest 1000 people in Britain. Unsurprisingly the wealth needed to have your name on that list has grown enormously. This year you need to have a combined wealth of £100 Million. Of course this doesn't include cold hard cash - as that would require access to bank accounts, but it does include identifiable wealth, such as land, racehorses, art, or significant shareholding in PLC's. Back when the list started you needed a paltry £15 million to be on the list.

Apart from the amount needed to have your name on the list changing, one of the biggest changes in the 26 years is where the wealth comes from. There has been a sharp decline in traditional British wealth, so much so The Queen has even fallen out of the top 300 wealthiest in GB. The wealthiest man in the UK is the owner of Warner Music, Len Blavatnik. He is worth a staggering £13.1 Billion - showing there is still money in music.

The other interesting fact is that the number of billionaires in Britain has more than doubled since the last General Election. On top of that the 1000 names on the list have a combined wealth of £547.126 billion compared to £249.615 billion back in 2005. That is some significant movement.

So where has all the increases and money come from? Of the 117 billionaires, just 62 are British. Hence the title of this blog. Even the Duke of Westminster has been pushed to 9th on the list. The question is is this good for Britain. Are we all benefiting from the extra money piling into the UK, or is going to cause dear old blighty a problem a few years down the road? A lot of the property in London is now owned by overseas investors, which  may have artificially raised the prices. However, as most of the money is in London there is a strong argument that the money coming into the UK is a good thing. Time will tell.


You can see the Sunday Times Rich List at
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/richlist2015
although it is a subscription website.

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