Reuben brothers top UK Rich List with £13.1bn fortune
Property seen as smartest investment as former number one Lakshmi Mittal drops to 12th place
Property developers David and Simon Reuben are now the richest people in Britain, according to the annual Sunday Times Rich List.
The brothers enjoy a combined fortune of £13.1bn, putting them top of the 1,000 individuals or families on the newspaper's rankings.
They made their fortune with Russian aluminium before switching to property. At the minute, that seems a smart move: billionaires whose fortunes are founded on commodities have slipped down the ranks, says The Times, hit by the global oversupply of steel, oil and other commodities.
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Lakshmi Mittal, whose family own ArcelorMittal, Europe's biggest steelmaker, topped the list in 2008 with a fortune of £27.7bn. He has dropped to number 12, with £7.12bn to his name.
ArcelorMittal lost £5.5bn last year as the price of steel plummeted, with many blaming China for "dumping" state-subsidised steel on the global market at uncompetitively low prices.
While the Mittal fortune has shrunk, the Reubens have become richer: the Sunday Times estimates their wealth has risen by £3.4bn in the past year.
New entries on the list include comic actor Sacha Baron-Cohen, who is in at 936 and worth £105m in combination with his actor wife, Isla Fisher.
Lewis Hamilton also makes his debut, says The Guardian. He is now Britain's richest sportsman, with an estimated £106m.
Singer Adele is the UK's richest musician, with the Sunday Times estimating that her personal fortune rose by £35m to £85m. She released her first album for four year, titled 25, in November and it has now sold 15 million copies.
The combined wealth of the 1,000 people on the list is a staggering £576bn, an increase of £28.5bn - or £901 every second - on last year.
The Guardian says equality campaigners have calculated that the wealth of the top 1,000 richest people in the UK is equivalent to that of the poorest 40 per cent of the population.
John Hood, of the Equality Trust, said: "The level of inequality in the UK is both completely unjustifiable and hugely damaging for society.
"A wealth of evidence now shows us that living in a more unequal country means you're more likely to suffer from poor mental and physical health, have poorer education, trust people less, be the victim of violent crime and even die earlier.
"It's not good enough for politicians to repeatedly fail to act on this."
Here is this year's top ten, with last year's position in brackets:
1 (5) David and Simon Reuben: £13.1bn (up £3.4bn). Property, internet.2 (2) Sri and Gopi Hinduja: £13bn. Industry and finance.3 (1) Len Blavatnik: £11.6bn (down £1.58bn). Warner Music Group.4 (3) Galen and George Weston and family: £11bn. Retailing.5 (6) Ernesto and Kirsty Bertarelli: £9.78bn (up £330m). Pharmaceuticals.6 (9) The Duke of Westminster: £9.35bn (up £790m). Property.7 (12) Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken and Michel de Carvalho: £9.15bn (up £2bn). Inheritance.8 (8) Kirsten and Jorn Rausing: £8.7bn. Inheritance, investment.9 (14) Hans Rausing and family: £8.6bn (up £2.2bn). Packaging.10 (4) Alisher Usmanov £7.58bn: (down £2.22bn). Investment.
Adele becomes richest female UK musician ever
21 April
The Sunday Times has compiled its annual Rich List – and this year it reveals that singer-songwriter Adele has become the all-time wealthiest female musician in the UK.
The Times's annual list estimates the fortunes of the wealthiest people in Ireland, as well as the UK – and in fact Adele is out-financed by Enya, the Irish singer who rose to fame in the 1980s with songs including Orinoco Flow (Sail Away).
Adele now has a fortune of £85m, the newspaper estimates, not far behind Enya, who is worth some £91m. The Londoner's fortune has increased by £35m in the past year.
Adele's fortune puts her at number 30 on a sub-list of the 50 wealthiest music millionaires in the UK and Ireland released by the Times. For the fifth year running, she is also at the top of the Young Music Rich List of those under 30.
Born in Tottenham in 1988, Adele rose to fame in 2007, one year after graduating from the BRIT school for performing arts, after a friend posted a demo she had recorded on MySpace.
She released her first album in four years in November, titled 25, and it has now sold more than 15 million copies. Earlier this year she won four Brit awards – a record for a solo artist.
Adele still has a lot to earn to rival Sir Paul McCartney at the top of the Times's list of rich musicians: the former Beatle is worth an estimated £760m, in conjunction with his wife Nancy Shevell.
The Rolling Stones are the wealthiest band on the list, with a combined fortune of £630m. Famously business-savvy, Mick Jagger told the BBC in 2010 that musicians would no longer make much money from recordings and that he was lucky to have worked in a brief period when it was possible to do so.
The Stones also have a combined age of 296. Britain and Ireland's wealthiest band whose members are all under 30 is One Direction, who have a cumulative wealth of £132m.
Here are the top ten richest musicians – or heirs of musicians – in the UK and Ireland, according to the Sunday Times:
1. Sir Paul McCartney and Nancy Shevell – £760m
2. Lord Lloyd-Webber – £715m
3. U2 – £500m
4. Sir Elton John – £280m
5. Sir Mick Jagger – £235m
=6. Olivia and Dhani Harrison (wife and son of the late George Harrison) – £220m
=6. Keith Richards – £220m
8. Ringo Starr – £200m
9. Michael Flatley – £198m
10. Sting – £185m
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