£6,600m
The Duke of Westminster
Grosvenor Group
Plans for a £40m apartment complex in Sydney, following on from a huge Hong Kong development show that Grosvenor Group is making itself felt on the global stage. But the company, owned by the family trusts of the Duke of Westminster, 53, is not neglecting its home patch.
Last year, plans for one of Bath’s biggest ever developments were unveiled. Work will start on Bath’s Western Riverside by the end of 2006. The scheme will take 15-20 years to complete. Westminster is also behind the Paradise Street development in Liverpool, which includes three department stores, two hotels, a bus station and car parking for 3,000 vehicles.
Taking such a long view has helped Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster to become the richest property developer in Britain. The range of his wealth is staggering, taking in estates in Lancashire and Cheshire, swathes of central London, in Mayfair and Belgravia, and tracts of land in Scotland, Canada and around the world.
Grosvenor Group, his main property company, saw its profits rise slightly to £93.2m on £286m sales in 2004. Its net assets rose to £2.28bn. Yet Grosvenor Group is but a fraction of Westminster’s wealth. Some 200 acres of Belgravia are held in separate trusts which should be worth around £4bn, not quite twice the Grosvenor Group net assets. That would put a value of around £6.2bn on the total Grosvenor family net assets.
But for all his riches the Duke has kept his feet on the ground. He is never happier than when at home near Chester or with the territorial army. Indeed, he has carved out a second, alternative career, rising to become its first major general.
Taking in the £62m in dividends that the family trusts have had from Grosvenor group since 1999, a valuable art collection and family properties, we reckon that Westminster is now worth around £6.6bn.
£2,500m
David & Simon Reuben
Trans-World Metals
Barely a week has passed this year without a property deal being pulled off by the Reuben brothers. Perhaps their best known coup was as part of a consortium which took over Elliot Bernerd’s (see page 36) Chelsfield operation in a £2.1bn deal.
They have recently signed up with Australian construction giant Multiplex to undertake a £1bn, 6m sq ft development in Gibraltar and also sold a west London site to Peter Simon, founder of the fashion chain Monsoon for its HQ.
They have been underbidders on a number of occasions showing that they will not overpay. Not that money is an issue. The Reubens, David, 67, and Simon, 64, can contemplate such moves after their work in Russia in the 1990s, where they were dubbed the “metal tsars”. But their origins were anything but regal.
Born in Bombay, the Reubens made their way to London, where Simon went into property and David started trading in scrap metal. Their foray into Russia proved controversial but lucrative. In a long analysis, Fortune magazine reckoned the Reubens made a £1.3bn fortune from their dealings in the former Soviet Union before the investment ended in 1999.
Our sources suggest that following astute deals in the British property market, they are worth at least £2.5bn with nearly half in liquid assets such as cash and bonds, while the rest is in their growing investment portfolio and property.
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£1,650m Earl Cadogan & Family The Cadogan Group Sloane Square, the heart of Chelsea and also the Cadogan estate, is likely to get a makeover that will make it much more pedestrian friendly and allow people to enjoy the area without the roar of cars. But it will only be the latest of Cadogan’s projects in the last few years to transform this part of Chelsea. Having inherited the title from his late father in 1997, Charles Gerald John Cadogan, 68, the eighth Earl of Cadogan, has presided over a hefty investment programme covering the 90-acre estate. This year work will begin on the final phase of the £150m redevelopment of the old barracks and sports ground at Duke of York Square on Kings Road, which has been a critical success. The family company, Cadogan Group, has benefited from the resulting rise in values and showed around £1.45bn of net assets in its 2004 accounts. Estates, past dividends and personal property take the Cadogan family to perhaps £1.65bn. |
£1,400m
The Hon Mary Czernin & the Howard de Walden family
Howard de Walden Estate
London’s Marylebone High Street was voted the capital’s best shopping street in the Time Out Shopping Awards 2004.
It is at the heart of the Howard de Walden Estate, which owns around 110-acres of central London in the Marylebone and Harley Street areas. Under professional managers, the whole area has been revitalised and rents of over £40 per sq ft are now being achieved for prime properties.
This will bring joy to the Howard de Walden family led by Mary Czernin, 70, the eldest of four daughters of the late Lord Howard de Walden, who died in 1999. Marylebone is now making serious money for the family.
In 2003-04, Howard de Walden Estates saw its profits rise to £31.1m on £42.9m sales and paid out a £31.1m dividend to the Howard de Walden family trusts which own the company.
In the last eleven years, the family has clocked up around £89m in dividends in total.
With central London prices up slightly in the last year, we raise our valuation of the family’s business assets to £1.3bn, adding another £100m for past dividends and other property assets to the Howard de Walden family.
£1,200m
Viscount Portman & Family
Portman Estate
Portman,47, will be watching very carefully what happens to Michael House, the former headquarters of Marks & Spencer. In February 2004, it was sold for £115m to London & Regional Properties and some £100m will be spent on refurbishment. The building is on a long lease of around 100 years from his family company, the Portman Estate. Any move to redevelop and move the site upmarket will be welcomed.
Christopher, the 10th Viscount Portman, has been trying to improve the image of his 110-acre central London inheritance since he took over the estate on his father’s death in 1999.
Owned by a series of complex family trusts, the Portman estate was slower than the other big London landowners to start improvements. The problem was that many of the properties were out on long leases.
Some of these are now coming to an end and the estate is taking a more proactive role in development, spending £40m on an investment programme such as Portman Village, the name for two shopping streets in the heart of the estate. Here there are proposals for a farm shop to be supplied from Portman’s Herefordshire estate.
There are few signs of family wealth in their two companies, Brickleton Group and Portman Settled Estates, with £5m of net assets between them.
But central London prices have risen relatively slowly in the past year as the property market has cooled, so we stick with our valuation of £1.15bn for the 110-acre Portman estate. We still add another £50m for family assets including the Herefordshire estate and a holiday home in Antigua.
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£1,200m Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay Ellerman Investments The Barclay twins, Sir David (below right) and Sir Frederick, may be sitting on a goldmine at Littlewoods. But they recently hit the headlines for squeezing costs at the Telegraph Group, which they bought for £665m last year and will make £100m this year. In 2002 the pair, both 70, paid £750m for Littlewoods. They then bought the mail order business from Great Universal Stores for £590m and merged the two groups in 2004. They have been offered £500m for the stores, a bid they have rejected for now. But spotting undervalued assets is their forte. 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 shipping line and another £100m from backing Philip Green in the break up of Sears in 1999. While their empire embraces property, The Scotsman and The Business newspapers, hotels and shops, they do not appear to make huge amounts of money. Littlewoods was the best performer in 2002-03 with a £210m profit, but many of the businesses are loss makers. Despite this the Barclays were valued at £1.2bn by bankers doing a thorough financial analysis of bidders for the Telegraph. We bow to their expertise and similarly value them at that level. |
£900m
Mark Pears & Family
William Pears Family Holdings
The Pears family will be pleased indeed with the performance of Telereal, the joint venture company that has taken over the running of British Telecom’s vast property portfolio. They own half the business along with Land Securities. In 2003-04, LandSec received £172m from Telereal.
We assume the Pears family must have had the same. Certainly, Telereal Services, the parent company, is in fine fettle, making £35.2m profit on £143m sales in 2003-04. The BT deal and the acquisition of a pub chain in 2003 for £57m and a joint venture to run NHS facilities show that the Pears family is willing to move out of its traditional property business.
The family empire, now run by three Pears brothers, was started by their grandfather, the late William Pears. He had assembled a Hampstead-based 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, 42, is managing director of the family’s main company, William Pears Family Holdings, but there are at least 31 separate companies which showed net assets of £496m net assets in 2003-04.
The Pears have received dividends of £30m in the past three years. With the money coming through from Telereal, we raise our valuation of the Pears family to £900m.
£900m
John Whittaker
Peel Holdings
Ports are now catching the eye of John Whittaker, the Isle of Man-based property tycoon. In June he finally took over the Mersey Docks and Harbour Co in a £780m agreed deal. In 2002 he took over Clydeport for £184m, and the latest deal makes him the second biggest port operator in Britain after Associated British Ports.
Whittaker, one of the most low-key tycoons in Britain, took his company Peel Holdings private last year. He has over 68% of the shares while his ally, the Saudi Olayan dynasty, holds 25%.
In the 1980s, Whittaker came to the City’s attention when he fought a long drawn out, and sometimes bitter, battle to take over the Manchester Ship Canal Co. It owned the land on which his successful out-of-town shopping complex, the Trafford Centre, was built.
The company is currently looking at developing Port Salford, a multimodal freight terminal on a 200-acre site in Irlam and Quays Point, in Salford Quays, with 1m sq ft of offices and residential and a “Third Grace” landmark building. This site is opposite the Imperial War Museum North, to which Peel donated £12m and large tracts, to aid development.
Among Peel’s other assets is the John Lennon Airport on Merseyside. Whittaker nearly became a Catholic priest but went into the quarrying business before moving into property. Three of Whittaker’s four children work for the family firm, with the fourth expected to join after graduation.
In the year to January 2004 Peel had £1.24bn net assets and we value the business on that figure. Whittaker’s stake is worth £842m. His other assets, including his homes in the Isle of Man and Spain and dividends of £6m a year, should easily take Whittaker to £900m.
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£860m Sir Donald Gordon & Family Liberty International Newly knighted Sir Donald Gordon, 75, stepped down from the Liberty International property group in June 2005. Its share price recently passed £10 for the first time as the City was impressed by the strong results that Gordon unveiled for 2004. The South African-born tycoon, 75, will move from chairman to become life president of “the company I love”, as he put it. Gordon started a South African life insurance operation in the 1950s but has focused on British property through Liberty International since 1980. He finally sold out of the South African group in 1999. His family stake in Liberty International, best known for shopping centres such as Lakeside in Essex, is up sharply and is now worth £689m. “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. 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. His South African share sales and other assets take him to around £880m, but we lop £20m off for those generous charitable donations. |
£833m
Benzion Freshwater & Family
Daejan Holdings
City investors would love to get their hands on Daejan Holdings, the low-key quoted property company run and 79%-owned by the Freshwater family. The Investors Chronicle recently calculated that Daejan’s share price was trading at a 40% discount to its real net asset value. Yet the growth in London property values has been a boon for Benzion Freshwater, 57, and his family which shows no sign of relaxing its grip on Daejan.
His father, Osias, arrived in London three days before the second world war as a penniless refugee. When he died in 1976, he was London’s biggest private landlord with 20,000 tenants. A sift through company records shows that Benzion Freshwater has 278 directorships in a complex web of companies.
Aside from a £373m stake in Daejan, there are three other main companies of note, Highdorn, Metropolitan Properties and Centremanor, which account for another £440m of the Freshwater family’s net assets.
We have tried to remove double counting on our part and any charitable stakes. We have also ignored a host of minor companies to allow a safety margin if we have not been ruthless enough in culling. To these £813m of net assets we add just £20m for personal property, again this is a conservative figure to give a margin for safety.
£810m
Sean Quinn & Family
Quinn Group
After coming to the attention of the UK property industry by buying the Wentworth golf course from Chelsfield, Sean Quinn, 59, is now looking at the UK market with acquisitive eyes. Quinn, who has 200,000 insurance customers in Ireland, is planning an assault on the British car insurance market by offering easy credit terms to younger drivers through his Quinn Direct company.
A farmer’s son, Quinn left school at 15 to work on his family’s dairy farm in Derrylin, Co Fermanagh.
His breakthrough came in 1973 when, at the age of 26, he realised the family was sitting on a goldmine – or to be more precise, on huge reserves of sand, gravel and shale. Buying a truck for £600 and borrowing money for a mechanical shovel, Quinn went into the quarrying business.
One half of the quarry was in Northern Ireland and the other half in the Republic. The Troubles in the north meant a healthy demand for building products in construction and repair work. In 1975 Quinn started making concrete blocks, followed by cement and then in the early 1980s roof and floor tiles. By the mid-1980s his Quinn Group had become Ireland’s second largest cement manufacturer.
Quinn diversified and bought nine Dublin pubs and a string of Irish hotels in the mid-1990s. The Irish property boom that followed increased their value six-fold. Quinn Direct Insurance, which now writes premiums of £350m a year, has also taken him into a new and lucrative market.
The family empire turned in profits of more than £100m on £700m sales in 2004. The group is conservatively worth £800m. Other assets add £10m to Quinn’s fortune taking him to £810m.
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£760m Sir Alan Sugar Amshold Group We’re all getting to know Sir Alan Sugar, 58, a lot better. The Brentwood-based electronics tycoon fronted The Apprentice, the reality TV show imported from America where it was hosted by Donald Trump. Until The Apprentice, the Hackney tailor’s son was best known as a former chairman of Spurs and for building Amstrad into a leading consumer electronics group selling phones and computers in the 1980s and 1990s. But he has several interests now. He still runs Amstrad, which enjoyed a good run over Christmas and doubled its half-year profits in 2004-05 to £14.2m. His £39m stake in Amstrad is now held via his personal Amshold Group, which also owns the £105m Viglen computer operation. But Sugar has another £456m worth of property held either via Amshold or overseas. In addition he has £150m of cash and personal assets including property in London, Florida and Spain, taking him to £760m. |
£750m
Simon Halabi
Buckingham Securities
Simon Halabi, 47, co-investor in the so-called Shard of Glass project in Southwark has been very active this year. He lost out to Leo Noe (see page 29) in a £300m sale and leaseback deal for more than 300 Boots The Chemists sites but is still in the running to acquire a portfolio of 16 Hilton hotels.
Halabi has a fast expanding property portfolio, which is held in overseas family trusts, advised by Buckingham Securities, the family property group.
The very low-profile Syrian-born property investor is a British citizen and has lived here since his teens. And he has some choice assets. In 2000 he bought the In and Out Club in Piccadilly for £50m. Halabi also likes shopping centres and has a couple – Slough and Stockport. The latter cost him £150m in 2003.
A net profit of £80m on the recent sale of properties and a recent revaluation of his trusts’ property portfolio take his valuation to £750m.
£750m
Eddie Healey
Stadium Development
Since working in his father’s DIY business in Hull, Eddie Healey, 67, has made his fortune from property deals. He has shown his confidence in the market with a number of recent deals including selling the Parkgate shopping complex at Rotherham for £260m, and buying in return the Newport Retail Park for £60m.
He is also developing a leisure complex outside Newcastle, buying a retail park in Hull for £30m and working with Dave Whelan of JJB Sports in launching Soccerdomes, which are combined football-based leisure and shopping ventures.
Healey may be a god in the property world, but he shuns the limelight. With fellow developer, Paul Sykes (see page 19) he turned a derelict site outside Sheffield on the M1 into the top out-of-town shopping centre in Britain.
The £1.17bn sale of the Meadowhall shopping centre in 1999 netted Healey around £420m for his 60% stake (taking account of £470m debt in the sale price).
Having reinvested some of the Meadowhall proceeds and stripping out the Parkgate sale, we can see nearly £100m of net assets in half a dozen separate Healey family companies including Stadium Holdings.
In all, allowing for double counting on our part, Healey should be worth £750m.
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£730m Trevor Hemmings The Northen Trust Group Ponden Mill, a Skipton-based home furnishing retailer, was recently taken over by Hemmings, 70, marking his first move into retail. Pubs and property have been his forte until now. But above all he has grand ambitions for Blackpool, which will depend on the outcome of plans to shake up rules for super-casinos by the government. If all goes to plan, he will transform Blackpool into the UK’s answer to Atlantic City in New Jersey. With immaculate timing, Hemmings sold up his building firm in the early 1970s for £1.5m. Blackpool Tower cost him £74m in 1998, while two years later he bought Littlewoods’ pools operation from the Moores family for £161m. Less high profile has been his buying stakes in quoted companies through his two main vehicles, Guild Ventures and Rumney Manor. Between them, the two have stakes in nine companies worth over £238m, the main holding being his near £163m stake in Scottish & Newcastle. His personal company, the Northern Trust Group (formerly TJH Group) showed £12.4m profit on £102.9m sales in 2003-04, when its net assets rose to £106.5m. His pub estate is worth £100m while Hemmings is also involved in property development in the regions from Exeter to outside Manchester. He should now be worth £730m with the rise in net asset values and his quoted stakes. |
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|
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Wealth (£m) |
|
1 |
|
6,600 |
|
2 |
|
2,500 |
|
3 |
|
1,650 |
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4 |
|
1,400 |
|
5 |
|
1,200 |
|
7 |
|
900 |
|
9 |
|
860 |
|
10 |
|
833 |
|
12 |
|
760 |
|
13 |
|
750 |
£725m
Andreas Panayiotou
Ability Developments
Former amateur boxing champion-turned property developer Andreas Panayiotou, 39, has moved up a gear recently with two new planned London developments. His company, Ability Developments, has bought a 1.2-acre site at 31 Millharbour, London E14, from private housebuilder Weston Homes. The site has planning consent for a 23-storey building, which he will call Ability Place.
But he is also looking westwards. CIT’s Abbey House, at 215-231 Baker Street, London W1, which will be re-named Ability Parkview, is the group’s first venture into the West End. The 121,300 sq ft former Abbey National headquarters has consent for 140 flats, 40 of them affordable. The scheme has a development value of £125m and is due to be completed in 2007. A new headquarters in Portland Place has also been bought for £7m and will be re-named Ability House.
Clearly Panayiotou is on a roll, and is likely to cash in on the Olympics coming to his Hackney ‘manor’, so to speak, in 2012. But he is also branching out into luxury yachts and aviation. In October his $35m yacht will be launched and will be ready for chartering in the Caribbean by Christmas. Ability Air is about to acquire its third aircraft.
On the property front, his Ability Developments is also looking at developing Manhattan loft apartments in New York to take advantage of the weak dollar. But it is the East End and the City fringes that has cemented Panayiotou’s reputation.
Eschewing the boxing ring on his mother’s advice, he took over running of his family’s Ability Developments business from his Greek Cypriot-born father in 1996.
Starting in the Hackney and Islington area with a development at 15 Chapel Market, Ability has moved on to larger and larger projects. They are always branded as Ability projects – hence Ability Towers or Ability Plaza, drawing comparison with Donald Trump in New York with his Trump Towers.
But Panayiotou is rare among London developers in one very important respect. His flats are not sold on, but rented out to young City professionals.
His company, Ability Developments, showed £108m of net assets in its last 2003-04 accounts, while the separate Domel Properties shows nearly £6m of net assets. In 2005, Ability’s net asset figure will rise to £300m. The latest purchases will increase that further. But the portfolio has much more value than is apparent in the net asset figure and City analysts reckon it could be worth around £725m in total. We value Panayiotou on this figure.
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£701m Chris Lazari Lazari Investments Profits at Lazari Investments should hit £18m in 2004-05, while the total value of its portfolio has risen to £624m, according to a recent valuation. It follows a spending spree by Lazari on West End properties. The 59-year-old Greek Cypriot by birth, came to Britain in the early 1970s, to work in the fashion business. In 1978, he diversified into property. We add another £77m to his portfolio for personal property and cash in the bank, taking Lazari to £701m. |
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£700m Sir Tom Hunter West Coast Capital Hunter, 44, worked in his dad’s grocery shop and then began selling trainers. While his schoolmates went down the pit, Hunter built up his 240-store Sports Division chain, employing 7,500 people. Just 14 years later in 1998, he sold it to Dave Whelan’s JJB Sports for £290m. Since then he has been investing heavily in property and also in ventures with retail king Philip Green. In 2004, for example, he sold a property portfolio two years after acquiring it and made a £50m profit. Some of Hunter’s remaining portfolio was revalued recently adding another £145m to its £400m valuation. Hunter has also entered the hotels and pub business through Travelodge and the Spirit group. He also went back to his proverbial roots with Qube, a mid-market footwear chain which is growing exponentially. In June 2005, Hunter was knighted in the honours list and he made around £20m profit when Land Securities bought LxB Properties. In all, he is easily worth £700m, even after his £100m of charitable donations last year. |
£650m
Albert Gubay
Anglo International Holdings
Gubay, 77, accepted an £80m offer for his Total Fitness chain of health clubs last September, having rebuffed previous bids.
Born in North Wales, he made his first fortune through the Kwik Save discount supermarket chain, which he sold in 1973 for £14m.
The main element to Gubay’s fortune, though, is his £450m property portfolio. He is also busy in development, with plans to convert a former seminary in Lancashire into flats, for example. The Total Fitness proceeds should take Gubay’s cash and other assets to £200m.
In all we reckon he should still be worth £650m.
£600m
Jack Dellal
Allied Commercial Holdings
Profits at Dellal’s Allied Commercial Holdings soared in 2003-04 from £1.7m to £7.5m on the back of a strong property market. 82-year-old Dellal, known in the industry as Black Jack, is a dealmaker whose prowess is only matched by his astonishing virility. He became a father for the ninth time in his late 70s.
Dellal made his mark in the early 1970s, selling his Dalton Barton bank for £58m and became 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.
With the profits rise, we raise Dellal to £600m this year.
£600m
David Khalili
Favermead
Speculation in the local press has it that Khalili may plump for Liverpool as home for his 20,000 piece Islamic art collection. The Iranian-born investor is also being tipped as a potential recipient of an honorary knighthood.
Khalili, 59, came to London in 1980 after a spell trading property in New York. His 20,000 piece collection has been valued at around £800m with the market for Islamic art particularly hot and record prices being paid right now.
But while the low-key Khalili has been having some success on the art front, he did not make much money by creating the world’s most expensive home in Kensington Gardens. In fact, he spent well over the £50m that he made from its sale in 2001 to Bernie Ecclestone — the F1 supremo.
Certainly Khalili’s visible asset wealth in his companies is not very much at all. Two companies, Favermead Assets and Favermead Investments have halved their net assets to £5m in their 2003-04 accounts. But he must have amassed a hefty fortune through his property dealing to assemble the art.
Taking a cautious line on the art we value it at around £500m, adding another £100m for his house proceeds, the company assets and other wealth.
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£600m Paul Raymond Paul Raymond Organisation Raymond’s Revue Bar, which symbolised the world of full nudity shows and g-strings in the Soho of old, is to re-open as a gay club called Too 2 Much. But the change will not worry Raymond, 79, as he still owns the freehold. The change of use reflects the rise of the new Soho with its gay-centric activity. It can only help Raymond, a former dishwasher, to get richer too. Long associated with the world of top-shelf publishing and Soho clubs, Raymond has been buying up property in Soho, as well as Chelsea and Notting Hill. His company, the Paul Raymond Organisation, was reorganised into two separate companies in 2003. The two companies, Paul Raymond Publications and Soho Estates, showed £25m profit on £38m sales. The two have around £301m of net assets between them. Though he keeps a low profile these days, he is still very much hands on. We value the business assets, owned by Raymond and his trusts, at £550m. But we add another £50m for Raymond’s personal property and past dividends and salaries (£33m from 1997-2002 alone). |
£575m
David Sullivan
Roldvale
When David Sullivan built his Essex home 13 years ago, it cost him the princely sum of £7m. He recently turned down an £18m offer for the property. But then he has always been an astute property man with a portfolio that has grown sharply in value to around £220m.
But it is soft porn and sport 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, 56, took his first steps into the top-shelf market at 21 while working at petrol stations owned by Gerald Ronson, the property magnate. His day job selling petrol made him £30 a week while at night he made up to £800 a week producing porn pictures and flogging sheets of 50 photos for £1. By the mid-1970s, he had 50% of the adult magazine market.
He joined forces with his main competitor, David Gold, and launched Sunday Sport in 1986, and Daily Sport. Sport Newspapers made an operating profit of £10m on £36.4m sales in the year to August 2003. The group is valued at £200m, putting a £100m price tag on Sullivan’s stake.
His Roldvale operation, with interests from property to chat lines, increased profits smartly to £20.3m in the year to September 2003. Adding most of the directors’ pay to the bottom line takes Roldvale’s profits to £25m, and it is easily worth £200m. Other assets including Birch Hall, his Essex mansion, a £20m stake in Opera Telecom and £29m in salary over the past five years, take Sullivan to £575m.
£570m
Bernard Lewis & Family
Lewis Trust Group
Despite the difficulties with filling its Israeli hotels, particularly during the period of the Iraq war, profits at the Lewis Trust Group actually soared in 2003 from £54.8m to £80.8m on £515m sales. The business is best known for its River Island fashion chain, which has been performing well in recent years. The business was started by Lewis, 79, chairman since 1997, and his brother David.
The pair started selling fruit from a lorry after the second world war. They moved into fashion and in 1957 started the Lewis Trust Group.
We value the business with interests in property, hotels, financial services and retailing on its £494m net assets figure. Dividends of £50m in recent years (including a £30m payout in 2002) and half of another company, UK & European Investments, with £51m net assets, take the Lewis family to perhaps £570m after tax.
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25 £550m David Murray Murray International & Premier Property Rangers are on a roll. First the Blues beat arch-rivals Celtic 2-0, then they stormed to the Scottish premiership and even turned in a profit after years of losses. Life could not be much sweeter for ‘Gers chairman, David Murray, 54. But it is not just in football that business is going well for Murray. His metals-to-property group Murray International, should show a big jump in profits in 2004-05 to well past the £20m mark on £370m sales. His ambition is to get turnover to £500m in a couple of years. He is also expanding his Premier Property Group. It has moved into London with the purchase of the press centre in Holborn for £42m and an Edinburgh shopping centre for £37m. The son of an Ayrshire coal merchant, he had just set up Murray International in 1976 when he suffered the car crash which cost him both his legs. “You could say that the accident concentrated my mind on business,” he later recalled. Murray International, with Rangers included, is easily worth £250m, while his property portfolio including large tracts on the outskirts of Edinburgh, is worth another £300m. In all Murray is now worth £550m. |
£520m
Paul Sykes
Highstone Group
The £1m he spent on bankrolling the UK Independence Party to electoral success in the recent Euro elections will have been money well spent in Paul Sykes’ view. He is determined to fight Euro integration every inch of the way and has thus far bankrolled UKIP with some considerable electorial success.
But while defending the pound and British sovereignty is a crusade for 62-year-old Sykes, he is also as busy as ever in the property world. He is looking to build on the success of one of his key developments in Leeds’ Victoria Quarter, where he hopes to convert the upper floors into luxury flats to rent out.
The son of a Barnsley miner, Sykes was written off at school but proved his teachers wrong when he made his first fortune in his early 20s breaking up old buses and selling the parts to the Far East. He moved into property, becoming a leading developer in the North.
Teaming up with Eddie Healey (see page 11) to build the Meadowhall shopping centre outside Sheffield proved to be a shrewd move. When Meadowhall was sold in 1999, Sykes cleared around £280m for his stake. After his campaigning in the run-up to the last election in defence of the pound, Sykes has returned to what he likes best: smart, new developments which regenerate his beloved Yorkshire and other parts of the North.
It is profitable too. His new property operation, Highstone Group, showed £137m net assets in its 2003-04 accounts when it made a £8.3m profit.
With proceeds from successful internet investments thrown in, Sykes should be worth well north of £500m. But his charitable work and the hefty cost of campaigning for the pound, peg Sykes at £520m.
£500m
Jane Clarke & Family
C Le Masurier
Professional managers are now helping the Clarke family tidy up their huge Jersey property portfolio. The family, now the largest private landowners on the island, have large tracts of the main town, St Helier. Individual assets include numerous shops, pubs and hotels, as well as scarce residential development land across the island and the redevelopment of the Le Moyes Hotel in St Brelade, which is nearing completion.
The death in 2001 of patriarch Fred Clarke led to the reorganisation of assets and a focus on raising asset values. Jane Clarke, his daughter and a formidable businesswoman in her own right, is the business head of the family and we put her here as representing the family as a whole. The C Le Masurier wine and spirit business has been sold, and further disposals are likely.
We still value the Clarke assets at £500m, but our spies in Jersey say this could ultimately be a billionaire family. The professionals now involved in valuing the family’s assets are astonished by the depth and breadth of what the late Fred Clarke had cannily assembled.
£498m
Keith Miller & Family
Miller Group
Having conquered Scotland and moved down to areas such as Wales and Birmingham, the south is the next target for the Miller Group, and a London office has been opened to help.
The Edinburgh-based business, started as a housebuilder in the 1930s by the father and uncle of Keith Miller, 56, the present chief executive, is still 92% owned by the Miller family.
In 2004, it posted record pre-tax profits of £52.5m on £752.2m sales, giving it 25% compound annual growth in profits for the last five years.
Following investment last year and the anticipated 2005 growth, the business is now worth at least £520m, valuing the family stake at £478m. Past dividends (£20m from 2000 to 2003) and other assets take the Miller family to £498m after tax.
£480m
Eddie & Sol Zakay
Topland Group
Another busy year for the Zakay brothers Eddie, 55, and Sol 53, as their Topland Group has snapped up several portfolios, including six Thistle Hotels in London and Edinburgh for £185m.
The sale and leaseback model has been serving the brothers well. Last year it bought 33 supermarkets and two distribution centres from Tesco and leased them back to the supermarket giant in a £675m joint venture deal.
Topland also sold assets worth £71m as it rebalanced its portfolio.
Topland saw its profits jump from £2.7m to £4.8m in 2003-04, while its assets grew to £452m. In all we value the pair at £480m this year.
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£468m Sir Donald Gosling Consolidated Property Investments When Gosling, 76, went out to dinner in Majorca’s Son Amar nightclub last October, he asked for a table for 180. His guests were the entire crew of the Royal Navy frigate, HMS Campbeltown, which happened to be moored nearby to Gosling’s 245-foot yacht Leander. Therein is the clue to his generosity. Gosling is an old salt himself and has a passion for boats. His dinner for the crew and a fleet of taxis cost him the best part of £10,000. But Gosling would have had no worries on that score, having just sold a property company, Consolidated Property Investments, of which he owned 40%, for £77m. It was a second windfall for Gosling, pictured here with Gaby Di Nora. His first came from the National Parking Corporation, which he had started in 1948 with partner Ronald Hobson (see page 24). Selling it fifty years later netted £290m. Hefty dividends over the years and his current property holdings (half of Metrose Properties) and sale proceeds, easily take Gosling to £468m this year. |
£460m
Peter Jones & Family
Emerson Developments
Employees of Emerson Developments were granted injunctions against animal rights activists last year to stop harassment. The reason: Emerson, as a property company, leases an office block to the Japanese firm Yamanouchi, for its headquarters.
Yamanouchi, in turn, is a leading customer of Huntingdon Life Sciences, the target of activists for several years over testing of drugs on live animals.
Emerson was started by former joiner, Peter Jones, 70, who moved into housebuilding in Cheshire way back in 1959.
He was one of the first developers to spot the 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, as well as being active in the north of England.
On the back of its current workload, his main company, Emerson Developments (Holdings) pushed up profits from £18.6m to £24.7m in 2003-04 when its net assets increased sharply to £424.4m. P E Jones (Properties), his other company, has around £24.1m of net assets. Jones and family trusts own all the shares in both.
Jones only takes modest salaries and no dividends. We value the business assets at £460m, adding £11m for other assets and property.
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£450m Mark Dixon Regus Regus revives. The Surrey-based provider of serviced offices has undergone a phoenix-like resurrection. In the fourth quarter of 2004 it made a profit – its first move into the black for four years. It has also been one of the first companies ever to survive Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States. Now the shares are riding high and the City expects a strong performance in 2005 on the back of the £164m acquisition of HQ Global, an American rival in July 2004. It is a triumph for Mark Dixon, 45, the Regus founder. A former sandwich and hamburger salesman, he formed Regus in 1989 with the sale proceeds of earlier businesses. It floated on the stock market in 2000 and the shares soared initially, making Dixon a billionaire on paper. But his wealth collapsed three years ago when the shares went into free-fall after hasty over-expansion. But Dixon has confounded his critics and with the shares now in recovery mode, his stake is worth £388m. With other assets and the proceeds of an earlier £61m share sale before the flotation, Dixon is easily worth £450m. |
£430m
Freddie Linnett & The Murphy Family
Charles Street Buildings (Leicester)
Profits at Charles Street Buildings (Leicester) rose to a healthy £36.5m on £37m sales, a robust 98.34% margin! The net assets at the family-owned property group also rose to a healthy £315.7m.
Freddie Linnett, 55, is a director and leading shareholder in the business, started by her uncles who came to Britain from Ireland after the war. When the uncles died, Linnett inherited their stakes. She married an accountant in 1995.
We value the business at £370m even today. Other assets and £62m of dividends from 1995 to 2004 inclusive, take Linnett and the Leicester-based Murphy family to £430m after tax.
£418m
Ronald Hobson
Consolidated Property Investments
The sale of Consolidated Property Investments for £77m last October showed what a canny operator Ronald Hobson, 84, is in the property field. The low-key Hobson, with around 40% of the company, made his first fortune as co-founder of the National Car Parks operation.
But with the other NCP founder, Sir Donald Gosling (see page 20), Hobson has made some shrewd property investments.
The pair still retain Metrose Properties, which made an £8m profit in 2003-04 when its net assets rose to £25m. Hobson teamed up with Gosling after the 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 for £801m, collecting around £290m each.
Huge dividends prior to that, plus the recent property activity and the Consolidated sale proceeds push Hobson up to £418m this year.
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£418m Robert & Vincent Tchenguiz Rotch Property Group Barely a week goes by without the Tchenguiz brothers Robert, 49, and Vincent, 45, buying or selling something, whether they are offices, hotels, pubs, houses, cinemas or motorway service stations. The Iranian-born brothers, whose family left after the Shah’s fall in 1979, set up their Rotch property business in 1982 dealing in flats in Hammersmith and never looked back. Today they claim to control assets worth well over £4bn according to Vincent (pictured right with Melissa Montezani) in a recent interview. They borrow to the hilt to take over buildings or other assets and bank on making more money from rental income than the cost of servicing their debt. It can work spectacularly well when they later sell. For example, they made a £58m profit on the disposal of the Pubmaster chain of pubs in which they had a 34% stake. But unpicking the Tchenguiz empire is a formidable task. Between them the brothers, who inhabit the fast lane of London society when not dealmaking, have 439 directorships. Rotch Property Group, their main company, made a £15m loss on £45m sales in 2002-03. It has just £45.3m net assets. But of the 439 directorships, only 90 show net assets over £500,000 and stripping out double-counting, we can see perhaps £190m of net assets helped by various Rotch subsidiaries or other Tchenguiz companies. Profits on property sales, private assets and Vincent’s new company, Consensus Group, should help take the pair to £418m. This is well below the Tchenguiz’s internal valuations but we are mindful of their borrowings. |
£410m
Robert Edmiston
IM Group
With bumper profits pouring into Edmiston’s Birmingham-based car distribution and property operations, he was able to give away over £27m to the charity Christian Vision in 2003.
The only thing that marks Edmiston, 59, out from other charitable types in the industry, is that Edmiston set up Christian Vision in 1988. The charity is at the heart of Edmiston’s operations. 10% of IM Group’s and IM Properties’ profits go directly to the charity, which then borrows against this cash to buy property itself and now holds a £140m portfolio.
Edmiston sees nothing wrong with serving Mammon and God, telling The Sunday Times recently: “In earlier times wealth was seen as the blessing of God and many great Old Testament figures were wealthy and did great things with their wealth, so we need to recover the balance. It’s what we do with the wealth which really counts.”
Edmiston’s mix of religion and business works a treat. An accountant by trade, who once worked for the now defunct Jensen sports car operation, Edmiston is one of Britain’s biggest importers of Far Eastern cars. His IM Group made £7.8m profit on £309m sales in 2004 and saw its net assets fall from £198m to just under £144m.
But the fall in net assets came about as Edmiston demerged his finance business, The Funding Corporation Group from IM, and into his own control as a separate operation. We add the £60m funding for that transfer to Edmiston’s wealth.
The separate IM Properties made £32.2m profit on £28.32m sales in 2004. It has a strong asset base too with £181.2m net assets. In all the companies are worth £385m net assets. Edmiston, who owns all the companies, has had £62m of salaries and pension contributions since 1999. In all he should be worth £410m allowing for tax and his huge charitable giving.
£400m
David Wilson
Wilson Bowden
It might be best known as a housebuilder but Wilson Bowden is building up a solid reputation for its property development work and regeneration schemes.
The Leicestershire-based operation is now involved in an £80m scheme to create a new town on the site of the old Ravenscraig steel works south of Glasgow.
In Glasgow city centre it has teamed up with Selfridges to develop a site for a store along with other shops and housing. In the North of England it is assembling a 420-acre site at Kingsway in Rochdale. All show that the group is doing well despite fears of a downturn in the housing market.
It comes some 45 years since David Wilson, 63, started the business. He recently relinquished the job of chief executive though retained the chairmanship of the entire business to which he has devoted his working life.
And what a life it has been. From the humble beginnings in Ibstock, north Leicestershire, 18-year-old Wilson joined his father in a building venture in 1960. It prospered and Wilson floated Wilson Bowden on the stock market in 1987.
Today it is regarded as the top quoted housebuilder by City analysts, and confirmed its reputation by producing a 28% hike in first half profits in 2004-05 to £118.2m.
But in June, the company warned that it was unlikely to meet its sales targets as an expected bounce after the general election had not materialised. The shares fell by 2% and Wilson’s stake is now worth £347m. With nearly £50m of share sales since the flotation and over £18m in salary and dividends in the past two years, we value Wilson at £400m.
£380m
Charlotte Townshend
Addison Developments
Her horse Made In Montot is causing a stir in racing circles, but it will be the performance of Addison Developments that will really cheer Charlotte Townshend.
Her property company has moved from a £2.8m loss to a £612,000 profit in 2003-04.
In June 2005, Ilchester Estates sold a complex of Essex offices and shops for £5.14m. Now 50, at the age of 15 Townshend inherited choice London acreage round Holland Park from her father, the ninth Viscount Galway, while in 1990 she inherited £40m in her mother’s will including 15,000 acres in Dorset and 3,000 in Nottinghamshire. The latter have been sold for a reputed £9m our sources tell us.
The improvement in her companies, still rising London prices in quality areas and sales from her bloodstock interests such as the top class hurdler Santenay, lead us to raise Townshend to £380m.
£347m
Jon Hunt
Foxtons
Foxtons’ number two, Peter Rollings, recently left the upmarket London estate agency to start his own rival business.
He will face tough competition from his erstwhile employer. Foxtons has had a good run with the rise in London house prices in recent years. In 2003, its parent company, Heven Holdings, made a £3.6m profit on £74.8m sales. Its 2004 figures should show post-tax profits of £5.5m, while expansion into Surrey will boost 2005 profits sharply.
This has helped push its value up to £130m. Heven Holdings is owned entirely by Jon Hunt, who started in property at 17.
A formidable estate agent, Hunt, 52, has also taken Foxtons into America. In 2003, Foxtons made a £2.2m trading loss there, but is now moving into profit after spending the best part of £10m on a marketing campaign.
Hunt has also been buying more property himself in the last year to the tune of around £27m. With his East Anglian mansion, he has personal property and other assets totalling £107m. In all, Hunt comes in at £347m.
£340m
Steve Morgan
Redrow
Steve Morgan’s efforts to take a stake in his beloved Liverpool Football Club have come to naught so far. The board has consistently rejected his overtures and he withdrew his £70m offer. Yet a Morgan takeover would go down well on the Kop, now basking in the stunning European Championship victory over AC Milan in May 2005. Morgan, who hails from Merseyside, is a passionate supporter. He can certainly afford such a move, having started his career as a labourer on a building site after abandoning his A levels. Morgan set up a small construction business in 1974 with a £5,000 loan from his father.
Twenty years later, as one of the biggest housebuilders in Britain, Redrow was floated on the stock market. Morgan retains a stake worth £57m, but he sold almost £240m worth of shares in the float and afterwards when he left the Redrow board in 2000. He also owns a £85m stake in the De Vere leisure group. His other assets include a Liverpool stake and a share of a new £50m leisure complex in Majorca.
Though now based in Jersey, Morgan is no retired tax exile pottering about the golf course. He is heavily involved in development work locally, in Europe and mainland Britain, putting in 80-hour weeks. His latest venture is Harrow Estates which aside from property investments, specialises in buying derelict land, cleaning it up and selling it on at a huge profit. After allowing for reinvestment of his Redrow money, his Jersey property, and his developments, Morgan is easily worth £340m – enough to take over Liverpool, if not quite in the Abramovich league!
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John Madejski Sackville Properties The owner of Reading Football Club has a 70% stake in Sackville Properties, which was in the news recently buying a flagship site next to Reading Station. The Station Hill site, acquired for £27.75m, is to be redeveloped into a new gateway to Reading from the station. Sackville produced a sharp growth in profits to £2m on £14.8m sales in 2003-04. Madejski’s deal-making skills were honed as an advertising executive on the Reading local paper. He left to launch a magazine in 1977, selling cars by classified ads accompanied by a picture. It worked a treat and in 1998 he netted £174m from the sale of AutoTrader’s parent Hurst Publishing. By then Madejski, 64, was chairman of the local football club, and the legacy of his sale is the Madejski Stadium, home to Reading FC. Over in the Galapagos Islands, Madejski owns the Royal Palm Hotel, voted one of the best hotels in the world by Tatler. In all, he is easily worth £325m now despite the heavy drain on his finances of running a football club chasing promotion. |
£320m
Harry Hyams
Walton Investment Co
Hyams, 77, has stakes in a number of small property companies. His main operation, Walton Investments, moved from a £5.4m profit in 2002-03 to a £122,000 loss in 2003-04. But we can still see £12m of net assets in his small ventures. This is of course small beer for Hyams, the son of an East End bookmaker.
Best known for the 1970s 35-storey Centre Point 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. Hyams made a further £98m when MEPC itself was taken over in 2000.
His Wiltshire estate, Ramsbury Manor, and his home in the south of France plus the net assets in the small Hyams companies and his art should easily take the low-key Hyams to £320m.
£309m
Don & Roy Richardson
Swiftfire
The Richardson twins, Don and Roy, 75, continue to diversify away from their Birmingham heartland. Last year they teamed up with the American casino operator, Las Vegas Sands, to bid for the rights to build a £250m casino in Manchester. Two years ago they spent £221m buying a stake in five big designer outlet centres in Europe.
Born within the shadow of the old Dudley steel works, the twins are best known in the Midlands for developing the Merry Hill shopping centre, which they sold in 1992 for a £50m profit. Since then they have been involved in scores of flagship projects in the Midlands.
Their main company, Swiftfire, saw its profit soar in 2003 from £4.2m to £13.9m. But it has £127.5m of net assets and we value the business on that figure. Yet after allowing for some borrowing on the acquisition of the European assets and taking account of other deals and £44m of salaries in recent years, we reckon the Richardsons have around £309m of assets, £11m up on last year.
£300m
Tony Gallagher
AC Gallagher
AC Gallagher, the Midlands-based developer, is quietly getting on with a number of big projects throughout Britain. The company, owned and run by Tony Gallagher, 53, has 32,000 plots with planning consent or allocated for residential development nationwide.
In the 18 months to June 2003, AC Gallagher made £11.58m profit on £40.3m sales. With a strong asset base, it is easily worth well over £160m. But Gallagher is also the largest private owner of retail parks throughout Britain with 2.75m square feet in all. These assets take him to at least £300m.
£300m
Leo Noe
Reit Asset Management
Perhaps Britain’s most active property player, Leo Noe, 52, has been busy in 2004 buying and selling everything from bank headquarters to shopping centres and prime office blocks in the City.
While we can see around £75m of net assets in a number of companies owned by the Noe family such as Agra, Flathost and Landmaster Properties, the extent of their deals and investments indicate more substantial wealth. In August, for example, Noe’s Reit Asset Management operation sold three shopping centres in the north for £378.5m, which it had bought in 2002-03 for £294m.
Earlier in the year, Noe took over Estates & General, a quoted property group for £70m. It has a £113m portfolio in the M25 area. Perhaps the most high-profile acquisition was the £283m purchase of the St Katherine Docks complex early in 2004. Yet by October, offers were coming in for just part of the complex of £127m.
True, there are borrowings attached to some of the purchases, but the way that Noe is able to extract hefty profits from his skilful deals gives him a £300m fortune easily.
£300m
Jack Petchey
Trefick & Petchey Properties
He may have the reputation as a savvy share trader, but octogenarian Petchey received an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours for services to young people.
Since 1999, he has donated more than £12m to Essex and East London clubs, schools and organisations for 11 to 25-year-olds. Petchey can afford it as his nose for a bargain is sharp. In 2003, for example, he bought a hotel group with 15 hotels for £85m. Barely a year later he had sold three for £57m and a fourth is reported to be nearly sold for a further £22m. So for £6m he now has eleven top class hotels, which will presumably be sold at a healthy profit.
Today we can see £206m of share stakes held by Petchey in 16 quoted companies, including a £74m stake in Warner Estate Holdings. With earlier proceeds and past profits, he is easily worth £300m.
£264m
James Mansfield
Truck & Machinery Sales
James Mansfield, 66, left school in his native Ireland at 14 to work in a quarry. But the soaring value of 164 acres on the outskirts of Dublin has built his fortune. He bought the land after auctioning 1,100 heavy machines used to rebuild infrastructure on the Falkland Islands following the 1982 invasion by Argentina. The land has since been turned into the CityWest conference, hotel and golf centre, which he values at £241m. He has another leisure site at Johnstown, which is worth about £20m. Mansfield has other land and retains his original business, Truck & Machinery Sales, which is run by three of his sons. In all he is worth £264m.
£260m
Gerald Ronson & Family
Heron Corporation
Ronson, 66, defeated English Heritage last summer for the second time. Despite objections, he was given planning consent for a 23-storey tower in the City, to sit next door to his earlier victory — the 37-storey tower on an adjacent site. Now Ronson is in talks with the City Corporation to have the height of that tower increased by about five floors.
Ronson ran and owned the Heron property empire in the 1980s, when his fortune was £600m plus. Then he was embroiled in the 1986 Guinness scandal. Ronson served six months 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.
Ronson emerged from prison and rebuilt the operation. The price of saving Heron was to dilute his stake down to 5% though he has been increasing it of late to around 23%. Heron has around £1bn in assets. The Heron Tower will cost £350m to build with another £200m to be spent on second-phase developments. After seven years work, it will be worth £800m. But his family stake is now worth at least £180m. His Snax 24 petrol retailing business has £40m in cash and made £8.5m profit in 2004. It is worth at least £80m. In all we value Ronson at around £260m.
£250m
Ian & Richard Livingstone
London & Regional Group Holdings
The Livingstone brothers Ian, 43, and Richard, 40, are currently working on a £500m office, hotel and housing scheme on the Greenwich peninsula, the pair hope to exploit anticipated demand as the redevelopment of the ill-fated Dome site gets under way.
The brothers first came to public attention in 1994 when, having built up a property portfolio through a company called Strategic Properties, they sold it on for £92m making a £29m profit on the deals.
The main holding company, London & Regional Group Holdings, has £138m net assets in its 2003 accounts. But looking at its various separate subsidiaries, plus other independent Livingstone companies, we can see a total of £238m in assets. With other assets and property, we value the Livingstones at £250m.
£250m
Jonathan Lyons & Family
JE London Properties
Originally from Leeds, Isidore (Jack) Lyons, 54, sold his first retail business back in the early 1950s for about £3m; he then built up the stores group, UDS, with his brother Bernard which they sold out to Hanson in the early 1980s, netting several million for the family stake.
The Lyons family, led by Jack’s son Jonathan, owns very large property holdings in the Notting Hill/Kensington area, held in part through JE London Properties Ltd. Many of these freeholds were purchased years ago for next to nothing and are now worth £2m a piece. The family also has extensive property assets in America including shopping centres.
Jack Lyons used to be Sir Jack but like his friend Gerald Ronson (see far left) he got embroiled in the Guinness scandal of the 1980s and was stripped of his knighthood. Jonathan runs the family companies which include the venture capitalist Albion Group and the Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust through which the family has become the principal benefactor to the London Symphony Orchestra. Though there is not much sign of asset wealth in JE London Properties (£553,000 net assets) or any of the half dozen directorships held by Jonathan, he recently expressed surprise at not being in the recent Sunday Times Rich List. We are happy to oblige and a £250m valuation is certainly conservative.
£250m
Stanley & Peter Thomas
Atlantic Property Developments
There was a near £106m pay-out for the Thomas family late in 2004 when the quoted TBI group, owner of Luton airport, was taken over. The £551m deal by the Spanish infrastructure company, Abertis, was agreed and concluded amicably. On top of the TBI sale, the family has commercial property investments which have been doing very well. These include a 300-acre golf development outside Cardiff.
But the family money comes originally from the much more mundane world of pies. The Thomas brothers, Stanley, 64, and Peter, 62, built up a large snack and pie business, Peter’s Savoury Products, which they sold to GrandMet in 1988 for £75m.
Another £25m in other Thomas ventures such as Atlantic Property Developments, take the family to perhaps £250m after their hefty charitable work.
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£250m The Marquess of Salisbury Gascoyne Cecil Estates The 7th Marquess of Salisbury, 59, has carried on the family tradition of involvement in Tory politics, first as an MP and later as a former Leader of the Lords. But he has had time to raise his beloved pigs (shades of PG Wodehouse perhaps) since being sacked by the then Tory leader William Hague, for colluding with Tony Blair over the future of hereditary peers. It is the ownership of Hatfield House that puts Salisbury into this list. Completed in 1612, Hatfield 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 sells his sausages. Shrewdly, he is also developing the family’s London acreage around Leicester Square. The family’s company, Gascoyne Holdings, owns the Hippodrome nightclub, and is in talks to convert it into a casino. The London estate, American land, the two stately homes with their surrounding 10,300-acres and the art collection makes Salisbury easily worth £250m. |
£246m
Sten Mortstedt & Family
CLS Holdings
CLS Holdings recently announced that it has reached its first prelet agreement for London Bridge Tower, which will be Europe’s tallest building. The group, controlled by Sten Mostedt, 65, and his family has a one-third interest in what is known as the Shard of Glass on London’s South Bank. A preletting agreement has been signed with luxury hotel group Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts for close to 18,500m² of space over 18 floors in the 70-storey mixed-use development located at London Bridge station. Little wonder that the share price of CLS is riding high at the moment.
The low-key Mortstedt, a Swedish national, is chairman of the quoted property developer based in London. He has been on the board as chairman since 1994. The Mortstedt family’s 50.1% stake is now worth around £191m. Mortstedt also has a £21m stake in Amino Technology, an AIM-quoted software operation. Share sales of over £30m and other assets take them to £246m.
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£236m Michael Evans & Family Evans Property Holdings Evans Property Holdings, the new parent company for the Evans’ family property interests, is doing well. Its 2003-04 accounts show £228.5m net assets, while profits rose 27.3% to £18.5m. Evans, 69, leads the low-key Leeds-based family, which is heavily involved in development work all over the north of England. His late father, refusing to go into the family’s tailoring operation, started Evans of Leeds as a transport operation 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. The family has 90% of the shares now worth nearly £206m. We add £30m for other assets and past dividends. |
£229m
Patrick Doherty
Harcourt Developments
In 2003, Dublin-based Harcourt Developments sealed a £47m deal for Titanic Quarter in Belfast. Patrick Doherty is the man behind Harcourt Developments and he is planning a £400m redevelopment of the Harland & Wolff shipyard where the Titanic was built. In 2003, Harcourt showed £53m of assets in its accounts but it has shopping centres and office blocks worth £193m. Doherty, 63, is expanding into the Caribbean where he has substantial hotel, transport and property assets. In all he should be worth £229m.
£227m
Bill Ainscough & Family
Langtree Group
For the past 32 years everything William Ainscough, 57, touches seems to turn to gold. In 1973 he founded the Wainhomes housebuilding business. After merging with two other builders in 1989, he floated the enlarged Wigan-based group five years later with a price tag of £106m. Fed up with stock market indifference to the company, Ainscough took Wainhomes private in 1999. Within two years, he had sold the company to the quoted housebuilder, Wilson Connolly, netting £44m for his stake.
Ainscough has several other irons in the fire. He owns Langtree Group, a property developer with a healthy £61.6m of net assets in the year to June 2004. And his housing ambitions have not ended. Ainscough bought the old Wain Homes south-western operation and the renamed Wain Group, which operates in the South West, made a £22m profit on £63.9m sales in 2003-04, and is worth at least £150m.
Allowing for tax, Ainscough must easily be worth £227m. His passion outside work is a collection of vintage cars on which he lavishes a great deal of money and attention.
£227m
John & Peter Beckwith
Pacific Investments
Centre Point, that central London tower, is up for sale with a £90m price tag and a sale would mean a windfall for Sir John Beckwith, 64. Like his brother Peter, 62, Sir John has a habit of backing winners. The Old Harrovian pair made their first fortune in property, netting around £80m when they sold their London and Edinburgh Trust property group to a Swedish outfit in 1990 just before the property crash. Since then the brothers have invested in a range of ventures. Peter has a stake in The Ambassador Theatre Group, a fast-expanding operation that achieved a £485,000 profit on £50.8m sales in 2003. It could be worth £40m, valuing his stake at £8m. In addition he has another £7m of net assets in small property companies.
Sir John has two main companies, River & Mercantile 11 Ltd which made a healthy £13.8m profit on £54.3m sales in 2003-04, largely as a result of the success of its Thames River hedge fund operation. It is worth around £130m on these figures. His other company Pacific Investments Ltd, made a £4.2m loss in the same period, but we value it on its £24.3m net assets.
But the brothers have also invested in sports-related businesses and sold them on at a profit of at least £50m.
Adding properties, hotels in France, and Sir John’s investment in the Model Frontiers fashion agency, a £257m would seem appropriate, but we cut that back to £227m to allow for reinvestment of sale proceeds.
£217m
Laurence Kirschel
Consolidated Developments
Tin Pan Alley, one of the last undeveloped sites in central London, is set to be transformed into a new cultural quarter for London. Momentum for the scheme around the Tottenham Court Road area is gathering pace with London Underground and the planned Crossrail line involved in drawing up plans with developer Laurence Kirschel. He has assembled the site and it is under starters orders for work to begin if all goes to plan.
Kirschel, 42, who set up his Consolidated Developments company in 1983 with just £5,000 capital, is also heavily involved in hotel and restaurant ventures in central London. A new Soho serviced apartment venture, Sohomes, is to be unveiled. Kirschel is partnered there by heavyweight investors.
We can see around £52m of assets in Consolidated Developments 2003 accounts and another smaller Consolidated operation, all owned by Kirschel. But these asset values do not take into account Kirschel’s substantial portfolio in Soho, where his holding in terms of square footage is even greater than that of Paul Raymond (see page 16). Part of his Soho assets have been valued at £35m while the Tin Pan Alley site could be worth as much as £150m.
With other assets including some choice Mayfair property, Kirschel has certainly done well in the last 22 years. Cautiously we value him at £217m for now until the Tin Pan Alley development is under way.
£215m
Grahame Whateley
Castlemore
The work ethic Grahame Whateley, 62, learnt from his grandfather – a Nottinghamshire miner – has been put to good use as he is now Britain’s largest developer of out-of-town retail schemes. Based in Halesowen, Birmingham, Whateley did his first deal in 1969, and was inspired to set up Castlemore as a result. Today it is working on 10m sq ft of new space worth over £1bn.
Castlemore is now making waves in the office market too while Whately recently invested in Birmingham-based sales finance boutique, Liquidity. In the year to September 2004, Castlemore saw its profits fall from £17.7m to £5.4m on £144m sales. Adding in part of Whateley’s £5.5m salary to the bottom line takes the profit to £10m. Castlemore’s net assets rose from £106m to £119m while Whateley’s other property trusts and private assets should take him to £215m easily.
£210m
Jim Mellon
Regent Pacific Corporate Finance
Croatia has proved a particularly fertile area of investment for Jim Mellon, 48, the buccaneering City investor who loves nothing better than to ruffle a few Establishment feathers. He owns just under half of Charlemagne Capital which has sold banks in Croatia for £350m, a five-fold return in four years. Mellon has big investments through his Regent Pacific operation in Hong Kong and the booming South Korean economy worth well over £50m, which are set to be sold generating more healthy profits. In Britain, he is investing in hotels in Blackpool, and awaiting the outcome of the changes to the gaming industry. He reckons the town will be transformed into a new Las Vegas. He is also the biggest property holder in the Isle of Man. With stakes in a couple of quoted companies in London – Wigmore and Betinternet.com – he is easily worth £210m in total.
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£210m Elliott Bernerd Chelsfield No longer involved in the Chelsfield property operation he founded, 60-year-old Elliott Bernerd has not opted for the quiet life yet. He is still dabbling in a few property deals and is looking for large development projects through an arrangement with Sir Stuart Lipton (see page 82), another survivor of the property scene. Funding should be no problem. When Bernerd took Chelsfield private in May 2004, he pocketed £45m from selling part of his stake. He reinvested the rest, worth around £56m, in the company. Five months later Bernerd sold the business, which he had founded in 1986, turning his £56m into £82m. He remains a consultant to his old company, with a salary and the rights to the name Chelsfield. Bernerd started work as an office boy in an estate agency at 16. He moved rapidly in the property world, and after setting up Chelsfield floated it on the stock market in 1993. Aside from his Chelsfield stake, Bernerd also has the separate Chelsfield Investments International which is involved in large projects in Italy and Gibraltar. These projects could be worth over £500m but right now we add just £100m to Bernerd’s £127m Chelsfield proceeds, taking him to £210m after allowing for tax. |
£200m
Victor Hwang
Parkview International London
The son of a Hong Kong businessman who wanted to own property from childhood, Victor Hwang, 51, has one of the top sites in London to develop. In 1993, his family bought Battersea Power Station for £10m. After 10 years of red tape, work is about to begin to create a £750m development with a rooftop hotel, cinemas and 650 apartments. Hwang owns a quarter of the project. We can see some assets in Parkview International, a £4m asset company. With his Mayfair home and other assets, Hwang is easily worth £200m.
£200m
Gerard O’Hare
Parker Green International
Leaving his family building firm in Newry, Northern Ireland in 1997, Gerard O’Hare, 47, went on to work on his own property developments. It certainly paid 0ff with Parker Green International now behind some of the North’s most important retail developments.
A chartered surveyor by trade, he had previously worked on projects in Northern Ireland through the 1990s, including Belfast’s Waterfront.
He owns The Quays retail and leisure complex in Newry which with associated development land is worth around £100m.
He has further shopping centres in the South and also in the North East of England, which together with other investments add at least another £87.5m. He is expanding into Eastern Europe and also America.
With personal property and assets included, O’Hare is worth around £200m. Aside from his business interests, O’Hare is also a prominent member of the moderate SDLP in Northern Ireland and is a visiting professor at the University of Ulster.
£194m
The Jack Baylis Family
JT Baylis & Co
With Australian predators circling large shopping centres with a view to multi-million-pound takeovers, the Baylis family is sitting pretty. It was due to the late Jack Baylis’s determination that The Mall at Cribbs Causeway, Bristol’s main out-of-town shopping centre, was built at all.
Baylis started in a small way after the war, using his army gratuity to repair bomb damaged buildings in Bristol.
Seeing the rise in land values in the 1960s, he cannily bought up the land on which Cribbs Causeway is now built.
Teaming up with the Prudential, the Mall was opened in 1998, then valued at £500m.
The Baylis family trusts have a 30% stake now worth at least £180m. The family company, JT Baylis & Co, reflects some of that with £93m net assets in its 2003-04 accounts. With other assets, we stick with our £194m valuation for the family.
If the Aussies strike, the Baylis family should go much higher. But sadly Jack will not be there as he died in September 2005, aged 85, never having seen his creation.
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£187m Robert Adair Melrose Resources & Terrace Hill Group Prior to moving into the City, Adair, 48, trained as a chartered accountant with Arthur Andersen. He chairs Terrace Hill Group, a Glasgow-based property services group, where he has a £54.5m stake. Adair also chairs Melrose Resources, the Edinburgh-based oil services-to-exploration group, where his stake has soared to £126m on the back of higher oil prices. Other assets such as his stake in the Mister Clean and Safe Gard Europe take him to £187m. |
£181m
Sir Euan Anstruther-Gough Calthorpe & Family
Calthorpe Holdings
Clearly Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe’s plans to revive the leafy Edgbaston area of Birmingham are bearing fruit. His Calthorpe Holdings operation saw its net assets rise sharply from £9.5m to £16.6m in 2003-04. Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, 39, wants to make the 1,550-acre Calthorpe estate the best place to live and work in the Midlands. It was in 1985 that he inherited the title from his late grandfather and the estate was part of his inheritance. The value of the estate should easily be worth last year’s £110m. His trusts made around £40m profit in 1999 by selling off 300 acres in Hampshire for development, leaving the family with 4,000 acres there. Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe also has interests in America and property in Europe. Conservatively we increase the valuation of the family by the £6m increase in the Calthorpe Holdings net assets, taking it to £181m.
£180m
Alan Murphy
Nikal Investments
Backing a new form of indoor Extreme Sports centre which has everything from rock climbing to snowboarding under one roof is one of the ventures that Alan Murphy, 57, is looking at. He is also heavily involved in property development through his new company, Nikal Investments. It is busy developing sites through the north of England and Birmingham with an end value of at least £350m.
Last October, Nikal submitted plans for the £350m Masshouse scheme in Birmingham where it is a partner. Murphy’s 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 sold the rest for £50m.
With the property deals and other investments, and personal assets, such as his huge yacht, which one sees moored in front of the Carlton every MIPIM we reckon this fanatical supporter of Liverpool Football Club should easily be worth £180m today.
£167m
Anthony Brotherton-Ratcliffe & Family
Croudace Group
Croudace, the Surrey housebuilder, is permanently under siege by merchant bankers keen to take over the business. But it is not for sale. Founded by Oliver Croudace, it was initially involved in minor contracting works. Jack Brotherton-Ratcliffe, who served in the RAF with distinction during the war, arrived as a partner and bought out the business entirely in 1950. It is still in family hands and now run by his son Anthony, 55. It remains one of the most profitable privately owned groups in Britain.
A new holding company, Croudace Group Ltd, was set up in 2002. It made £10.7m profit on £126.3m sales in the fifteen months to the end of December 2004 and has £75.9m of net assets. It is worth perhaps £90m. The separate Croudace Properties is easily worth its £40.4m net asset figure. Other assets, including £32.5m of dividends from 1993-04, take the family to £167m.
£165m
Eliasz Englander & Family
Citywise
Eliasz Englander, 73, and his family are moving into retail property. In May he bought the Yate shopping centre in Bristol for £98m, and last March he bought the Broad Street Mall in Reading for £70m. But Englander is better known for the family’s holdings in London. Through Citywise, the family owns Holborn Links with £144.6m of net assets in 2003. The family also have several other separate smaller companies with net assets totalling at least £20m. In all, the Englander family is easily worth £165m.
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£165m Brian Scowcroft & Janet Lefton Alard Properties A new £100m road and some extra land at his Carlisle development look like turning the Kingmoor Business Park into a very valuable asset for Brian Scowcroft, 49. It is six years since Scowcroft started his property development company, Alard Properties, and he plans to acquire 5m square feet of old industrial sites in the next 10 years. 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. Scowcroft says he never wants to sell this particular asset as he sees it providing for his children and his grandchildren. It is the flagship in his business park portfolio, which includes sites in Stockport and Leigh, as well as an operation in Wrexham. Crossley Park in Stockport was his first purchase for £1.8m and is now valued at around £10m. Alard, which turns over around £4.5m, is a world away from Scowcroft’s previous life as boss of Swinton Insurance. It was founded in the front room of his father’s house in 1957 and Ken Scowcroft built it to be one of the largest car insurance companies in Britain. In 1988, he started selling stakes in the firm to Sun Alliance. By the early 1990s the Scowcroft family had made around £150m from the sale before tax. Brian, a qualified chartered accountant went into industrial sites as he had the capital to acquire the land cheaply. Only about half of the 570 acres on his four sites are developed and there is scope to double the £4.5m annual rental income over the next five years. Scowcroft also loves the peace of his 1,500-acre estate in the Lake District, where he spends his time shooting and collecting cars. In all, with the success of Kingmoor Park (£17.3m net assets in 2003), the earlier Swinton proceeds and personal assets, the Scowcroft family, which includes his low-key sister, Janet Lefton, 47, is now worth £165m. |
£160m
David Gabbay & Family
O&H Capital
David Gabbay, 61, runs O&H Capital, a property company based in London, which saw its profits soar to £21.3m on £80.8m sales in the 18 month period to February 2004. It has £263m net assets. But Gabbay, who has around half the shares with trusts, has other assets.
We value his O&H stake at £131.5m. He recently snapped up the trendy London Hempel hotel for £10m. In all we reckon Gabbay and his family must be worth around £160m with past salaries (over £13.8m from 2001-04) and dividends.
£158m
Joseph Brennan & Family
Brennan Bakeries
Joseph Brennan, 63, and his wife own Joseph Brennan Bakeries, Dublin’s biggest bakery, which makes Brennan’s bread. In 2003 it made £3.3m profit on £31.6m sales and is worth £36m. The Brennan family also had a large property portfolio sold for £120m in 2001. Other assets such as Century Finance take the Brennan family to £158m.
£157m
Sean Mulryan
Ballymore Properties
In 1982 Sean Mulryan, 51, a trained stonemason and draughtsman, decided to sell his family home using the capital to start his business.
He bought a site in Ballymore Eustace and began building houses.
His Dublin-based business, Ballymore Properties, is now one of Europe’s largest urban regeneration companies. It has secured contracts worth over £2bn to redevelop the Wood Wharf site in London’s Docklands and another £200m deal to develop a site in Luton. In 2003-04, Ballymore showed £12.6m profit on £141.6m sales. With a strong balance sheet and £87.4m of assets, it is easily worth £150m. Mulryan, who owns it all has at least £7m of other assets including a Kildare stud farm.
£150m
Mendi & Moises Gertner
Orgate
The Gertner brothers continue their frenetic pace in the property market. In December they raised £215.65m directly from the capital markets by issuing bonds secured against seven properties they own. They recently sold 1 America Square to the State of Qatar for £110m only a year after buying it from Japanese investor Shimizu for £93m. Their most spectacular coup was the 2002 purchase for £167m of the Liffe building, home to the London futures market. Based in London, the Gertners’ main company, Orgate, saw its net assets increase to £66.2m in 2003-04. But other stakes add another £10m in companies we can see. Cautiously we stick with a £150m valuation for the Gertners to take account of the profits on deals and property purchases, which we reckon will probably have been acquired with some borrowing. The Gertners also have substantial assets in America and Europe.
£150m
David Kirch
Channel Hotels and Properties
It’s been a busy time for Kirch, 69, the low-key Jersey property player and investor. In December 2004, he upped his stake in drug discovery firm ML Laboratories to 8.1%, a stake that is now worth £4m. Earlier in July 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 residential property in the 1960s, selling his last properties in 1988 for £30m. He now runs Channel Hotels and Properties from Jersey. 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.
Outside his current takeover situations, he has a further £17m of stakes in sixteen different quoted companies. Out of all this we feel safe to up him to £150m.
£148m
Simon Clarke & Family
St Modwen Properties
The death of Sir Stan Clarke last year robbed the property and racing worlds of one of its most colourful figures. One of the top developers in the Midlands, Sir Stan had had become the biggest racecourse owner after the Jockey Club with nine courses round Britain from Newcastle to Brighton.
After being turned down by the army at 21 because of his health, Clarke became a plumber in the Staffordshire village where he lived, later starting up a construction business with £125 of savings.
He sold the company, Clarke Securities, for £51m in 1987. Shrewdly, he kept the property side of the business, now called St Modwen. Though he had retired from the chairmanship of St Modwen and of Northern Racing his stakes in both were worth around £128m in total.
We assume these will pass to his family, led by Simon Clarke, 40, with other assets of around £20m. Simon Clarke is deputy chairman of Northern Racing and will represent the continuing interests of the Clarke families on the board of St Modwen.
£146m
Michael Horton & Family
Hortons Estate
Birmingham developer Hortons’ Estate has been kept busy over recent months. Its Innovation Square development in the city centre let its last remaining suite in May this year to Hays, the recruitment company. It has also diversified into industrial estates near Midland motorway junctions.
The business began in the 19th century when a butcher, Isaac Horton, developed the Midland Hotel and the Grand Hotel, both still key landmarks in Birmingham city centre.
The family, led by Isaac’s great grandson, Michael Horton, 66, still owns the business which made £8.5m profit on sales of £14.7m in the year to September 2004, when its net assets rose to a record £134.5m.
We value the family at that asset figure, adding £11.5m for past dividends and other assets. From 1994-2003, the family has had £17.4m of dividends before tax.
£145m
Pervaiz Naviede
Legendary Property Company
Starting on a stall 20 years ago selling “fancy goods” in Gretna Green market, Pervaiz Naviede, 44, reckoned he should be collecting rent instead of paying it. He persuaded Safeway to sublet him an empty building which he turned into a market hall and of course started collecting that rent.
He moved on to purchase a shopping parade and through the mid- to late 1980s along with his partner, Warren Smith, he traded in investment properties. The pair escaped the market crash in the early 1990s and have diversified into acquiring and refurbishing properties for retailers and old council blocks.
There are two main companies we can see, Legendary Property Company and Legendary Property Company (Aberdeen), which together made £13.3m profit in their 2002-03 accounts. Both are owned by Naviede.
In all we value his business interests at around £125m. But we add another £20m for other assets (including a £14.4m dividend in 2002-03).
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||
|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
36 |
Robert Edmiston |
410 |
|
43 |
Don & Roy Richardson |
309 |
|
44 |
Tony Gallagher |
300 |
|
59 |
Grahame Whateley |
215 |
|
66 |
Sir Euan Anstruther- Gough-Calthorpe& Family |
181 |
|
76 |
Simon Clarke & Family |
148 |
|
77 |
Michael Horton & Family |
146 |
|
100 |
Rupert Mucklow & Family |
112 |
|
107 |
Eric Grove |
105 |
|
138 |
Robert Morton |
85 |
£145m
Paul Thwaites
Ashwell Property Group
‘I didn’t go to university, and I don’t regret it,’ says Thwaites, 51. We can see why — he is described as “owning half of Cambridge”, and now banks at Coutts. Thwaites is powering ahead in the East Anglian property market with his Ashwell Property Group.
He started the business in 1981 as a quantity surveying operation but 17 years later, Ashwell moved into property and building in its own right. Since then it has built up a strong reputation for its development and Private Finance Initiative work.
In 2003-04, Ashwell Property showed £32.1m of net assets in its accounts. But with its share of joint venture work and a future £3bn development programme, including a £600m Cambridge project and a £400m housebuilding operation across East Anglia, we give the business a £140m valuation. We add £5m for other assets, taking Thwaites to £145m.
£145m
Bill Gredley & Family
Unex Corporation
An equestrian centre in Braintree, Essex is to become the largest all-weather arena in Europe after Bill Gredley bought it last year. But then Gredley, 72, is a leading racehorse owner and a shrewd property developer.
Business is good, too. Unex Holdings, the East Anglian property group he runs, saw its 2003-04 profits more than double from £1.9m to £4.5m. Its net assets also rose sharply from £103m to £127.6m. The business is owned by Gredley and his family. Gredley’s most famous horse, User Friendly, won the 1992 Oaks at Epsom.
His racing interests, a £13m dividend in 2002-03 and smaller companies we can see with net assets of £2m, take Gredley and his family to £145m after tax.
£142m
Henry Moser & Family
Jerrold Holdings
Henry Moser, 56, left school at 16 and worked on market stalls as a trader. He later built up Jerrold Holdings, a low-key Manchester property to finance business. The Moser family own most of the shares in the company which saw its profits surge to £26m profit on sales of £54.7m in the year to June 2004. It has £69.7m of net assets and we value the business at around £150m on these figures.
Moser, known for his hard work and dedication to the business, refused to take a business lunch for twenty years as he felt guilty about not being hard at work. It has paid off. The Moser family have a £140m stake, but we add another £2m for smaller companies such as UK Mortgage Corporation with £520,000 net assets.
£140m
Everard Goodman
Tops Estates
Everard Goodman, 73, has had a good year, even if it marks the end of his time as a major property player. This May Goodman sold shopping centre specialist Tops Estates to Land Securities for £517m, walking away with over £130m.
Despite other careers, property is in Goodman’s blood. The son of a Leeds surveyor, Everard Goodman left Yorkshire to start work in London as an accountant and qualified at 21. He floated a jewellery business in 1959 and sold it in 1972. Goodman later moved into property before setting up Tops Estates. In 1983, he floated the business on the then Unlisted Securities Market, and it quietly prospered until the sale to LandSecs.
Goodman still has a £5.9m stake in Trust of Property, a quoted investment trust. Other assets (£2.5m of net assets in smaller companies) and dividends take him easily to £140m.
£140m
Tom Scott & Family
CI Traders
Tom Scott, 60, seemed to tighten his grip on the Channel Islands’ economy in August 2003 when his CI Traders operation took over Comprop, Guernsey’s biggest developer. Scott was a leading shareholder in both groups, and now runs an operation embracing pubs, beer, retailing, supermarkets, petrol, hotels, consumer finance and a string of franchises. CI Traders, though, having taken on Comprop, is looking to sell around £25m of properties to reduce its debt burden.
In April 2005, the quoted International Energy Group, controlling the local energy supplies, was sold for £202m to Prime Infrastructure, an Australian group. Scott, as chairman, made £19m from the deal.
Yet for all his local business activity, Scott is not from the Channel Isles. He moved to Guernsey having built up a Leicester crane hire operation which was sold for £75m in 1987. Aside from his quoted stakes, Scott has the Jackson Group, a motor trader which sells luxury marques on the island and the south coast of England, and has sales of £170m. With his extensive private property portfolio and energy interests in Britain, France and Portugal added (not forgetting an £11.4m share sale in 2001) Scott is easily worth £140m this year.
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||
|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
5 |
Sir David & Sir Frederick Barclay |
1,200 |
|
27 |
Jane Clarke & Family |
500 |
|
74 |
David Kirch |
150 |
|
82 |
Tom Scott & Family |
140 |
|
92 |
Phyllis Somers |
120 |
|
208 |
Mike Bell |
52 |
£140m
Ephraim Shahmoon & Family
O&H Capital
Ephraim Shahmoon, 68, is the partner of David Gabbay in O&H Capital, the property to construction group, which saw its profits soar to £21.3m on £80.8m sales in the 18 month period to February 2004. It has £263m net assets. But Shahmoon, who has around half the shares with trusts, also has other assets. We value his O&H stake at £131.5m. Past salaries etc take him to £140m.
£140m
John Marston & Family
Marston Properties
The Marston family’s hotel interests were put up for sale last year but a deal with a City institution fell through over the £175m price tag. The Marston family has decided to stick with the 15-strong hotel portfolio and has embarked on a hefty investment programme of refurbishment.
The family has been in the building and property business since 1895. In 1938, the company began converting four derelict cottages into holiday flats. Out of this operation, a hotel business was born. In 2002, the hotel operation was demerged from the property business and continues to boom. Kent-based Marston Hotels made £4.2m profit on £48.8m sales in the year to March 2004.
While the £175m price tag may have been a bit hefty, we settle for £120m, which values John Marston, 70, and his family’s 84% stake at around £101m. The separate Marston Properties Holdings – with £30.5m of net assets – is at least 75% owned by the family, giving a near £23m stake. Marston Hotels also paid out a £12.1m dividend in 2001 and £5m in 2002. In all, we add £6m after-tax, taking the family, led by Marston, to £140m this year.
£130m
Michael Oglesby & Family
Bruntwood
The landmark St James building in Manchester is one of the latest additions to Michael Oglesby’s property portfolio. He has also recently bought Piccadilly Plaza for £55m from Portfolio Holdings. He now controls 20% of the offices in the city centre through his Bruntwood property operation. Liverpool looks set to be the next target for the Oglesby makeover of tired 1960s sites. He has spent £24.5m acquiring Littlewood’s old HQ at 100 Old Hall Street from the Barclay brothers.
It was in 1970 that Oglesby, 66, moved from Scunthorpe to Manchester, forming Bruntwood five years later. He chairs the Cheadle-based group, while his son, Chris, is MD. The share structure is complex but the main family operation, Bruntwood Ltd, saw its profits dip to £7m on £51m turnover in the year to September 2004. But its net assets rose to £99.5m and we value the operation on that figure. Other smaller but separate Bruntwood operations take the total net assets owned by the Oglesby family to at least £115m after stripping out any double-counting. In all, with other assets, the Oglesby family are still worth perhaps £130m.
£130m
Susan Prescott & the Austin Family
Ethel Austin Properties Holdings
The Austin family finally severed its links with the Ethel Austin retail chain in June. The Merseyside-based business was sold to the Dutch finance group, ABN Amro, in a £122.5m deal. It was the second buyout for the business and the family sold its 7.5% stake netting around £9m. The family, represented on this list by Prescott, sold the business initially for £55m in 2002 to a management team, but kept a 7.5% stake.
The business had been started in the 1930s by Prescott’s grandmother, Ethel Austin, in Liverpool when she sold wool from her home, later opening a single shop and expanding into children’s clothes. The Austin family, represented on this list by Susan Prescott, 53, also kept its extensive property assets after the MBO. The family is involved with local developer, Stephen Beetham, who has developed the Beetham Tower in the city.
In all we can see two Ethel Austin property companies with nearly £112m of net assets between them in 2003. Adding the proceeds from the buyout and the recent stake sale should take the Austin family to over £170m. But we fear there could be some double-counting in the property shareholding and only raise the Austin family to £130m.
£130m
Robert Rayne & Family
London Merchant Securities
The death of Lord Rayne in 2003 robbed London of one of its shrewdest property developers. After war service with the RAF Rayne turned his family’s tailoring operation into a property company. London Merchant Securities, his quoted company, pioneered development on the fringe of the City. His son, Robert, 56, is chief executive. Lord Rayne left £119.6m in his recent British will which excluded assets in France. Adding some of this to the family’s £71m stake in LMS and the Rayne family should be worth £130m after death duties.
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Irvine Sellar Sellar Properties £129m The ‘Shard of Glass’ as it has been nicknamed is set to rise above London Bridge Station, and it has just signed up its first tenant. The Asian hotel group, Shangri-La will take 20% of the tower. The tower, if built, is likely to be worth up to £1bn on completion and will be visible proof of the remarkable recovery of Sellar. Fourteen years ago, his property group went bust and he lost £28m. The 66-storey London Bridge Tower (its official name) will rise 1,016ft above the main line station underneath and cost £300m to build. Sellar, 67, has financial partners, including Simon Halabi (see page 11) and the Mortstedt family (see page 32) of CLS Holdings, each taking a one-third stake. Not bad for a former market trader who turned into the king of Carnaby Street fashion before selling up in 1980 and moving into property. We can see around a dozen companies he owns with £11m of net assets, including Sellar Property. He has acquired hotels, offices and a Manchester shopping centre taking his investment portfolio value to a net £62m. With his development portfolio, his joint venture portfolio with the Civil Service Sports Council to develop a chain of health and fitness clubs, plus his homes in London and Surrey, the Sellar family is easily worth £129m. |
£125m
Chris Marshall & Family
Marshall Holdings
The Marshall name hangs on virtually every new development coming out of the ground in Yorkshire, or so it seems. Credited with being the most successful speculative developer in the region, Chris Marshall, 66, is also the most low-key and shuns all publicity. Not that he needs it, for when he does a deal the rest of the market sits up and takes notice.
Marshall heads the Leeds-based, family-owned building firm that has made great inroads into city shopping centre development in Glasgow and Newcastle. The firm, started by Chris Marshall’s great grandfather, is one of the largest players in the Leeds property market and for that reason alone he needs to be on our list. A rival property man describes Marshall as a “canny businessman”. In 2003, profits at his Marshall Holdings fell slightly to £16.2m on £124m sales but it has £100m of net assets. We add £5m for past dividends.
£122m
Sir Tom Farmer
Morston Assets
A failed green attraction created on two former Yorkshire colliery sites with £50m of public funding could become an eco-friendly working village. This is the latest scheme from Sir Tom Farmer’s Morston Assets property business. But it is tyres that made Edinburgh-based Farmer his first fortune. He started Kwik-Fit in 1971 later selling the company to Ford in 1999 for £1bn. Farmer netted £78m for his stake. In 2002, Ford sold it to a venture capital group for a miserable £330m, Farmer having turned down the opportunity to buy it back. In June 2005, it was sold by its CVC backers in an £800m deal, which must have caused Farmer, 65, a few regrets. Yet he was savvy enough to retain the freeholds on many Kwik-Fit properties generating £1m a year in rents.
Meanwhile his development activities continue apace. He is developing a £150m industrial park in Staffordshire and has also built a 125-acre business park near Edinburgh. In all, Farmer is reckoned to have £850m worth of developments in the pipeline. We can see half a dozen small property companies controlled by him or his trusts with around £15m of net assets. He also recently made around £8.5m by selling a stake in KBC Holdings, a managed office business.
While all these assets would normally push Farmer to over £130m, the drain of Edinburgh football club, Hibernian, on his finances is considerable. But it is still afloat and has avoided administration unlike rivals such as Hearts of Midlothian. Still, the sale of businesses and his development programme should lift Farmer easily to £122m this year.
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£120m Sir Robert Ogden Ogden Properties Ogden, 69, was an early investor in London’s Docklands when no-one would touch it, and made his fortune when prices shot up. He also saw the potential in slag heaps, extracting coal and redeveloping the land for recreational use. Ogden now runs a number of companies from his Yorkshire base. His two main companies – A Ogden & Sons and Ogden Properties – had £35m of net assets in 2003. Other companies add another £2m of net assets. But with many other private interests and the fine collection of horses Ogden is easily worth £120m. |
£120m
John Dunsdon & Family
Coldunnel
A brilliant time for veteran auction-haunter and trained surveyor Dunsdon, 53. His Surrey-based property company, Coldunnel, produced sparkling figures in 2003-04 showing £4m profit on £6.3m sales. Equally as important, its net assets soared in value from £31m to £94.7m. But we add around £25m for other assets including an estate, £7m of dividends in recent years, a property subsidiary called Combined Counties Properties and costume jewellery company Cabouchon.
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Tom Wheatcroft Wheatcroft Land £120m Leicester property man Tom Wheatcroft, 83, a life-long Formula One fanatic, may be secretly hoping that he can persuade Bernie Ecclestone, the Tsar of FI, to move the British Grand Prix to Castle Donington from Silverstone. It was Wheatcroft who revitalised the Castle Donington track in the 1970s after opening his collection of cars to the public in 1973. Wheatcroft, whose 80th birthday in 2002 coincided with the silver jubilee of the circuit’s reopening, continues to expand his motor museum, regarded as the most complete of its type in the world. Recent additions include Damon Hill’s Honda in which he achieved the team’s first grand prix victory at the 1998 Belgian GP at Spa. Aside from motoring, Wheatcroft is a property developer and builder. We can see healthy growth in the net assets to over £13m in his three main companies, Wheatcroft & Son, Turnpike Road Farm and Donington Park Racing. He leased out Donington in 1997 for 25 years to a company called Two Four Sports in a £40m deal. With the proceeds of this deal, his £60m classic car collection and the business interests thrown in, Wheatcroft is easily worth £120m. |
£120m
Viscount Petersham
Elvaston Investments & Stanhope Gardens
Living quietly in Yorkshire, Petersham, 60, is heir to the Earl of Harrington, and owner of some prime acres in South Kensington around Stanhope Gardens. His daughter is married to Viscount Linley, son of the late Princess Margaret. His London property assets are owned via a Bermuda holding company and have been valued at about £100m. The assets of his two main companies Elvaston Investments and Stanhope Gardens, came in unchanged at around £9m in 2003. In all we value Petersham at the same £120m as last year.
£120m
Phyllis Somers
Neutral Holdings
Phyllis Somers, 83, is the widow of Nat Somers who made his fortune from his two passions — flying and business. Somers first learnt to fly in 1936 and later owned airports, but real success came in 1988, when he sold Southampton Airport for £50m. His numerous property deals and a large £20m executive jet are testament to a £120m fortune. Following his March 1998 death, we assign his fortune to his widow. She is a director of small company, PS Webber, and is also a generous donor to many charitable causes.
£115m
Peter Prowting
Prowting Investments
In 1948 Peter Prowting became a director of his family’s construction company, Prowting, started by his father in 1912. He became chairman in 1955 and the Uxbridge-based business floated in 1988. Now retired, his family and trusts sold up in 2002 to Westbury netting £88.5m. Prowting, 80, also made another £24m in June 2004, when the quoted Estates & General property group was sold to property tycoon, Leo Noe. Past dividends and other assets (including £5.9m net assets in Prowting Investments) take him to £115m.
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|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
7 |
John Whittaker |
900 |
|
15 |
Trevor Hemmings |
730 |
|
31 |
Peter Jones & Family |
460 |
|
40 |
Steve Morgan |
340 |
|
56 |
William Ainscough & Family |
227 |
|
67 |
Alan Murphy |
180 |
|
69 |
Brian Scowcroft & Janet Lefton |
165 |
|
78 |
Pervaiz Naviede |
145 |
|
81 |
Henry Moser & Family |
142 |
|
86 |
Michael Oglesby & Family |
130 |
|
86 |
Susan Prescott & Austin Family |
130 |
£115m
Michael & Robert Slowe
J Leon & Co
The Slowe cousins, Michael, 70, and Robert, 68, 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 the year to March 2004, it made £5.7m profit on £9.4m sales, but it has net assets of just under £110m. The company is easily worth that figure and we add £5m for dividends.
£113m
Ardeshir Naghshineh & Family
Targetfellow Group
Former civil engineer Ardeshir Naghshineh, 53, founded Norwich-based Targetfollow in 1992 as a property group which now controls assets of £400m including Wembley Point in London and St James Court in Warrington. Though it made a £1.2m loss in 2003-04, Targetfollow has £103m of net assets. It is owned by Naghshineh and a series of trust companies which we assume are his family trusts. We can see another half dozen smaller and separate property groups with around £13m of net assets. A £113m valuation is right.
£112m
Manny Davidson & Family
BL Davidson
The takeover of the Leopold Joseph merchant bank in early 2004 netted 74-year-old Manny Davidson (right) £5m for his stake. But property is where he has made his fortune. In August 2001, Davidson joined with giant British Land to take over the quoted Asda Properties business, which his family had built up over the years. The renamed BL Davidson showed £204m of net assets in 2003, when it made a £5.3m profit. The Davidson family’s 50% is easily worth £102m. London-based Asda concentrated on the warehouse market and central London properties before the merger. Other assets such as the swish Putney Bridge Restaurant and Wolfe Securities add £5m, taking the Davidson family to £112m.
£112m
Michael Herbert & Family
Donegal Place Investments
Herbel Restaurants, based in Belfast, holds the largest KFC franchise in Europe and also acts as a franchiser for Haagan-Dazs ice cream.
Founded in 1981 by Michael Herbert, 48, it prospered through the troubles as few rival fast-food chains dared venture into Northern Ireland. The business, with around 40 franchises, made £3.8m profit on £39.8m sales in 2004. But it does have net assets of £24.3m and we value the business on that figure. Herbert has also branched out into properrty development in Belfast and Scotland in a big way. He names his buildings after his wife Lesley, and so there is Lesley Plaza and Lesley Manor. Hoardings on his sites proclaim “Lesley Does It Again.” It works. His Donegal Place Investments had £87.8m net assets in its 2004 accounts. In all he is easily worth £112m.
£112m
John McCarthy & Family
McCarthy & Family
McCarthy, 65, was already a successful property developer when, in 1976, he spotted a couple of lines in a green paper suggesting that developers should be encouraged to provide sheltered accommodation for the elderly.
He set up McCarthy & Stone, which was floated on the stock market in 1982. It was revealed in June last year that he backed a plan by his two sons, Spencer and Clinton McCarthy, to bid for the operation. The bid was rebuffed by the directors and McCarthy stood down as chairman. Despite losing the chairmanship, he retained a 13% stake in the company until last May when he sold it for £74.4m. McCarthy also has a Wiltshire estate, at least £3m of other business assets we can see and past dividends. His son, Clinton, now runs Churchill Retirement Living, a Lymington-based property development company. In 2003 accounts it made £4.6m profit on sales of £17.5m. The company is worth £32m and that takes the McCarthy family to perhaps £112m.
£112m
Rupert Mucklow & Family
A&J Mucklow
Albert Mucklow retired as chairman of A&J Mucklow, the quoted Midlands property group in June 2004. His son, Rupert, 42, took over the reins of the firm started in 1933 when Albert’s father and uncle launched a housebuilding operation. In the war they carried out earth-moving contracts to build airfields. The company floated in 1962 and ceased house building in the 1990s to concentrate on property. The Mucklow family has a 44% stake now worth £104m. Past salaries and dividends add £8m.
£110m
Thomas Jennings & Family
Cusp
We raise our valuation for the Jennings family which owns the Rotary Group, an electrical and engineering contractor based in Northern Ireland. Jennings, 51, is now chairman of the business started by his father in 1954. It is easily worth £66m on the back of £6.6m profit on £115m sales in 2003. The family also own Cusp, a successful property developer which holds nearly £41m net assets according to its 2003 accounts. We add £3m for dividends.
£109m
Henirich Feldman & Family
Inremco 26
Feldman, 53, is a very low-key London property owner and trader with over 50 directorships to his name. His main holding company is Inremco 26, which was incorporated in 1983. It made a £3.5m profit in 2003-04 when its net assets were £78.9m. In addition there is Castledock, owned by a trust company, which has £21.3m of net assets. We can also see Feldman stakes in a host of smaller property companies worth over £9m. With other assets we reckon Feldman is now easily worth at least £109m.
£106m
Martin Birrane
Peer Group
Knowing a thing or two about racing cars has helped Birrane, 70, who has 47 wins under his belt as a saloon car racer. He was able to buy Lola Cars, the maker of famous racing cars in 1997 from the receiver, and turn it round to the point where it has just seen its chassis selected for a new racing operation – Formula A1, which is planned to compete with F1. All the cars will be of the same design and there will be 30 of them – so it should prove lucrative for Lola and Birrane.
An Irish property magnate from Co Mayo, where his father ran a tailoring business, Birrane travelled the world after school before marrying at 22 and emigrating to Canada. His wife did not like Canada though he developed a taste for real estate there. He returned to Britain and started racing as well as dealing in property. The 1970s were a difficult time but he survived and his Peer Group has around £64.5m of net assets in its latest 2003 accounts. He has pumped around £20m into Lola and diversified into new areas. Lola made a £5.9m loss in 2003-04 on £5.2m sales. It still should be worth at least the £20m Birrane has put into it and the sales are rising sharply. He also owns the Mondello Park racing track in Co Kildare, on which he has spent around £5m, turning it into a modestly profitable venture. With other interests and assets including a security and contract cleaning company, Birrane is worth £106m in the current climate as Peer’s net assets have edged ahead.
£105m
Eric Gadsden
WE Black
Profits fell sharply at WE Black in 2003, but the Hertfordshire developer still looks in fine fettle. It made £6.7m profit on £11.1m sales – a 51.5% profit margin. With £63.6m of net assets and a solid balance sheet, it is still worth £70m. Gadsden, 60, as owner, took little out of the company (£1m dividends in 1997). But he had a £1m stake in Newport Holdings, a quoted property company recently taken over and another £30m of net assets in brick and property firms. With other interests Gadsden is still worth £105m.
£105m
Eric Grove
Canberra
The son of a West Midlands blacksmith, Eric Grove, 74, started Canberra, a Midlands housebuilder in 1968, specialising in high-quality houses.
He sold the business to Alfred McAlpine in 1988 mainly in McAlpine shares. While he sold most of his McAlpine shares netting around £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. With his cash and other assets, he is easily worth £105m.
£102m
Sir David Garrard
Minerva
The disappearance of the Allders name from the high street came after the group went into receivership in January. Allders was 60% owned by Minerva, the property group, but the collapse has had limited impact on the company co-founded by property veteran Sir David Garrard, 66.
Minerva itself is involved in a large development in Croydon where Allders was to have been a flagship tenant. Other retailers are queuing up for the site. Garrard, who has been in property for 40 years, also received a number of takeover approaches for Minerva last year, but no-one would pay the price he reckoned Minerva was worth.
In March 2005, Garrard announced his retirement and his trusts sold £35m worth of shares. He retains a stake worth £15m. Other wealth, past deals and £6m of net assets he owns in three smaller companies take him to £102m.
£102m
Duncan Sinclair & Family
Mountview Estates
An accountant by training, Duncan Sinclair, 58, is chairman of Mountview Estates, a quoted property dealer. Mountview’s purchases in recent years include a portfolio of Chelsea flats bought from the Cadogan Estate (see page 5).
He became company secretary of the North London-based company in 1977. The family’s 50.7% stake is now worth nearly £97m. We add another £5m for the family’s net assets in smaller private companies such as Ossian Investors and Sinclair Estates.
£100m
Cyril Dennis
Runfield Investments
A big development in Liverpool is occupying Cyril Dennis, 61. His Runford Investments is building two tower blocks in a £67m development due for completion in 2006.
Dennis 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 45 small companies including Runford Investments held by the Dennis family. With the developments in the pipeline, we stick at a £100m valuation.
£100m
Joey Kaempfer
McArthurGlen
During the boom years of the 1980s, Joey Kaempfer went from building small town house projects to developing some of Washington DC’s most expensive commercial real estate. By 1989, Kaempfer, 58, had built a fortune estimated at £25m, according to a source familiar with his finances. But after the commercial real estate market took a dive starting in 1989, he was $750m in debt and had to sell nearly all of his ownership in his buildings to avoid bankruptcy. But Kaempfer found a new route to success. Asked in 1993 by a friend Alan Glen to help expand his shopping mall operation in Europe, Kaempfer found a continent ripe for designer discount shopping. He went into partnership with BAA, the British Airports Authority, which injected £300m of capital into a joint venture, BAA McArthurGlen. By 1999 it had two malls in France, five in Britain, and one in Austria. Kaempfer was by then Europe’s biggest outlet man. By early 2002, he had teamed up with the Richardson twins to buy out BAA from the European malls in a £200m deal. Later that year, BAA exited from the British malls and a venture capital group and the Richardsons became Kaempfer’s main backer.
Kaempfer also has new development interests under way in Berlin, Salzburg, Venice and Florence. As his malls are counter-cyclical, the downturn in retail does not affect him and expansion is under way at sites in Rome, Milan, Vienna, Holland and France. Although there is not much sign of huge asset wealth in the accounts of McArthurGlen UK, there is a lot of value in the outlets. Early in 2004, for example, McArthurGlen injected five of its European outlet malls into a ¤400m (£266.7m) pan-European outlet retail fund set up in partnership with Henderson Global Investors. As such we are safe to value Kaempfer at £100m.
£100m
Bill McCabe
LNC Properties
Bill McCabe, from Belfast but based in Dublin, made £47m from judicious sales of stakes in SmartForce (now Skillsoft), a Nasdaq-quoted global leader in online learning he led until 2000. He invested part of the proceeds in other emerging technology companies through Oyster Technology Investments and he is diversifying into recycling buying half of Bedminster International (Ireland) in August 2003. He reinvested the proceeds in property, buying a central London office block for £80m in March 2005. Glasgow-based LNC Properties, which is controlled by McCabe, sealed the deal for the 84,000 square foot building, marking its first investment in the City.
Earlier in 2004, McCabe, 48, is thought to have paid over £30m to buy a derelict building in the centre of Manchester, as Irish investors continue to cherry-pick properties in the UK. LNC Properties, which is said to be controlled by an Isle of Man company linked to McCabe, owns properties worth over £260m and has a credit line of about £340m. The company grew out of McCabe’s £117m purchase of a mixed property portfolio from Scottish Life in 1999. LNC made a £4m profit on £12.3m sales in 2003. We value McCabe at around £100m this year on the back of his successful transition into a major league property man.
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£ 100m Anton Bilton & Family Raven Group A busy time for Anton Bilton, 41, the property entrepreneur. Having reshuffled his property assets and sold his Raven property operation to the quoted Raven Mount house builder in a £37m deal, he is now looking seriously at Russia as a place for investment. Raven Russia, a unit of Raven Mount, plans to invest £500m to buy and build warehouses and logistics centres in Russia during the next two years. Guernsey-based Raven Russia is being floated on the Aim with a value of £150m as a prelude to its Russian foray. Property is in Anton Bilton’s blood. He is the grandson of the late Percy Bilton, a West London property developer who died in 1983. Percy had built his own quoted property group (called Percy Bilton, naturally) which was taken over by rival Slough Estates after a bitter battle in November 1998 for £270m. The Bilton family’s 29.4% stake was held via Glenhazel Investment Trust and was worth £79.4m. With these wider family assets added to Anton’s own business and personal assets (including a magnificent £2m plus country mansion), a £100m valuation for the Bilton clan seems reasonable after tax. |
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£100m Nigel Wray Prestbury Investment Holdings Busy in the property market, Nigel Wray, 57, and partner Nick Leslau sold a batch of buildings through their Prestbury operation in June for £263m. Since the early 1980s, he has made a series of shrewd moves in property, media and communications which have earned him a fortune. We can see 15 stakes in quoted companies held by Wray or recently taken over which are worth in total £38m. The largest is Domino’s Pizza UK and Ireland, where his stake is worth £16.8m. But share sales and a host of unquoted investments such as Saracens, the rugby club with £1.8m of net assets, his half share of Prestbury (with £58m of net assets in 2003) should easily take him to £100m. We expect to see the fruits of the multi-million pound profit on the Prestbury property sales trickle through in its 2004 accounts. Wray will go higher as a result. |
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|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
11 |
Sean Quinn & Family |
810 |
|
47 |
James Mansfield |
264 |
|
55 |
Patrick Doherty |
229 |
|
62 |
Gerard O’Hare |
200 |
|
72 |
Joseph Brennan & Family |
158 |
|
73 |
Sean Mulryan |
157 |
|
100 |
Michael Herbert & Family |
112 |
|
104 |
Thomas Jennings & Family |
110 |
|
106 |
Martin Birrane |
106 |
|
111 |
Bill McCabe |
100 |
|
119 |
Frank Burke & Family |
98 |
|
121 |
Noel Smyth & Family |
95 |
|
130 |
Richard Barrett |
90 |
|
130 |
Bernard McNamara |
90 |
|
130 |
Johnny Ronan |
90 |
|
|
|
|
Born in the 1960s |
35 |
|
Born in the 1950s |
79 |
|
Born in the 1940s |
94 |
|
Born in the 1930s |
66 |
|
Born in the 1920s |
22 |
|
Born in the 1910s |
2 |
£100m
The Earl of Portsmouth
Grainger Trust
The rise in the share price of Grainger Trust, a Newcastle-based property group is of immense interest to the 10th Earl of Portsmouth, its largest shareholder and shrewd businessman. His stake has shot up in value to over £50m. He sold some land in 1986 and invested the proceeds in the Grainger Trust. He was on the Grainger board but resigned in early 2002 after selling £9.11m worth of shares. With his other assets, Portsmouth should still be worth £100m today despite the rise in the Grainger share price.
A keen supporter of hunting, Portsmouth, 51, may end up in prison though if he defies the hunting ban. As he wrote to his local paper recently: “For my part, come what may, I will continue to hold lawn meets for the Hampshire Hunt and to allow them to hunt on my land, as I have done for more years than I can remember.”
£100m
Maurice Wohl
United Real Property Trust
Wohl, 88, was a very low-key property developer in London after the second world war. He built up United Real and floated it in 1961.
By the mid-1970s he had retired to Switzerland. In 1986, United Real was taken over in a £117m deal by the late Tony Clegg, a brilliant property dealer of the time. Wohl made around £60m from the deal. But he has some hefty private investments and we keep him at £100m.
£100m
Charles Yeates
WS Yeates
Having finished a second award-winning office complex in Leicester, Charles Yeates is a developer in the enviable position of having all his properties occupied by blue chip clients. It means he can be relaxed about the state of the economy. He has no borrowings and his various properties in Britain and Spain produce good yields in a low inflation environment. He is now busy working on more developments in Spain.
Yeates, 70, started in business at the age of 22 after leaving the RAF, becoming a leading dealer in buses and coaches. Today his Loughborough-based company – WS Yeates – is involved in property and fine art. In 2003, the company made around £721,000 profit on sales of £1.4m. But it has net assets of over £23.5m. Yeates has other overseas property assets and art, which take him to £100m.
£98m
Frank Burke & Family
Farmglade
BDL, a profitable construction and civil engineering group, made £5.2m profit on £46.7m of sales in 2003. With a strong balance sheet, the Uxbridge-based business should easily be worth £40m on these figures. It is run and owned by Burke, 57, who also owns Farmglade, a property company with around £50m of net assets. Other assets take the Burke family to £98m.
£98m
Sir Fraser & Gordon Morrison
Edgemor
Sir Fraser Morrison, 57, the former chairman and chief executive of construction and property company Morrison Construction, has set up an £100m property investment vehicle, putting £6m of his own money into the venture called Edgemor. Bank of Scotland is providing a revolving credit for the vehicle, which aims to buy £100m of property within five years.
But Morrison also has some other pressing issues on his mind. Battle was due to be joined in the courts in October 2005 with AWG, the water-to-infrastructure group, taking on Sir Fraser Morrison. The nub of the dispute concerns AWG’s allegation that Morrison overstated the profit of his construction operation which was bought by AWG for £262.5m in 2000.
The two Morrison brothers were both directors of Morrison Construction, which came to the stock market in 1995. Regarded as one of the top building companies in Britain, the brothers agreed the takeover by AWG. They received £57m in cash and 3% of AWG in shares. They are no longer listed as AWG shareholders, but we assume they have reinvested the £33.6m value placed on that stake at the time of the takeover. AWG’s action is being directed at Sir Fraser alone. Gordon Morrison has been tipped as a potential bidder to buy the business back off AWG but it has turned round and does not appear to be up for sale. Other assets and estate companies add around £7.5m. In all, the Morrisons are worth perhaps £98m after tax. If the court battle goes against Fraser then he may leave this list.
£95m
Peter Klimt & Family
Dawnay Day International
Klimt, 59, is also one of London’s low-key property developers. We have been able to see eight separate property companies in which he has a stake. These include Starlight Investments, Sologlade and Armstrong Properties. In all, the total net assets attributable to Klimt and his family in those eight companies totals £87.5m. With other assets and properties, we value Klimt and his family at £95m, though some reckon he could be £100m plus.
£95m
Guy Naggar
Dawnay, Day International
French banker Guy Naggar, 65, created banks in France and Switzerland before becoming deputy chairman of Charterhouse Bank in London. In 1981 he bought the Dawnay, Day bank, then a virtually moribund operation. With partner Peter Klimt he has built it into a private property and financial services group which the FT recently valued at over £250m.
Certainly we can see around £46m of net assets in a clutch of companies – Sologlade, Dawnay, Day Properties, Wordrapid and Starlight Investments – owned by Naggar or his trusts. But taking the FT as our cue (with a dash of caution) we value Naggar at £95m – the same level as his partner, Peter Klimt.
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£ 95m Sammy Lee MDP A short throw from Harrods is a new ultra smart development called The Knightsbridge, with one of the world’s most expensive apartments in the shape of a £20m penthouse. It is the work of Sammy Lee, a 46-year old Hong Kong Chinese entrepreneur who is spending most of his time in London these days. Lee, who studied law in Britain and trained as a solicitor, is a good friend of Donald Trump, the American tycoon, and the pair are also working on a $3bn development in Manhattan called, naturally, Trump Place. Lee is also working on a 640-acre development in Las Vegas. In 2003, he spent $20m on acquiring a 63% stake in MDP Worldwide, a Hollywood-based film maker, which netted an Oscar in the shape of Charlize Theron in the film Monster. If the Knightsbridge and Manhattan projects are successful, Lee should be well on the way to billionaire status. But now he is reckoned in property circles to be just shy of £100m. We settle for £95m. |
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£95m Noel Smyth & Family Alburn A tax lawyer by training, Noel Smyth, 53, is now a leading Dublin property developer. He is seeking to build a 24-storey residential tower in Dublin, and in 2003 was chosen to spearhead a £300m regeneration of the Clyde in Glasgow. Active in the British property market through his company, Alburn, Smyth is also redeveloping the old MI6 building in London. Alburn made a £13.7m profit in 2003. The total Smyth portfolio has been valued at £63m, while the sale of a stake in the Dublin property company, Dunloe Ewart, in 2002, netted Smyth and his family £31m. In all he is easily worth £95m. |
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||
|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
111 |
Maurice Wohl, 88 |
100 |
|
183 |
John Byrne, 85 |
61 |
|
211 |
Philip J Davies, 84 |
51 |
|
34 |
Ronald Hobson, 84 |
418 |
|
184 |
Sigmund Sternberg, 84 |
60 |
£95m
John Nike & Family
Nike Land Securities
The John Nike Stadium in Bracknell is home to the Bracknell Bees ice hockey team, though it is affectionately known locally as the Beehive. The stadium is owned by Nike Land Securities, a company, run by local entrepreneur John Nike, with interests in property, car dealing and leisure. Though Nike Land went into a £2m loss on £79m sales in 2003-04, it still has £33m of net assets. Nike owns all the business with his family and trusts.
But he also has 50 acres of land in Bracknell where he is hoping to gain residential planning permission. Even without this, the land is easily worth £50m. It was accumulated in the 1960s and carries no debt.
In addition Nike has already sold tracts of land to large computer companies such as Dell and Hewlett Packard raising over £40m. Nike, 70, should be worth at least £100m, but exercising a little caution and with the slight fall in net asset value at Nike Land this year, we make him £95m.
£93m
Tony Khalastchi & Family
Flodrive and Strandpark Properties
Well known in London auction rooms bidding for property, Tony Khalastchi made auction history in May 2003 when he bid £8.55m for an industrial ground rent in Bristol, the biggest lot ever to have been sold under the hammer.
Khalastchi, 44, can afford it. His family’s two property groups, Flodrive and Strandpark Properties, made nearly £14m profit on £80m sales in 2003-04 between them.
The Iraqi-Jewish Khalastchi family are a close-knit group. Tony shares his offices with his father, Frank, from whom he learnt the auctions game, and his brother, Peter.
We value the businesses on their sharply higher net asset figures of over £90m, adding another £3m for other Khalastchi assets.
£92m
Andrew Rosenfeld
Minerva
Some 2,500 past and present members of the collapsed Allders department store pension fund are not very happy with Rosenfeld, 43, and his business partner, Sir David Garrard. Their property group, Minerva, owned a 60% stake in Allders, but rejects any suggestions that it had a fiduciary duty to shore up the under-funded Allders pension fund.
On top of this Minerva has recently dashed hopes that it will find a suitor for itself willing to pay a hefty price for a takeover. In short it is not a happy time for Rosenfeld, a chartered surveyor by training, and long regarded as one of the brightest stars on the property market.
With Garrard, he floated property group Minerva on the stock market in 1996. It has been busy working on development schemes in the City and Croydon town centre. While its share price soared in late 2004 on takeover hopes, recent events have hit the stock hard. Rosenfeld’s stake is now worth £61.5m. He has other assets as he told The Sunday Times of around £30m in trusts and other family interests. We value him at around £92m.
£91m
John Hindle & Family
Brookhouse Properties
John Hindle, 70, chairs Brookhouse Properties, a sale-based industrial and residential developer working on schemes from London Docklands to Glasgow. In 2001, Brookhouse’s profits came in at £8m while it had £92.6m net assets. In 2002, the group was reorganised and results not consolidated. But we can see a dozen separate smaller Brookhouse companies all owned by the same parent, the Luxemburg-based Aggregate Co, with about £91m of net assets between them. This tallies with what the old Brookhouse had in its accounts.
£91m
David Pearl
Structadene
David Pearl’s Structadene business bought Frasier House, Leman Street, London E1, from Motcomb Estates for £9m in July 2004. Pearl was in the news when he bought the quoted property minnow, Newport, in a £27.8m recommended takeover. Clearly then Pearl is not showing any sign of slowing down even at the age of 59.
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. In 1965, Pearl went into property, managing flats and factories and never looked back.
Structadene saw its profits fall from £14.9m to £7.4m on £21.3 sales in 2003. But its net assets rose sharply to £87.8m. We value Structadene at £88m, adding £3m for Pearl’s stakes in smaller companies.
£90m
Richard Barrett
Treasury Holdings
Co Mayo man Richard Barrett, 51, is one of Dublin’s top property developers. With Johnny Ronan, he co-owns Treasury Holdings and is also moving into renewable energy and wind farms. Treasury Holdings holds a 35.5% in Real Estate Opportunities, a property investment company quoted on the London stock market. That will rise to 56% after Barrett and Ronan sold two properties in Dublin to Real Estate Opportunities. Before that deal, Real Estate was valued at £117m. Treasury Holdings itself is worth around £160m, valuing Barrett’s stake at around £80m. Other assets take him to £90m.
£90m
Rodger Dudding
Lonsto (International)
The son of a naval officer, Rodger Dudding, 67, took a craft apprenticeship in naval engineering over the five years from 1954 to 1959 at Chatham’s naval dockyard.
He regards it as invaluable experience, “keeping one on the straight and narrow and instilling discipline,” he contends.
Dudding’s naval career was cut short by injury and he went into business before launching Lonsto (International) which makes and installs ticket and queue management systems used by banks and supermarkets.
The business is still thriving and at least 6m people a day pass through a Lonsto queuing system. But Dudding is also the king of lugs in Britain – or lock up garages. He has over 11,000 of them and is aiming for 20,000. The lugs came about by accident in 1975 when a friend suggested Dudding should buy a block of lock-ups in south London. He realised that the garage business was fragmented and not regarded as serious. Single-handedly he changed all that. Today, he is also busy with development of garage sites, turning them into housing.
Dudding’s various firms and family trusts have net assets which now total £90m.
£90m
Bernard McNamara
Michael McNamara & Company
Ireland’s fourth largest building contractor, Michael McNamara & Co, started in Co Clare in the 1940s. Founder Michael McNamara, 55, began his building career as a craftsman in his old neighbourhood carrying out repairs and alterations to local buildings for Clare county council. The company has worked on some prestigious projects such as university buildings in Dublin and is also building some large hospitals and offices. He is also part of the consortium that bought the SuperQuinn supermarket chain for over £300m in early 2004. Michael McNamara, with a £154m turnover, has been valued at £28m, while McNamara’s property portfolio is worth £62m.
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£90m Kevin McCabe & Family Scarborough Property Group Kevin McCabe, 57, a quantity surveyor by trade, started working for Bovis in 1964 at the age of 16. In 1971 he joined the Teesland property group and nine years later formed Scarborough Property Co. In 1989 McCabe led the management buyout of Teesland and in 1996 the business merged with Scarborough, only to demerge four years later. In 2002 Teesland acquired a stock market listing by way of a reverse takeover of the then ailing Semple Cochrane, a Scottish engineering group. McCabe chairs the group, renamed Teesland where he has a £4.5m stake. The Scarborough Property Group – which his family still owns all of – saw its 2003-04 profit soar from £7.7m to £11m on sales up £30m at £87m. We reckon the company is worth around £70m on these figures. McCabe, who has extensive interests in Scotland and Yorkshire, has more than 300 significant directorships. We add another £20m for his wealth here including a £2m stake in the quoted Fairbriar housebuilder. Scarborough is also set to make a £25m profit from the sale of its Euston station office campus in London. That should push McCabe up next year’s list. |
£90m
Martin Myers
Mountgrange Capital
Myers, 64, is one of London’s shrewdest property players, who has been buying and selling property companies for years. The chartered surveyor made his first £10m with the sale of the quoted Imry property operation in 1989. With Manish Chande, he later built up Trillium, a property services company, with £70m backing from Goldman Sachs. They sold it to Land Securities for £300m. Late in 2003, the duo sold a Lincoln shopping park for £90m which they had bought 18 months previously for £67m. Myers had 43% of the company involved in the deal. We can see several companies where Myers or his trusts have substantial stakes, the largest being 52% of Chester Holdings (UK) with £55m net assets. He also has Mountgrange Land, which made £11.2m profit in 2003-04. In all with his racing interests added, he should easily be worth £90m.
£90m
Johnny Ronan
Treasury Holdings
Johnny Ronan, 51, is one of Dublin’s top property developers. With Richard Barrett, he co-owns Treasury Holdings and is also moving into renewable energy and wind farms. Treasury Holdings holds a 35.5% in Real Estate Opportunities, a property investment quoted on the London stock market. Real Estate was valued at £117m. Treasury Holdings itself is worth around £160m, valuing Ronan’s stake at around £80m. Other assets take him to £90m.
£90m
David Russell
Property Alliance
One of nine children, David Russell trained as a carpenter in his native Rochdale. He went to work on a market stall but made his first fortune in fitted kitchens. By the age of 29, he had sold the business for £12m.
A few years in the jet-set world of supermodels and high living followed. Today Russell, 49, spends his time on his property and construction business, with his four children, and ruminating on politics.
His property business Property Alliance is engaged in a full-frontal assault on the city-centre office market. A £12m development in Manchester’s King Street is under way, and much more activity is planned.
Last year, Property Alliance paid £3.5m for the 38,000 sq ft Harvester House office block at 37 Peter Street. And at Deansgate, a stone’s throw from the new Hilton Hotel development, the company will redevelop a 42,000 sq ft office building. The plans are now with the Town Hall authorities, and the freehold already presold for around £10m.
Today the Russell empire, apart from city centre sites in Manchester, also includes offices and leisure developments in Oxford, Chorley and Blackburn. Property Alliance made £1.8m profit on £12.7m sales in 2003-04. He owns it and we value Russell at £90m.
£86m
Robin Clark & Family
Taylor Clark
Robin Clark, 67, the son of the late property developer Robert Clark, now runs the family firm. Renamed Taylor Clark, the London-based company has property, leisure and forestry interests. About 43.3% of the company is owned by a charity. In the year to March 2004 profits rose sharply from £936,000 to £3.4m on sales down sharply at £7m. But the company has nearly £152m of net assets and a high credit rating. Using the assets as a valuation, the Clarks’s 56.7% is worth £86m.
£85m
Robert Morton
Stackbourne
Morton’s stakes in 19 quoted companies are worth £26m. A company investor, he left school at 16 and qualified as a chartered accountant. He teamed up with a client to go into business, and has been buying and selling companies ever since. At the height of the dot.com boom, Morton, 63, was worth £150m, though in 2000 it was reported by The Times to have fallen to £50m. We reckon that with other stakes in unquoted companies such as Merritts Properties (£14m net assets) and Stackbourne plus various trust funds, Morton should be worth £85m.
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£85m Sir Henry Warner & Philip Warner Warner Estates Warner Estates, the quoted property group, is in fine fettle. In the first half of 2004-05, profits rose from £6.8m to £8.7m and were accompanied by a bullish trading statement from the company. The Warner family, led by Sir Henry Warner, 83, have a substantial stake in the London-based operation. After distinguished wartime service with the Scots Guards, Warner inherited the baronetcy from his father in 1955. Warner is no longer on the board of the company, run by his son, Philip, but the family retains a £75m stake with trusts. We add another £10m for estates and other assets such as the Brettenham Trust. Some have suggested that the Warners are far wealthier than we state. We can’t see it but would love further particulars from anyone who can. |
£80m
Paul Bloomfield
Investor
Paul Bloomfield, 59, a former bankrupt, was a major player in the 1980s property boom when he worked closely with the late Tony Clegg and his Mountleigh Group. Mountleigh ultimately went bust albeit after the business had been sold to new US owners and Clegg and Bloomfield had departed from the scene. Bloomfield, known to all and sundry as “Boom Boom” traded his way out of insolvency and in 2002 his voluntary arrangement with creditors was lifted. With a series of unnamed partners, he claims to have made £158m profit from 1997 to 2002 through a string of deals.
In 2003 he lined up German bank WestLB to finance the £750m redevelopment of Wembley Stadium. He is currently exploring a number of investments including PFI hospitals and social housing. Well-informed sources suggest to us that he has made around £80m, much of it coming from the Russian deals.
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£80m John Ritblat & Family British Land Shares in British Land reached a record high late in 2004 as investors hoped the company would sell off its flagship Broadgate development in the City and return the cash to shareholders. A new chief executive has taken over at the group which for long was regarded as the personal fiefdom of its chairman, John Ritblat. It is reasoned that he could bring a new focus to the group. But in any case the rise in the share price will be pleasing to Ritblat, 70, long regarded as one of the most astute property men in London. He trained as an estate agent and then started his own agency. He runs British Land, which he has built into a £2.5bn company. His direct stake is worth around £29m while his son Jamie runs Delancey Estates, taken private in 2001, when the Ritblats had 7%. In 2003-04 it had £227m net assets, valuing the family stake at £16m. Options and other business assets including Chardwick Investments keep the family at a very conservative £80m. |
£80m
Con Folkes & Family
Folkes Holdings
The decision by Con Folkes, 52, to take the Folkes Group private in 2002 was vindicated with the 2004 results showing that its parent company, Folkes Holdings, notched up profits of £3.5m.
The group, which can trace its history back to 1697, as a blacksmith making chain mail and swords, was floated on the stock market in 1953 – the day that Con Folkes was born. In 1981, he became the then youngest chairman of a quoted company.
Folkes Group, now in property and engineering, was taken private in a £38.5m deal, leaving Folkes and his family with 100% of the shares. With £57m of assets, it is one of the largest private property groups in the Midlands, with industrial subsidiaries doing very nicely too. We value it at around £60m, adding £20m for other assets to the Folkes family.
£80m
Jim Moore & Family
Inside Track & Instant Access Properties
Based in Spain, Jim Moore set up Inside Track Seminars in 2001 to promote and advise on buy-to-let properties. A marketing man, Moore has seen the profits of Inside Track and its related company, Instant Access Properties, soar to £9m in 2003-04. They are expected to hit £17m in 2004-05. Inside Track has had 40,000 people attending its free workshops while Instant Access provides one-stop shops for investors in property. Moore has appointed advisers to examine a trade sale or a flotation of the Kingston upon Thames-based operations. Moore and his family trusts have a stake worth £80m at the mooted £150m sale or float price.
£78m
John Guthrie
Broadland Properties
69 -year-old John Guthrie, a chartered surveyor by training, is chairman and managing director of Broadland Properties, a private property group based in Scarborough. He owns all the shares either directly or through family trusts. The business, which was started in 1950, saw its profits rise sharply from £241,000 to £2.11m on sales of £26.4m in the year to September 2004. But we value it on its £72.8m net assets. Other Guthrie assets such as White Rose Finance (£897,000 net assets) take the Guthrie family to perhaps £78m.
£78m
The Ziff Family
Stylo and Town Centre Securities
Virtually every tycoon in the property world sought to take over the late Arnold Ziff’s company, Stylo, over the past 44 years. Bidders came and went, seen off by the redoubtable Ziff, who died in July 2004. He had only recently retired as chairman of the shoes to property group.
Stylo, headquartered in a Yorkshire stone blockhouse in Bradford, is the Ziff family’s corporate fortress by virtue of a complex share structure which was devised by Stylo’s merchant banker of the day when the company went public in 1935. The business was founded by Ziff’s grandfather, his sister and their brothers – all children of Russian émigrés – in 1918.
Stylo’s prime assets include freehold premises in most of the best high streets in Britain, which is why so many property companies have tried to muscle in. The Ziff family infuriate them by operating conservatively, worrying less about profits than building net worth and maximising reserves in case of, quite literally, rainy days. It works, with Stylo making £6.8m profit on £209m sales in 2002-03. In the 1960s, the Ziff family moved into property with the separate Town Centre Securities, where the family stake is now worth around £58m.
With their £16m Stylo holding and other assets, the low-key family, is worth at least £78m. But it won’t be the same without Arnold Ziff to guide them.
£76m
Roger Wickens & Family
Store Property Holdings
Roger Wickens, 61, is a director of a low-key property group, Store Property Holdings. Its profits rose sharply to £3.3m on £9.3m sales in 2003-04, while its net assets rose to £67.4m. The shares in the Chichester-based company are owned by Wickens and family trusts. We also add £8m to the Wickens family for past dividends and the net assets of the separate Wickens Estates.
£75m
David Gradel & Family
UK Estates
Gradel’s family was involved in property development in the North in 1960s. Gradel, 56, who worked for an American bank, came into the business in the late 1980s, and ran UK Estates, a quoted property operation, where the family had a large stake.
The Gradels eventually took UK Estates private and now, through various trusts, own most of the shares. It had £25m of net assets in its 2002-03 accounts. Other Gradel companies show a further £9m in net assets.
However, the family has significant wealth outside these companies, including large property portfolios in Glasgow, Leeds and Birmingham. Gradel’s background was in property, banking and finance; he was a vice-president of US bank Security & Pacific National Bank before taking up his present role at UK Estates in 1987.
The previous generation of the family shrewdly cut borrowings and sold a lot of property before the early 1990s crash. They have started investing heavily in the last six years. UK Estates owns one of Manchester’s landmark buildings, the 200,000 sq ft office block near Piccadilly. In all the Gradel family is easily worth £75m.
£75m
Resham Lally & Family
Bilston Properties
General Motors named Resham Lally as one of its winners in the “Dealer of the Year Awards”, in June 2004. Lally, 65, is managing director of Bilston Properties, a West Midlands management consultancy and property developer.
The company, which was incorporated in 1984, is wholly owned by Lally and his family. He also has numerous other interests in the UK, US and India. His British interests are worth over £10m, while his American car dealerships – hence the GM award – and property are worth over £40m. His Indian assets are worth £10m, while property adds another £10m at least.
£75m
Jim Leavesley & Family
Evans Property Holdings
In the mid-1960s, when the big brewers started upgrading their sites, Jim Leavesley bought some redundant Bass and Worthington buildings with his brother-in-law, the late Sir Stan Clarke (see page 41), to set up St Modwen Properties. Today, Leavesley, 75, has a 14.3% stake in the quoted St Modwen, through his JD Leavesley operation, and that stake is now worth £54m. At Evans Property Holdings, the Leeds property group dominated by the Evans family, the Leavesley family has a 9% stake. We value the company (where he is still a director) on its £228.5m net assets in 2003-04. The family stake is worth £20m.
JD Leavesley is also a huge dealer in surplus military supplies – of a non-combat variety. His company, Military Vehicle Spares, has two Staffordshire hangers stuffed with everything from nuts and bolts to generators. With other assets such as a pig farming operation, the Leavesley family should be worth £75m.
£75m
The Morris Family
Woodgavil Properties
Based in Surrey, the Morris family own at least 12 separate companies, which we can identify including Woodgavil Properties and Exe Valley Investments.
The family’s property empire started after the war as a house builder. In all, these companies have net assets of over £30m collectively. But these and other family assets have huge redevelopment potential, which puts a £75m value on the assets and the Morris family.
£75m
William Rankin & family
Hanro Property
William Rankin,74, is chairman of Hanro, a family-owned property group. While he only has a small stake, many of the shares in the Newcastle-based company are held in family trusts. In 2004 Hanro made £8.9m profit on £8.3m sales, a sharp increase on 2003.
We value the business on its £71.2m net asset figure, adding another £4m to the Rankin family for past dividends including a share of £6.8m paid out by Hanro in 2003 and 2004 combined. The company used to be involved in motor trading but now concentrates on property.
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£75m Judith and Fergus Wilson Woodgavil Former maths teacher Judith Wilson, 55, gave up her job in 1992 to concentrate on property. Working with her husband Fergus, 57, also a former maths teacher, she bought houses which they rent out to young professionals in the Ashford area of Kent. She now has around 465 properties that she rents out – worth £75m, according to press reports. Despite little evidence of asset wealth in 36 companies, including Burwood Properties, we stick with that £75m figure as the Ashford area is booming on the back of Eurotunnel. |
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No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
13 |
Eddie Healey |
750 |
|
26 |
Paul Sykes |
520 |
|
54 |
Michael Evans & Family |
236 |
|
90 |
Chris Marshall & Family |
125 |
|
92 |
Sir Robert Ogden |
120 |
|
92 |
Viscount Petersham |
120 |
|
130 |
Kevin McCabe & Family |
90 |
|
144 |
John Guthrie |
78 |
|
144 |
The Ziff Family |
78 |
|
155 |
The Earl of Yarborough |
72 |
£74m
Ken Rohan
Airspace Investments
Airspace Investments is owned and controlled by Cork builder Ken Rohan, 61, who has been in the construction business for the best part of three decades. Rohan is still involved in property development, particularly in the industrial sector, concentrating on the north side of Dublin. He worked on 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. Since the 1980s, he has concentrated on his own commercial property interests. Rohan is the developer behind the Furry Park and North Ring business parks outside Dublin. He also owns land close to the M50 junction in Finglas. In 2003, Airspace made £3.6m profit on £9.5m sales, but we value the business, owned by Rohan, on its £61m net asset figure. We can see another £12.7m net assets attributable to Rohan in three other smaller companies. In all, he is easily worth £74m.
£73m
Daniel & Martin Tannen
Tannen Group
Tannen Group, the north London-based property company, saw its profits fall sharply from £3.9m to £1.6m in 2002-03. Its net assets rose to £48m. We value the business on its net asset figures. The Tannens, 48 and 50, and family trusts own all the shares. We add another £20m for other Tannen business assets we can see including Gladehurst Properties with £14m net assets. We also add another £5m for dividends and salaries (including £6.8m in 2000-01), taking the Tannen family to perhaps £73m after tax.
£72m
Melvyn & Delia Grodner
Atmore Properties
Melvyn, 61, and Delia Grodner, 52, own some asset rich property companies in Liverpool. Their principle operation, Atmore Properties, had £49.4m of net assets in its June 2004 accounts. But we can see at least another five small but separate businesses with a further £17.3m of net assets. In addition, one of the Grodners will have been the highest paid director at Atmore, netting a £6.8m salary in 2003 and £3.7m in 2002. With other property and past salaries, the Grodners are easily worth £72m after-tax.
£72m
Albert Hay & Family
Capital & City
London property group Capital & City made a £2.5m profit in the year to September 2004. Chartered surveyor Albert Hay, 58, and his family own around 75% of the group, which also made a £2.5m profit in the year to September 2004.
It also has over £46m of net assets in its balance sheet. We value the Hay family stake at £34.5m. With other property investments of around £37.5m, we value the Hay family at £72m.
£72m
Gerard Versteegh & Family
Versteegh
Swedish-born Gerard Versteegh, 45, is managing director of Versteegh, a Chelsea-based property investor. In 2003, it made £893,000 profit on £17.8m sales, a sharp fall in profits on 2002. But after a revaluation of its property portfolio, the net assets rose to £72m and we value the company on that figure. It is owned by Gerard Versteegh Holdings, which is in turn owned by two Jersey-based trusts. We assume the beneficial owner must be the Versteegh family, and we value the family on that net asset figure.
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The Earl of Yarborough CYZ Properties Defiantly, around 1,000 people turned out to watch the Brocklesby hunt after Christmas. Yarborough, 41, a keen huntsman and Master of the Hunt, will have been glad to see them. He succeeded his father to the title in 1991. There is plenty of land for the hunt as his Lincolnshire estate runs to 28,000 acres. Yarbrorough’s father left £67m in his will. Aside from his hunting duties, Yarborough has a 40% family stake in CYZ Properties, which had £1.8m net assets in 2003-04 and paid out £600,000 in dividends the previous year. As a result we increase our valuation of Yarborough to £72m. |
£70m
Yianis Christodoulou
Octagon Assets
Octagon Assets, a London-based property firm, showed a sharp increase in its net assets in 2003-04 from £27.3m to £46.1m. Yiannis Christoloudou, 40, owns its parent company, Yianis Holdings. We can see another two separate property operations, Vevea Investments and Millennium Assest, both owned by Yianis Holdings, with a further £21.3m net assets. In all Christolodou should be worth £70m with other smaller property company assets such as Apexmaster and Erene Properties.
£70m
Danny Desmond
Bride Hall
65-year-old Desmond started the Bride Hall property group in 1984, and sold 50% of the company to Great Portland Estates for £10m in 1987. He bought the 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 companies showed around £11m of net assets in their 2003 accounts. But other property assets and past sale proceeds take Desmond to £70m.
£70m
Joey Esfandi
Dwyer Estates
London-based Esfandi, 54, has been active in property development and construction since the early 1970s. He set up his own property business, Winglaw, in 1980 and 12 years later became chief executive of the quoted Dwyer Estates. He sold Winglaw in 2000 to Warner Estates for over £100m, netting £52m from the deal for himself and family trusts. He had already taken Dwyer private in 1998 and continues his property development work. With his sale proceeds, and his stake in Dwyer we still value Esfandi at £70m.
£70m
Michael Hunt & Family
Hippo Golf (Europe)
Hunt’s main business, Hippo Golf (Europe) swung from a £757,000 profit to a £325,000 loss on £9.5m sales in 2003. Yet the manufacturer of golf equipment, run by his son, is but part of the Hunt family portfolio. We can see another £3m of net assets in several other smaller businesses. Hunt, 71, made his fortune initially helping the late Octav Botnar build Nissan UK into one of Britain’s most successful car dealers. By the late 1980s, the Sussex-based business was making huge profits and was worth over £1bn. It generated huge dividends and Hunt had a 13% stake before the whole operation unraveled. Our sources indicate that he has a huge property portfolio to add to these businesses, but we still clip the Hunt family back to £70m with the losses at Hippo Golf.
£70m
Mark Kavanagh
K Hardwicke
Dublin property developer Mark Kavanagh, 60, has been involved in prestige projects such as Dublin’s International Financial Services Centre. A prominent backer of Fianna fail, Kavanagh has two main companies: K Hardwicke and Kopian, with £63m of net assets between them in their 2003-04 accounts. With other assets we value Kavanagh at £70m.
£70m
Charles Kenny & Family
Clancourt Group Holdings
Charles Kenny, 69, and his family own most of Clancourt Group Holdings, which has a commercial property portfolio based in Dublin. It has recently started the largest speculative development in Dublin for many years, building almost 290,000 sq ft in a single phase on a site overlooking the Iveagh Gardens near St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. The £200m plus scheme will be completed in the summer of 2006.
Clancourt’s parent company, Grimwade, showed £7m profit on £14.7m sales in 2003 when it had £153.4m net assets. Cautiously we value the Kenny family at around £70m.
£70m
James Lambert & Family
Lisburne Holdings
James Lambert, 48, is the son of Maurice Lambert, the driving force behind the developer Lynton Holdings in the 1960s and 1970s. The family made at least £20m from the £220m sale of the Lynton business to BAA in 1988. Since then Lambert has quietly been building up a £30m property portfolio with tenants such as Burger King and Anglian Water. There is also Lisburne Holdings, another property company, which Lambert owns directly or via trusts. It made £2.3m profit in 2003 and should be worth £10m.
With other assets such as art and private property, we value the Lambert family at around £70m.
£70m
Alan & Edward Lee
Princeton Investments
The Lee brothers are the sons of Arnold Lee, one of London’s great developers of the 1950s. He built up Imry Properties and in 1987, before the stock market crash, sold his family’s 39% stake for just over £20m. Since then his sons, Alan, 48, and Edward, 46, have been quietly running the family’s property interests via Princeton Investments. Though it showed a £174,000 loss on £205,000 sales in 2003, Princeton has had some impressive assets. The FT reported it had a hefty £150m portfolio, £110m abroad. In late 2004, the family bought Hagley House in the leafy Edgbaston area of Birmingham, paying £7.1m for the 17-storey building. We stick at £70m for the family.
£70m
Caspar MacDonald-Hall
London & Cambridge Properties
Property man Caspar Macdonald-Hall, 55, has a number of property and industrial holdings. He has around 4.8% of London & Cambridge Properties with £355m of net assets in 2003-04, so his stake is worth around £17m. He also has half of Proudreed, a Southampton property investor, with £58m net assets, so his stake there is worth £29m. We can see over £2.5m of net assets in other small companies. Macdonald-Hall is also a non-executive director at AIM, the recently de-listed aviation group, where he had a £3.3m stake. In the last two years at London & Cambridge, he had £10.9m in dividends, and some £28.5m in total since 1995. He is easily worth £70m allowing for tax.
£70m
Mel Morris
Ford Sellar Morris
Having made a packet on the internet, Mel Morris, 49, is not resting on his laurels. In 2004 he put £275,000 into a security firm, Webscreen Technology. He also joined gambling site Midasplayer.com as chairman. He also had time to take charge of an online networking business for professionals, called Soflow.com.
With whatever time Morris has left, he is working with Derby University to help decipher which technologies might be worth something in the future. He has launched a scheme at the University to offer a range of prizes in the design and technology area, to ‘bring focus’ to the field. This must be why Morris has emerged as one of Britain’s most successful serial entrepreneurs in recent years.
He has been running businesses since the age of 20, when he set up his own consultancy company, Link Management Services. He sold his first software product at the age of 21, then moved to America to work for Wang Laboratories, where he overhauled its systems and saved the company millions in revenues. He later went into property and in 1989, sold his stake in property group Ford Sellar Morris for £15.2m to Irvine Sellar.
By then Morris had started an IT company called Prometrics which was sold in 1997 for £10m and more in an earn-out deal where Morris was paid in stages for good results. He left in 1998 to form uDate, the internet dating company. Early in 2003 the Derby-based company was sold for £92m. Morris netted well over £20m from the deal. Until we see the fruits of his recent investment, we keep him at £70m.
£70m
Brad Rosser
Inside Track
A former assistant to Alan Bond, the Aussie tycoon, Brad Rosser, 42, later worked for McKinsey, the management consultancy. He went on to become corporate development director for Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. Today he runs two property-related ventures. The profits of Inside Track and its related company, Instant Access Properties, soared to £9m in 2003-04. They are expected to hit £17m in 2004-05. Inside Track has had 40,000 people attending its free workshops while Instant Access provides one-stop shops for investors in property. Rosser and his co-owner, Jim Moore, have appointed advisers to examine a trade sale or a flotation of the Kingston upon Thames-based operations. Rosser and his family trusts have a stake worth £70m at the mooted £150m sale or float price.
£70m
Ron Wood
Ron Wood Developments
Bury-based Wood, 56, started selling greetings cards on commission while still a teenager, and later founded the chain as Ron Wood Greetings Cards. He sold it in 1996 for £90m and since then around half its value has been destroyed. Wood did reinvest some of his own money in the venture when he sold to a new management team, but the company was sold again and we assume he did not take too big a hit then. In recent years, Wood has largely been involved in property through his Ron Wood Developments, in the Manchester area. This business only shows limited assets, and its net assets have shrunk to a negative figure of £1.6m in its 2003 accounts. In all we clip £5m off Wood’s wealth taking him down to £70m.
£69m
Mathias Kraus & Family
Pall Mall Investments
Mathias Kraus, 63, and his family own Pall Mall Investments, a north London-based property group, which made a £974,000 profit in 2002-03, and has net assets of £46.7m. We value the business on the net asset figure. But Kraus family trusts, we reckon, also own Lonia Ltd, a West End-based property business which made a £6m profit on £1.3m sales in 2002-03. It is easily worth its £22.3m net asset figure. In all, Kraus and his family must be worth £69m.
£68m
John Miskelly
MTS
Belfast businessman John Miskelly, 42, has a string of companies and assets in Northern Ireland. His main operation, MTS (NI) has various transport contracts in the public sector. He also has a nursing home operation and Miskelly Construction for building work. He has four pubs in Co Down on the outskirts of Belfast, supermarkets and 48 acres of zoned development land in the Belfast and Dublin area. We can see only £3m assets in the 2003 accounts of MTS (NI), but Miskelly is easily worth £68m.
£66m
Michael Astor & Family
Sableknight
A City financier who has worked with John Duffield, Astor, 59, is a member of the Anglo-American financial dynasty. The Astor family company, Sableknight, made a loss of £530,000 in 2003, when its net assets fell slightly to £62.3m. With any proceeds from his work, and an estate company, we value Astor and the wider family slightly down at £66m to reflect the fall in net assets.
£65m
Jeremy Agace
Hambro Countrywide
Agace, 65, continues to keep a low profile, having left Britain in the late 1980s for Monte Carlo following the sale of his estate agency business. Agace followed his father as chairman of the estate agency Mann & Co. In 1985, it floated on the stock market and a year later merged to form Hambro Countrywide. His proceeds from the merger were £37m. As a tax exile, his wealth and other assets will have grown to at least last year’s total of £65m. Our spies report that Agace is a keen racer of classic Ferraris.
£65m
Albert Perry & Family
Cromwell Holdings
Perry, 81, started work as a 16-year-old office boy for a firm of London builders. Within 11 years, he was a director and went on to build a property empire. He chaired the quoted company PSIT which agreed a £247m takeover by MEPC in September 1997. Perry and his family trusts collected £40m in cash from the deal. We add £19m for the family farming, property and stud company, Cromwell Holdings, with £19.2m of net assets in 2003-04. A further £5.5m of net assets in two companies, Stonplan and Cromwell Investments, take the Perry family to £65m.
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Robert Dickinson & Family Grainger Trust Rupert Dickinson, pictured, may be the CE of property group Grainger Trust, but his father Rupert, 71, still has a lot on his plate. The deputy lieutenant of Northumberland, a major figure in the North East business community, sits on the board of numerous local companies, including Grainger, of which he is chairman. The Dickinson family have a £57m stake in the business, held both beneficially and in trust. Other assets such as a family-owned company, Cross House Buildings (with £1.2m net assets) and property should take the Dickinson family to £65m easily, we reckon. |
|
|
||
|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
147 |
William Rankin & Family |
75 |
|
174 |
Robert Dickinson & Family |
65 |
|
180 |
Stuart Monk & Family |
62 |
|
244 |
Peter Stephenson & Family |
42 |
£64m
Peter Levy & Family
Shaftesbury
Having recently retired as chairman of the quoted Shaftesbury property group, Peter Levy, 65, will be delighted with its recent performance. In the year to September 2004, its net asset value rose 20% and the shares hit a record high by the year end. Levy still retains a stake in the business now worth £11m. Shaftesbury is the leading developer in Covent Garden and has been instrumental in revitalising the area.
Levy learnt his business from his father, a major player in the property world in the 1950s and 1960s through his company, Stock Conversion. That was taken over in the early 1980s, valuing the family stake then at £40m. With Levy’s remaining Shaftesbury stake, past share sales (including a £5m sale in early 2004), other assets and the Stock Conversion sale the Levy family is worth perhaps £64m.
£63m
Ray Horney
Real Estates Opportunities
Horney, 69, started his entrepreneurial life by renting washing machines to Brighton council tenants in the 1950s. He later moved into white goods retailing and, in 1985, sold his business for £21m. Five years later, Horney took a stake in St James Beach Hotels, a West Indies chain floated in 1994. The investment did well for Horney. Three years later he made another £27m when it was sold. He now chairs and has a £1.7m stake in Jersey-based property company Real Estate Opportunities, in which Irish property investor Treasury Holdings has a majority stake. Share sales, other assets and around £3m of stakes in quoted companies take him to around £63m.
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£63m Sir John Mactaggart & Family Mactaggart Heritable Holdings Mactaggart Heritable, the Glasgow-based property group, saw its net assets decline slightly in 2003 from £54.4m to £52.9m, but it is still an effective money-making machine turning in an exceptional £4.2m profit on £4m sales. Chaired by Mactaggart, 54, whose younger sister is Labour MP for Slough, the company was founded by their great-grandfather. Also called Sir John, he was an active Labour man and was treasurer of the first branch of the Labour party under Kier Hardy. While he travelled third class, the family can do better today. We value the business on the net asset figure, adding £10m for past dividends etc. |
£62m
Nick Capstick-Dale
UK Real Estate
A new Covent Garden-style leisure-to-retail complex complete with a theatre and theatre school is set to be built by Nick Capstick-Dale in the heart of London’s Kings Cross area. With the Eurostar trains set to use the station in 2007, and a huge regeneration under way, he is clearly going to be in the right area at the right time.
Capstick-Dale, 43, went to work 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.
UK Real Estate showed around £11.7m assets in its 2003-04 accounts, but in total Capstick-Dale has net business assets of around £57m. We add £5m for property and personal assets taking him to £62m.
£62
Stuart Monk & Family
Jomast Property & Finance
Stuart Monk is MD of Jomast Property & Finance, a property company with interests in construction.
The Stockton-based operation has been busy developing housing on the hugely successful Hartlepool Marina. It made £2.5m profit on £8.5m sales in 2003-04 and its net assets rose sharply from £29.3m to £60.8m after a sharp revaluation of assets in the balance sheet.
We value it on the net assets. Monk, 56, and his family trusts own it all. We add another £1.2m for other assets and stakes in separate companies, including 50% of Ladyjoy, a local pub company in the area.
£62m
Malcolm Scott
Dunalastair Estates
Malcolm Scott, 41, is one of Scotland’s up-and-coming businessmen. After agricultural college he went to learn all about his family’s grain business, with a spell at a London commodity broker. Returning to Edinburgh, he kept working at the grain operation and also started his own business, Dunalastair Estates, specialising in all areas of property and land. When his father retired, Scott took over the grain operation. In the 1990s he undertook a wide range of property deals in London, Edinburgh and Northern Ireland. In addition, recognising the housing requirement in the Edinburgh environs, he acquired a very large site in East Lothian in 1998, which is now incorporated in the local structure plan.
Scott’s grain interests held via Swarland (Grain Dryers) and Philip Wilson (Grain) made £1.4m in their 2003-04 accounts. They are worth £10m easily. His land and property interests add a further £39m, while Scott also has a 50% stake in a planned coal-fired power station in Pakistan worth £10m. A prominent Tory in Scotland, Scott also has £2m of other assets taking him to £62m.
£61m
John & Ciara Byrne
Carlisle Trust
John Byrne, 85, has been building up his Dublin-based property empire since the 1960s. He is a leading supplier of office space to the public sector. With his wife, Ciara, 63, and family trusts, his interests are held mainly through the Carlisle Trust, which showed £35m of net assets in its 2003 accounts. But other assets should take the Byrne family to £61m.
£60m
Berish Berger & Family
Greaterhaven
The late Gerson Berger earned his money originally by hauling sacks of dried beans round London, hence his nickname: “Getzel, the bean man”. But by dint of hard work and living frugally, he built up a huge residential property empire. The family ran into difficulties in the early 1990s’ property crash but survived and later prospered.
The family is now headed by Gerson’s grandson, Berish, 49, and he is a director of over 100 companies. We can see £70m of net assets in them, but cut that back to £60m in the present climate.
£60m
Kip Bertram & Family
Bertram Books
Kip Bertram and his late mother Elsie started Bertram Books in a disused Norwich chicken shed. It is now Britain’s largest independent book wholesaler. In February 1999, it merged with Cypher, a public library supplier in a £54m deal. The deal effectively valued the Bertram family stake at £35m.
Kip Bertram, 61, is no longer in the book trade, having moved into property development and investment in high tech firms. As a result the family’s asset wealth has now grown to £60m.
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|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
18 |
Sir Tom Hunter |
700 |
|
25 |
David Murray |
550 |
|
28 |
Keith Miller & Family |
498 |
|
65 |
Robert Adair |
187 |
|
91 |
Sir Tom Farmer |
122 |
|
119 |
Sir Fraser & Gordon Morrison |
98 |
|
178 |
Sir John Mactaggart & Family |
63 |
|
180 |
Malcolm Scott |
62 |
|
214 |
Jack Hamilton |
50 |
|
247 |
Louis Goodman & Family |
40 |
|
247 |
John Kennedy & Family |
40 |
|
285 |
John Ray |
30 |
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£60m Kevin Heaney Cornishhomes.co.uk A north London property developer, Kevin Heaney, 42, moved down to Cornwall in 2001 and has since become a leading developer in Truro. Though his cornishhomes.co.uk operation he is involved in developments around the South West from Liskeard to Truro. Heaney’s various Cornish projects are valued at £110m. With borrowings and construction costs of nearly £47m, these should yield a £63m-plus profit for Heaney. His existing Cornish property and homes are worth £9m, while his European assets are valued at £10m. He commutes between Cornwall and Monaco. In all, until his new developments are completed, we value Heaney at £60m. |
£60m
Manish Chande
Mountgrange Capital
Mountgrange Capital, the property company run by Manish Chande, 49, and his business partner, MartinMyers (see p64), had a spectacular 2003-04, producing a £22.3m profit on £96m sales. Having spent £60m buying a clutch of sites in May, including a Hove office development, they announced that phases two and three of the Hove City Park development would go ahead. The pair are perhaps the shrewdest property players in the City, reflected in the surge in Mountgrange’s profits. Yet Chande has not had it easy. His family hailed from Uganda, where they were expelled by the Amin regime. He was in school in England at the time and went on to train as a chartered accountant. By the late 1980s he was finance director of the Imry property group working with Myers. After Imry was taken over, he and Myers built up Trillium, a property services company, with £70m backing from Goldman Sachs. They sold it to Land Securities for £300m. Late in 2003 the duo sold a Lincoln shopping park for £90m which they had bought 18 months previously for £67m. The Trillium takeover netted Chande around £8m. His 45% stake in Mountgrange Capital is easily worth £40m. With other assets and past dividends (Mountgrange paid out nearly £19m dividends in total in the 2002-04 period) Chande should be worth £60m.
£60m
Michael Heller
London & Associated Investment Trust
Accountant Michael Heller, 69, and his father built up and sold KP Nuts to United Biscuits in 1968. Heller shrewdly invested his wealth in property. Today the Heller family fortune derives from its 55% holding in the quoted specialist shopping centre investor London & Associated Properties which the Hellers have controlled since the early 1970s. Over the past five years L&AP, which Heller chairs and where his son John is chief executive, has expanded dramatically with large centres in Sheffield, Windsor and St Helen’s and the family’s holding here is worth £35m. In addition they own stakes in Bisichi Mining, where son Andrew is chief executive, and Electronic Data Processing which, together with other privately owned investments and homes, takes the total to £60m.
£60m
David Lewis
Marylebone Property Holdings
Lewis is a chartered surveyor and one of Britain’s top property men. With impeccable timing, he sold a number of businesses right at the top of the market, including Hampton Trust, which fetched £100m just before the 1987 crash. Lewis, 66, received £25m for his 25% stake in Hampton. His family has at least £30m of stakes in a number of companies including Marylebone Property Holdings, Ledale Investments and Molyneux Securities. With other assets we value the Lewis family at around £60m.
£60m
Anthony Loftus & Family
Accurist Watches
Anthony Loftus, 63, is one of three brothers who run Accurist Watches, the business started by their late father, Asher, in 1946. They also own a large amount of property in the Baker Street area of London.
Accurist, which became synonymous with 1960s fashion through its Old England range, made £248,000 profit in 2003-04, but adding in part of the £1.7m directors’ pay to the bottom line would take the profit to £1.5m and justify a £15m valuation easily.
However, property has traditionally done better for the Loftus clan than the watch business. Though no full accounts are published for their property vehicles, Loftus Family Properties or Flairline, in 1990, they received £22m for the sale of a property. With the rise in Baker Street prices, a £60m price tag is a conservative estimate.
£60m
Graham Mellstrom & Family
Glen House Estates
Surrey property tycoon and farmer, Graham Mellstrom, 74, is busy restoring the historic Woolhanger Estate manor house on Exmoor. On completion the house and 3,500-acre estate should be worth £8m. Mellstrom is a colourful cove who stood as a UK Independence Party candidate in the 2001 general election. His career has been equally exotic, including running the National Guardian Mortgage Corporation which went into voluntary liquidation in 1991 as a result of the sharp drop in residential property values. All creditors were paid in full and the only shareholders to lose were Mellstrom and his family.
Mellstrom, who left school at 16, started his first business venture just after the war when milk was rationed. He did a milk round in the morning and trained to be a chartered accountant during the day. It paid off – his family own Glen House Estates, a property group with £22.3m net assets in 2003-04. Aside from his property firm and the Devon estate, Mellstrom also has some choice agricultural land and estates in Hampshire, Northumberland and Lincolnshire worth a further £25m. In addition, an industrial estate and cattle station in Australia are said to be worth around £3.5m. In all Mellstrom and his family should be worth £60m.
£60m
Paul Rooney
Arun Estate Agencies
Paul Rooney, 58, is one of Britain’s top estate agents. His move to the premier league of estate agents came in 1991 when he bought 98 branches from the Pru for £2m to add to his then 10-strong chain. He changed the name of the business from Rooney & Co to Arun Estate Agencies and never looked back. Based in Horsham, West Sussex, Arun turned in an impressive £10m profit on £47.5m sales in 2003-04. We would normally value the business at around £70m on such a performance, but these are tough times for estate agents and we cut that back to £50m. Rooney owns it all and we add another £10m for his past dividends and salaries after tax (including £6.9m in 2003-04).
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£60m Nick Leslau Prestbury Investment Holdings Nick Leslau reckons the property market is now “hotter than it was in the 1980s”. He has taken advantage of the huge institutional demand for direct property and in the past few months has raised £550m from sales. The most recent sale – a clutch of buildings for £253m – made a multi-million-pound profit for Prestbury, the property company that Leslau owns with fellow tycoon Nigel Wray. Trained as a chartered surveyor, Leslau, 46, teamed up with financier Wray to build Burford, the quoted property group. He left Burford in 1997 and started Prestbury. Renamed Prestbury Investment Holdings, it shuns the stock market, and at the end of 2003 had £57.7m net assets. Leslau has a 51.4% stake which we value on the net asset figure at £29m. We add the £1.9m net assets of his NML Developments. The profits from the recent sales and other assets will take him comfortably to £60m. He will shoot up this list in the next year or two when the fruits of those deals are apparent in the Prestbury accounts. |
£60m
Sir Sigmund Sternberg
Starmount Securities
Sir Sigmund Sternberg, 84, has a reputation as a great philanthropist and a tireless worker for peace and reconciliation between Jews and Muslims. He is also an active backer of New Labour. His business interests include a family investment company, Starmount Securities, which made £3.4m profit on £5.9m sales in 2002. It has £34.2m of net assets. We can see another £4m of net assets in other small companies. With other interests and with his reputation for charity work, we reckon Sternberg and his family is worth £60m.
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£ 60m Michael Slade Helical Bar One of the most astute developers in the quoted property sector, Michael Slade, 59, is managing director of Helical Bar. A chartered surveyor and keen yachtsman, Slade has a £30m stake in the London-based operation. He also made a £1.3m gain from exercising share options in 2004. A special dividend for Helical Bar shareholders totalling £107m in late 2004 resulted in a further £12m going to Slade. His past hefty salaries, stakes in other ventures such as Interactive Digital Broadcasting and Europa Property Investments, plus his own property assets should take him to £60m. |
£57m
Edelin Davis & Family
Broadthorpe
Edelin Davis, 70, is managing director of Broadthorpe, the holding company for William Davis, the Loughborough building contractor. It pursues a policy of buying land when prices are low and builds high-margin homes on its stock of land. In the year to May 2004, Broadthorpe made £9.7m profit on sales of £93.7m. With £56.7m of net assets, the family is easily worth that amount. Davis only has a 2% stake, but 98% of the shares are held in trust. We assume that they are owned by his family, and if they are the figure could be much higher next year.
£56m
Bakir Cola
Cola Holdings
Bakir Cola, 63, runs and owns Cola Holdings, a London-based property-to-hotel group. The company saw its profits rise sharply in the year to September 2004 from just £475,000 to £1.3m on sales up by £3m at £39.7m. Cautiously we value the business on its £51m of net assets, adding another £5m for Cola’s property and £700,000 a year salary.
£56m
Richard Harris & Family
Cardinal Group
Cardinal Group, a fast-growing property company is run by chartered surveyor Richard Harris, 60, who has over 100 directorships. Cardinal is his most significant company with £48.9m of net assets in 2003-04. His family has a 66% stake worth over £32.6m. They also have stakes in nine companies and the total value of those stakes is another £23.4m in net asset terms. With property and other assets we value the Harris family at £56m.
£56m
Edward Lonergan
Deramore Holdings
Lonergan, who comes from Belfast, owns and runs Deramore Holdings, a highly profitable property development and construction company. Incorporated in 1987, Deramore saw its profits rise sharply from £3.9m to £8m in the year to March 2004, but with net assets of over £50m, Deramore would easily be worth that figure. Lonergan, 54, also has a 50% stake in Lochinver, a property company with £8.3m of net assets and a £1m stake in Deramore. We value Lonergan at £56m in all.
£56m
Douglas Woolf & Family
Romulus Holdings
Romulus Holdings, a Leicester-based property group, is owned by Douglas Woolf, 68, and his family trusts. We value the company on its £54.1m net assets for 2003-04. The company has paid out £4.5m in salaries to its highest paid director since 2000. We assume it is Woolf and add £1.9m after tax to take the Woolf family to £56m.
£55m
Carl Brian & Family
Headcrown
Brian, 40, a chartered accountant, is a director of Headcrown, a private and very low-key London property to construction company. His father, Edward, retired as chairman in 1995. Headcrown made £7m profit on £180.5m sales in the year to September 2004. While Headcrown is owned by two Channel Isles companies, we reckon the Brian family are the ultimate owners. We value the business at £40m. But £23.2m of dividends from 1996 to 2004 and other assets add £15m to the Brian family after tax.
£55m
Jack Brignall & Family
Wykeland Group
Regarded as a brilliant salesman, Jack Brignall, 78, sold his original company, truck distributor Tillotson, in the early 1960s. Today Brignall has construction, property and farming interests in his family-owned Wykeland Group. The Hull-based business had £57.4m of net assets in 2003-04 when it made a £4.1m profit. We value the business near the net asset figure. Other assets will take the Brignall family to at least £55m.
£55m
Peter Dawson & Family
Consolidated Property Wilmslow
Property developer Peter Dawson, 53, runs Consolidated Property Wilmslow, an Alderley Edge developer. Founded in 1986, Consolidated made £648,000 profit on £2.1m sales in the year to June 2004. Its net assets shot up from £19.9m to £27.8m in the same period and we value the business, owned by Dawson and his family trusts, on the latest net asset figure.
Dawson is also a director of the separate Gemsupa Ltd, which showed £27.3m net assets in the same period. It is owned by the Jensal Settlement and Dawson was the settler and trustee of this trust. As a result, we assume that the Dawson family is the ultimate beneficiary of the Jensal Settlement. In all we value the family at £55m.
£55m
Martin Higginson
Cityblock
After running a series of magazines such as BMX Weekly in the 1980s, Lancaster-based Martin Higginson, 42, sold the publications to IPC. He moved into scratch cards and built another business which he sold in 1996 to Scottish Telecom.
His main business now is Monstermob, which specialises in content for mobile phones. Following news in October 2004 that the Barclay brothers, the owners of the Telegraph, had taken a 7.5% stake in Monstermob, the shares shot up, valuing Higginson’s stake at nearly £34m. Earlier in 2004, he sold £2.5m worth of shares. But he also has a £3.44m stake in Cityblock, an Aim property company which gets him onto this list. Property and earlier sale proceeds take him to £55m.
£55m
Robin Tomkins & Family
Grainger Trust
Tomkins, 79, began 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. After the takeover he sat on the Grainger board and had a sizeable stake. But he is no longer a director or listed as a major shareholder.
Our local sources in Essex suggest that he has handed the bulk of the sale proceeds to his family, which we cannot confirm. But we still list the family at £55m to reflect the share sale less tax.
£53m
Charles Clowes
Clowes Development (UK)
65-year-old Charles Clowes was in the news locally in Derby last year as he was linked with a consortium said to be bidding to take over Derby County Football Club. But a bid did not materialise and the Rams remain outside Clowes’ orbit. As chairman of Clowes Developments, a Derbyshire-based outfit, he has a lot of interests locally, and has made some serious wealth from his businesses. He owns all the shares in the company which saw its profits rise from £2.7m to £7.7m on £17.4m sales in 2003-04. With a strong balance sheet and nearly £35m of net assets, it is easily worth £50m on these figures. We add another £3m for Clowes’ other business assets.
£53m
Patrick McKillen
Pacific Land
Dublin-based Patrick McKillen, 50, has built a £38m international property portfolio through Pacific Land and other companies such as Jayfield Investments. His Irish retail interests include a stake in Champion Sports Group, which sold half its stores to Foot Locker, the American giant, in October 2004. In all, McKillen is easily worth £53m.
£52m
Mike Bell
Parkridge Holdings
Long-time Jersey resident Mike Bell, 57, has interests in French property and shopping centres in England. A canny investor, his total portfolio is still worth at least £52m. He is on the board of Parkridge Holdings, a fast-growing London-based property group. Parkridge Holdings, which made £5.3m profit on £73.2m sales in 2003, is worth £40m. We assume Bell has the 25% stake we have identified worth £10m.
£52m
Paul Leach & Family
Hubert C Leach
Hertfordshire-based Leach Homes was founded by Hubert Leach, a man of high principles who laid down strict guidelines of quality and craftsmanship. It was in 1931 while working as a builders merchant, that he built his own home and moved into housebuilding.
Today Paul Leach, his son, 77, leads the business in housebuilding and commercial development. Hubert C Leach, its parent company, is a pretty solid operation even though profits fell to £4.7m on £19.4m sales in 2003. It has nearly £40m net assets. It is easily worth £44m. There are five other Leach family businesses with £8m of net assets. The Leach family takes little out of the businesses and we still value it at around £52m.
£52m
Stuart Wall
Opal Property Group
Starting in 1988, low-key Manchester property business Opal Property Group specialises in residential and student accommodation in the North of England and the Midlands. Its accounts for the 18 months to September 2003 showed an £8.8m loss but the net assets soared from £32m to £51.5m. Joe Dwek, the prominent Manchester industrialist, joined the board in December 2003. Opal is entirely owned by one of its directors, Stuart Wall, 54, and we value him on the net asset figure.
£51m
James Barham
Bayfordbury Estates
James Barham, 68, stepped down as chairman of Bayfordbury Holdings in February 2004 after selling the business to Fairview, for an undisclosed sum. Bayfordbury traded as Rialto and analysts reckoned the sale price would be around £60m, which accorded with Bayfordbury’s 2003-04 net assets of £55m.
Barham will now concentrate on his other property developer Bayfordbury Estates. With other assets and £16m of dividends in the last six years, Barham is easily worth £51m after tax.
£51m
Philip J Davies
Philip J Davies (Holdings)
Philip J Davies, 84, started his own clothing business in the 1950s. By 1970, he saw that making clothing was not as profitable as property investment and built a portfolio mainly in the North.
A Manchester magistrate, Davies has a private company, Philip J Davies (Holdings) and his private property partnership with assets worth £51m, following a steady year in the Manchester and Leeds commercial property market. His sites are virtually all let.
£51m
Brian De-ath & Family
Wickford Development Company
Run and owned by Brian De-ath, 70, Wickford Developments is a very profitable developer based in Essex. Wickford’s profits fell sharply in 2003 from £8.7m to £1.8m on sales also down from £20.6m sales to £11m. But De-ath took a £5.3m salary. Added to the bottom line that would take the profit to perhaps £7m. On these figures, Wickford would be worth £40m.
De-ath and his family trusts own all the operation which is easily worth £45m. He has had £14m of salaries and dividends in the last three years. Allowing for tax and other assets he should be worth £51m.
£50m
Tom Bloxham
Urban Splash
Morecambe should be the next place to receive the Bloxham treatment. The tired old resort and its splendid, if dilapidated, art deco hotel will be turned into a trendy new area – the Brighton of the north – if the public sector can get its input together. Winning a clutch of property awards for developments such as the ambitious Budenberg Haus Projekte in Altrincham is a long way from his early days selling fire extinguishers door-to-door. But Bloxham, 41, has proved an adept inner-city developer — converting derelict buildings into trendy apartments through his Urban Splash group. In 2003-04, Urban Splash made £6.3m profit on £22.4m sales. It has £30.4m net assets and Bloxham has a 70% stake in the £60m operation. There are some other Bloxham ventures such as TBI 2000, a property letting business, while Bloxham also chairs the BaaBar leisure operation. In all, Bloxham is easily worth £50m.
£50m
Tony Gatehouse & Family
Medsea Estates
Tony Gatehouse, 66, moved to Spain in 1984 where he acted as an intermediary between Spanish developers and UK agents. In 1998 he set up Medsea Estates, an Alicante-based estate agency which floated on the AIM in August 2004 valued at around £60m. The shares rose after the float and the Gatehouse family’s 77% stake is now worth around £49m. In 2003, Medsea sold 1304 properties at an average price of £103,000. By 2020, one in five elderly Britons will be living outside Britain, mainly in Spain. Other assets should take him to £50m.
£50m
Jack Hamilton
Parador Properties
Raised in a Glasgow tenement, Jack Hamilton, 57, left school at 16 to become an apprentice in a chartered accountancy firm. After three years he left to become a management trainee for Marks & Spencer.
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Jan Fletcher Fletcher Group Holdings Jan Fletcher, 51, liked The Drum seafood restaurant in Harrogate so much that she bought it. She already owns Bryan’s of Headingly – a fish and chip restaurant – but property is her mainstay. She is forging ahead with plans for City One, a £500m city centre development in Leeds. An accountant by trade, Fletcher was bored of bean counting and took over an ailing trucking operation for £2,000 in 1974. She soon found she could make more money from buying and selling trucks rather than haulage and quickly moved into the motor trade. Her MSF Motor Group is the result. Buying and selling sites for car dealerships sparked her interest in property and for the past 15 years, she has been working on commercial and residential developments throughout Europe. She came to prominence when she was named was the Veuve Cliquot Businesswoman of the Year in 1994, a tribute to her formidable talent in building up a business portfolio which also includes Bee Health. Her largest visible business asset, Jan Fletcher Properties, had £8.8m net assets in 2002. She has 50% of MSF Motor Group, now one of the biggest Peugeot dealers in Britain. It made a £377,000 profit on £91.5m sales in 2003, yet it could be worth £20m. Bee Health has around £500,000 net assets and she has half that company. With property developments elsewhere, Fletcher should easily now be worth £50m. But when City One is complete, its enhanced value will push Fletcher up this list rapidly, we reckon. |
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£50m Sir Stuart Lipton Stanhope Sir Stuart Lipton, 62, founded Stanhope in 1983 and is best remembered for developing the Broadgate Estate in the City. Now private, after near 1994 bankruptcy, Stanhope has recovered. In the year to March 2004, its profits rose sharply from £1.3m to £3.6m on £14.1m sales. With £17.8m of net assets, it is worth perhaps £50m in today’s market. Lipton is set to sell his 44% stake in the group to the management at the end of the year. We add another £10m for salaries and £2.7m of net assets for First Base Securities. After a chequered career, Hamilton and his wife moved to Spain in 1996. His wife wanted to return to Britain after two years and, when he advertised the property in British papers, he was flooded with enquiries. He saw a marketing opportunity and set up Parador Properties to sell Spanish properties. In 2003-04, the Redhill-based operation made £2.3m profit on £23.2m sales. This year it will sell £350m worth of houses producing an income for the company of £35m and valuing Hamilton’s 50% stake at £50m. |
£50m
Roger King & Family
International Hospitals Group
Roger King, 69, is chairman of International Hospitals Group, a Hertfordshire-based health care company. The company made a loss of £1.1m in 2003 but has £9m of net assets.
King also has a number of other assets including Stoke Park, the luxury Buckinghamshire golf club which featured in the Bond film, Goldfinger. Celebrities Hugh Grant and Tom Cruise play there. It has 27 holes and a Grade 1 listed club house.
According to The Sunday Times King has put it up for sale with a £40m to £50m price tag. With other property, King should easily be worth £50m.
£50m
Kevin Linfoot
KW Linfoot
Last year, Kevin Linfoot’s company, York-based KW Linfoot, was selected to develop the residential element of the £100m Bridgewater Place scheme, which will create Leeds’ tallest building.
Linfoot, 47, has been in the property game a long time though. At 12 years old, he was carrying coal for his father and began his career as a property developer at 16 buying and selling terraced houses. In 1981, he started KW Linfoot, building it into one of the north’s leading developers of housing and commercial property. Much of the regeneration of the Leeds city centre housing market has resulted from Linfoot’s work.
KW Linfoot nearly doubled its profits to £638,000 on £17.5m sales in 2003. He owns all the business. With these business assets and others including a Russian art collection, a chain of filling stations and a leisure portfolio, Linfoot is worth £50m.
£50m
Raymond Mould
Pillar Property
Raymond Mould, 64, qualified as a solicitor in 1964 and became a tax specialist. He moved into property and formed the Arlington Group in 1976. It was sold to British Aerospace for £279m in 1989. Mould, who collected £19m from the sale of his Arlington stake, started again with Pillar Property, which floated on the stock market in 1994. His stake in Pillar was worth £34m when an £811m takeover by British Land was agreed in May 2005. With earlier share sale proceeds, and his extensive racing interests, we reckon Mould is easily worth £50m.
£50m
Michael Pass
Granwood Holdings
Granwood flooring was invented in the early 1900s and has been developing ever since. More than 5m m² of British-made Granwood floors have been laid over 50 different countries throughout the world. The business is owned by the low-key Michael Pass, 68, through Chesterfield-based Granwood Holdings.
In 2003, Pass was in the news when he sold a 29% stake in Gaskell, a quoted Lancashire carpets group, which he had acquired in 2001. Pass owns all of the Granwood shares, which has a subsidiary, National Floorcoverings, with £9.6m net assets in 2003. Pass has other companies including a property outfit called the Derbyshire Group, which made £4.3m profit in 2003 when it had £13.1m of net assets. He also owns Amber Farming with £24.5m net assets in 2003. With past dividends Pass should easily be worth £50m.
£50m
Simon & Paul Upward
Ocobase
Simon, 44, and Paul Upward, 42, run and own Ocobase, a Croydon-based property company. In 2004-05, it made £4.3m profit on £6.6m sales. With £45m of net assets and low borrowings, it is worth that figure. We add another £5m for two more separate property companies, Bayside Investments and Sima Investments, taking the Upwards to £50m.
£50m
Graham Harris
Sunlight Projects
Harris, 58, owns Sunlight Projects, a London-based property operation, where he is also a director. In the year to April 2004, Sunlight made a £166,000 profit on £12.1m sales but it has seen its net assets jump sharply to £49.4m and we value the business on the net assets only.
£49m
Stephen Conway
Galliard Holdings
Conway, 57, a leading London developer, has a 67.6% stake in Galliard Holdings, which saw its profits fall to £7m on £93m sales in the year to March 2004. It does have hefty borrowings though and we reckon the company is worth about £65m on these figures. That values Conway’s stake at around £44m. But past salaries and stakes in a range of small property companies take Conway to around £49m.
£49m
David McLean & Family
David McLean Holdings
David McLean (pictured right), 62, is showing his mettle as a developer having recently won the auction for the first parcel of land to be sold as part of Liverpool’s King’s Dock rebirth. Aside from that, the former North Wales brickie has made a name developing Birmingham’s Masshouse and St Austell’s town centre.
McLean, who moved into housebuilding in the 1970s, has also built his eponymous construction group into one of the major contractors in Wales. A float has been mooted but nothing has thus far materialised. In the year to June 2004, its parent company David McLean Ltd made a healthy £6.6m profit on £212m sales. On these figures it is worth around £45m. McLean owns 96% worth £45m. He has had over £8m in salary in the last three years, so after tax, we value him at £49m.
£48m
Elizabeth Abbott & Family
Abbot Bros Holdings
Abbot Bros Holdings, a St Albans-based investment company, made a £1.2m profit and has £31.6m of net assets in the year to March 2004. Elizabeth Abbott, 51, is a director and family member representing the family as a whole who, with their trusts, own all the shares.
The company is easily worth its net asset figure. But the family also took a £15m dividend in 2001 and £3m in the previous three years combined. After tax and allowing for other property assets, the Abbotts are now worth £48m.
£48m
Bruce Jarvis & Family
Ravensale
Bruce Jarvis, 57, runs Ravensale, a private property company based in west London. The bulk of the shares are held by a Bahamas trust, but we assume they are owned by the Jarvis family. In 2002-03 Ravensale made a sharply higher profit of £3.4m profit on £31m sales. It has £48m of net assets. We value the Jarvis family on the net asset figure.
£48m
Mark Kay
ROK Property Solutions
Chartered surveyor Mark Kay is a prominent Exeter developer, who founded the Rokeagle operation in the city. In 2001, he sold the business to the local EBC construction firm in a £14.7m deal and the business was re-named ROK Property Solutions. Kay, 55, joined the board of the quoted group as property director. But he has now left the board though he retains a £17.4m stake. He also has £28.6m of net assets we can see in companies such as Eagle One and some other smaller companies. With those, Kay is a £48m man.
£47m
John Sunley & Family
Sunley Family Ltd
Sunley’s father started work shifting muck at 14. At his death in 1964, he was the chairman of several successful public companies. John Sunley, 69, heads the family company, Sunley Family Ltd, which is engaged in property investment and housebuilding.
In 2003, Sunley Family’s profits were £3.2m on sales of £56.5m. It is worth its £39m net assets. We add £8m for Sunley’s other assets and past dividends (over £6m from between 1997-2002) including Sunley Farms worth £1.7m.
£46m
Brian Howard & Family
CAEC Howard (Holdings)
Brian Howard, 70, chairs CAEC Howard, which was founded in Bedford in 1935. Its history spans a diverse range of businesses which included manufacture of building blocks, engineering, transport, warehousing and property investment. In recent years however, the group has largely focused upon the commercial property sector, although it still retains interests in other businesses. The company saw its profits rise from £4.2m on £4.9m on sales of £5.7m in the year to September 2004. But we value the business on its net assets which have shot up to £54.3m. The Howard family owns 85% of the shares worth £46m.
£46m
Andrew Murray & the Murray Family
The Hollins Murray Group
The Hollins Murray Group is a well respected Cheshire-based property company, with investments in many of the prosperous Cheshire towns south of Manchester. It is run by MD Andrew Murray, 51. In 2003-04, the group made £3.1m profit. But we value the operation on its £41.5m net asset figure. Although Murray only has a small stake, the business is owned by the wider Murray family and trusts. There are more than 20 family shareholders in all. We add another £4.3m for the net assets of the Dinmore Manor Estate Ltd, taking the Murray family to £46m.
£45m
John De Stefano
De Stefano Investment Corporation
John De Stefano, 60, is well-known both as an investor and a retail property agent in the property scene. He used to work with his ex-wife Felicity Devonshire. The pair had worked together as a partnership for 20 years, but following their divorce, he bought her share in the portfolio of their company London & Henley Holdings in the middle of 2003. He is also a major shareholder in a consortium which paid £7m for a group of seven restaurants, which included Aubergine in Fulham and L’Oranger in St James’s in December 2004. Although De Stefano has 70 directorships, his main parent operation, De Stefano Investment Corporation, is his main asset. In 2003-04, it made a £5.7m loss on £6m sales. But it has £41.3m net assets. It is owned entirely by De Stefano and we value him at around £45m with other assets.
£45m
Leonard Eppel & Family
Arrowcroft Holdings
Leonard Eppel, 77, chairs Arrowcroft Holdings, a London-based property company. He holds 71% of the shares directly with the rest owned by family members; in its latest 2003 accounts Arrowcroft showed net assets of £25m. The Eppel family also owns a large portfolio of shopping centres and industrial storage parks in Britain and Europe. Eppel was also the government’s main adviser on the redevelopment of Liverpool’s Albert Dock. The Eppel family is currently involved in a £300m regeneration scheme in Croydon. Eppel runs the company with his son-in-law. With its assets outside Arrowcroft the family is easily worth £45m.
£45m
Peter Gadsby
Cedar House Investments
In 2001 Peter Gadsby, 57, sold his 77% stake in Birch, the Derby-based property and construction group to Edinburgh based Miller Group, one of the largest private companies in the UK. No price was disclosed in the sale, but as part of the deal, Miller Birch was created as a joint venture. Since then it has been hugely successful as a leading East Midlands developer with major sites such as the former Royal Ordinance Depot with 1m sq ft of office space. Its net assets stand at around £12m. Gadsby also owns Cedar House Investments, a private developer largely responsible for the successful development of Derby County’s Pride Park. Cedar House has a net asset value of £5m. Gadsby recently acquired a majority stake in Radleigh Homes, an East Midlands housebuilder building 300 units a year. It is on track for a £3.3m profit in 2004 and is worth around £15m. With other investments, such as Priordawn which is working on the new Derby College and the Cathedral quarter, and his own non-business investments, Gadsby is now easily worth £45m.
£45m
Robin Leigh & Family
Sterling Securities
40-year-old Robin Leigh is the son of the late Gerald Leigh, a noted property developer and racehorse trainer who died in 2002. His company, Sterling Securities, is still owned by the Leigh family. In 2003-04, it made a £226,000 profit but that was after an extraordinary £8.3m profit the previous year. Gerald Leigh left over £28m in his will and, in late 2004, his widow sold the family’s Northamptonshire mansion for £17m, way beyond the £11m asking price. In all, the Leigh family as a whole should be worth at least £45m.
£45m
Tony Marcus & Family
Thornfield Group
Veteran Leeds property man, Tony Marcus, 59, owns Thornfield Group which made an extraordinary £17.8m profit in 2002 and followed that with a £1.9m loss in 2003. It does have over £10m of net assets. Marcus teamed up with the Bank of Scotland and Lehman Brothers in early 2002 to form a joint venture, Thornfield Properties, which was valued at around £250m at the time.
Marcus and his family own a 28% stake in Thornfield Properties, worth perhaps £70m on the 2002 valuation, though we lop off £25m in the light of the recent Thornfield figures. It is heavily involved in town-centre redevelopment’s across the UK. Cautiously we run with a £45m valuation for Marcus overall when taking into account the Thornfield Group net assets.
£45m
James Watts & Family
Corporate Investments
Corporate Investments, an Ipswich-based property group, is owned by James Watts, 67, and his family. In the 2003-04 accounts, the company revealed net assets of £29.6m. The Watts family also has a number of other smaller but separate property groups. Property Associates is the largest with £15m net assets in 2003-04. In all, with other smaller stakes in another five companies, we reckon the Watts family must still easily be worth £45m.
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£45m John Cutts Parkridge Holdings Having just finished a £45m project at Brighton’s Marina, Midland property tycoon John Cutts is planning to upgrade the rest of the site. Cutts, 46, made his first fortune in 1998 selling the Kingspark Developments business to the American firm ProLogis and netting around £30m for his 33% stake. After that Cutts set up on his own with Parkridge Holdings, which made £5.3m profit on £73.2m sales in 2003. It is worth £40m, valuing Cutts 54% stake at £21.6m. With his earlier proceeds he is worth £45m. 244£ 42m |
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233 £45m Paul Bassi Bond Wolfe Properties Earlier in 2004, Paul Bassi’s company, Bond Wolfe, cast its eye over Chesterton International, the upmarket estate agency, but did not proceed with a bid. It perhaps reflected Bassi’s cautious approach to the property business. Yet he is one of the largest private landlords in West Bromwich and the Black Country, and recently acquired the £14m West Plaza/Metro Court hotel and office scheme. Bassi, 43, has stakes in various Bonde Wolfe companies showing around £20m of net assets. A 60-acre land bank, substantial cash reserves from sustained profits and £10m worth of property sales in 2003. With his own private assets including a Midlands farm and other private property, Bassi is easily worth the £45m we pitch him at. |
£44m
John Chamberlain & Family
Chamberlain Holdings
John Chamberlain, 61, is managing director of Chamberlain Holdings, a Luton-based property developer. The Chamberlain family owns 96% of the shares in the fast-growing business. We value the family stake at the £31.5m net asset figure at the end of 2003, adding another £3.5m for the separate Home Counties Investments operation. With personal assets of £5m added, the Chamberlain family is worth about £44m.
£43m
Frank Boyd & Family
Killultagh Estates
Founded in 1997, Killultagh Estates is one of the leading property companies in Northern Ireland. The Belfast-based operation is owned and run by Frank Boyd, 51, and his family.
Boyd started in electrical contracting and later moved into property. Killultagh Estates had £33m of net assets in its 2002-03 accounts. The separate Killultagh Properties is worth its £8.2m net assets while an electrical contractor is worth another £1.6m, taking the Boyd family to around £43m in all we reckon.
£43m
Michael Cotter
Park Developments
Michael Cotter, 64, is one of Dublin’s leading developers. His Park Developments (Dublin) posted a £8.8m profit on £55.7m sales in 2003. He purchased Glencairn House, the former British ambassador’s lands in Sandyford, for over £20m in 1999. He also built one of Ireland’s first £1m houses at Carrickmines Wood.
Cotter is part of the urban capital consortium that won the competition to develop Carlisle Pier in Dun Laoghaire. This will include a National Maritime Life Centre, a 127-bedroom hotel, 229 apartments, retail, leisure uses and a floating stage.
In all Cotter’s stake in Park Developments (Dublin) is worth £41m. Other assets take him to £43m.
£42m
Demi Chervak & Family
High Point Estates
Demi Chervak, 51, is managing director of High Point Estates, a Harrogate-based property group. Founded in 1985, High Point showed £20.5m of net assets in its accounts for the year to July 2003. Chervak and his family own it all. We value the business on its net asset figure, adding another £20.8m of net assets for another five separate Chervak companies such as High Point (Bury). With other assets, the Chervak family should easily be worth £42m.
£42m
Nicholas Porter
Unite Group
An increase in foreign students and UK undergraduate applications have strengthened the outlook of accommodation provider Unite.
Nicholas Porter, 36, started as a property developer but moved into building new student accommodation through Unite in 1991. It provides students with rooms built on production lines, dropped into the shell of the building as it goes up. They have cable TV and internet access. Many have en-suite bathrooms. So the days of grotty student digs are rapidly ending thanks to the work of this entrepreneur .
London-based Unite floated in 1999 and has grown by acquisition to a £330m market capitalisation in May 2005. Porter has a £40.3m stake and with a £2.1m share sale in 2004, is worth £42m after tax.
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£42m Peter Stephenson & Family Able UK Peter Stephenson, (right with Middlesborough mayor Ray Mallon) has been in the news in 2004 over plans to dismantle four redundant American navy ships at his Hartlepool breakers’ yard. The plans have been stalled over fears of possible contamination from the ships. But Stephenson, 58, is determined to press on, and told MPs recently that there was ‘a real possibility for Teesside to become recognised as the European centre of excellence for ship recycling.’ He spoke after giving evidence to a committee of MPs in London examining the potential to expand the ship recycling yard at Graythorp, near Hartlepool. A deal for 80 ships with the US Navy could dwarf the present four ships. Stephenson is managing director of Able UK, which aside from demolition work, is also a property development company that redevelops redundant industrial sites. It made a £560,000 profit in 2003, and it has £38.9m of net assets. We value the company on the net asset figure, adding another £902,000 for the net assets of a separate company, Stephenson Demolition. Stephenson and his family own all the shares in the businesses. We value the Stephenson family at £42m with other assets and property. |
£40m
Jeffrey & Edward Azouz
AR&V Investments
Originally backed by their uncle “Black Jack” Dellal, the Azouz brothers Jeffrey, 58, and Edward, 56, are directors of around 70 companies. Their main vehicle, AR&V Investments, is a property investment group which made £872,000 profit on £2.6m sales and showed £23.1m net assets in 2003-04. We value the company at £24.3m, of which the Azouz family own 100%, but with their other properties the brothers have built up a £40m property portfolio.
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£40m Carol Ainscow Artisan Holdings Artisan, the development company headed by Carol Ainscow, 47, is busy on some daring oval-shaped flats at its Albion Works scheme in the historic Ancoats quarter of Manchester. The development is named Ovale, from the Italian word for the shape, chosen to reflect Ancoats’ history as the city’s Italian quarter. Artisan will then switch its attention to neighbouring Vulcan Mill for redevelopment and new-build apartments. Bolton-born Ainscow has come a long way from her pioneering work co-founding Manto’s, the stylish gay bar on Manchester’s Canal Street. Now one of the north’s leading developers, she has 11 separate companies we can see with around £13.5m of net assets in their 2003-04 accounts attributable to her. But her total portfolio is now worth at least £40m after revaluation. |
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No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
78 |
Paul Thwaites |
145 |
|
80 |
Bill Gredley & Family |
142 |
|
99 |
Ardeshir Naghshineh & Family |
113 |
|
184 |
Kip Bertram & Family |
60 |
|
201 |
Robin Tomkins & Family |
55 |
|
233 |
James Watts & Family |
45 |
|
260 |
Richard Cattermole & Family |
39 |
|
285 |
David Gibbons |
30 |
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£40m John Kennedy & Family Kenmore Investments After qualifying as a chartered surveyor, Kennedy, 54, left his native Ayrshire to see the world. Shipwrecked while working his passage on a ship from Singapore, Kennedy landed in Australia in the clothes he stood up in but having lost his bagpipes. After building a marina business in the West Indies, he returned to Scotland to start Kenmore Property Group. He and his family trusts own a 96% stake. In 2003-04, its profit and turnover soared to £10.7m and £67.8m respectively. With £32.6m net assets, we value the business at around £35m. That means the Kennedy family stake is worth £33.6m. Other assets, including stakes in companies such as Forthway and Kenmore Homes plus past dividends and salaries take the Kennedy family to £40m easily. |
£40m
Ronald Barrott
Stannifer Group
Stannifer Group, a West Midlands property operation, has established a strong reputation for retail facility development and for promoting mixed-use schemes in city-centre locations, such as Bradford. The business was founded in 1991 by Ronald Barrott, 52, who remains chairman and chief executive.
With any earlier proceeds from the Chelsfield link-up with Stannifer and his remaining shares there, he should be worth at least £40m.
£40m
Grenville Dean & Family
Nest Egg and Merivale Moore
The Merivale Moore property company was set up by solicitor Grenville Dean, 72, in 1961 refurbishing and converting small houses and flats in Kensington.
The company floated on the stock market in 1985. In 2003 Dean took the company private in a £34m deal. His family company, Nest Egg, now owns all of Merivale, which we value on that buyout figure. The Dean family also largely own the separate West Norfolk Tomatoes. Despite it name, it is a property company, and is worth its £8.3m net assets in 2003. In all, Greville Dean and his family should be worth around £40m, allowing for minority interests in Nest Egg.
£40m
Louis Goodman & Family
Union Estates
Profits fell from £4.8m to £3.5m in the year to September 2004 at Union Estates, the Glasgow-property group. The business, with £24.4m net assets, is owned by Louis Goodman, 54, and his family.
As a young man of 21 he launched his property empire from the backroom of a dress shop, while he was working full-time as a company secretary at a steel stockholder. After a period as a public company, Goodman took the business private in 1998. His City Site Properties subsidiary has £36m net assets. In all the Goodman family is worth £40m.
£40m
Garrett Kelleher
Shelbourne Development
Garrett Kelleher, 44, is a Dublin developer who has a successful decorating business in the US. His company, Shelbourne Development, has property interests in Chicago and France as well as in Dublin and Limerick.
In 2004 Kelleher pulled out of its €365m deal to buy the landmark Lloyds Building in the City of London from its German owners after discovering a fault in the structure. But Kelleher has been successful in buying large sites in Dublin such as the former Department of Justice headquarters on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, which will be massively extended, given a facelift and retained as offices by Shelbourne. Kelleher paid €52.3m for the building – more than €12m above the guide price. In all his Shelburne interests are worth £40m.
£40m
Peter Livesey & Family
PJ Livesey Group
The PJ Livesey Group has developed a reputation for converting old buildings into stunning homes throughout the north. Run by its managing director, Peter Livesey, 57, the Manchester-based operation made £5.2m profit on £38m sales in the year to June 2004. It is easily worth £40m on these figures. The Livesey family and trusts own all the shares and we value them at £40m.
£40m
Martin & Louisa Morgan
OTH
Martin, 43, and his wife Louisa, 38, founded The Original Travel House in 1992. Via teletext and 22 shops it specialises in last-minute bargain holidays.
Morgan, the son of a nurse and teacher, left school at 16 with five O Levels and started welding. He later became a holiday rep before opening his first shop in his native Swansea. In 1999, he sold the business for around £40m. The proceeds have been invested in property and the family trusts own 88% of his investment vehicle OTH, with over £40.2m net assets in 2003.
£40m
Brian Moss & Family
Gat Investments
Brian Moss runs Gat Investments, a property group based in South Wales. It had £22m of net assets in its 2003-04 accounts, when it made £1.2m profit on £2.1m sales. The business is owned by the Moss family and trusts. Moss, 69, also founded Nuaire Holdings, a South Wales-based air conditioning manufacturer, which was sold for £38m in March 2004. Family trusts had around half the company. The Moss family is worth around £40m in total.
£40m
Michael & Steven Ratcliffe
The Wolsey Group
The Wolsey Group is a property finance group based in Cobham, Surrey. The highly profitable operation made £7.9m profit on £34.3m sales in 2003. Michael, 62, and Steven Ratcliffe, 38, are directors of the group, and have 51.7% of the shares with their trusts. We value the company at around £75m and that puts a £38.7m price on the Ratcliffe family stake. Past dividends should take the Ratcliffe’s to £40m after tax.
£40m
Peter Rich & Family
Rich Investments
Rich Investments specialises in industrial property in London’s Old Kent Road and Crayford in Kent. Peter Rich, 51, is MD of the company, founded in 1966, which made £391,000 profit on £2.1m in 2003-04. It has £38m net assets and is owned by Tanhauser Investments (Bermuda). But the accounts also note that Peter Rich’s family trusts own Tanhauser. We value the company slightly more than the net asset figure, adding £1m to the Rich family for property, taking it to £40m.
£40m
Charles & Anne Scrutton
Scrutton Estates
Founded in 1962, Scrutton Estates is a property company based in the East End of London. It is owned and run by Charles, 60, and Anne Scrutton, 57, either directly or through trusts. In the year to April 2004, the business made £1.1m profit on £1.6m sales. But its net asset figure rose to nearly £39m. Other assets should take the Scruttons to £40m.
£39m
Richard Cattermole & Family
Elizabeth Holdings
Cattermole, 60, started a hotel in 1971, when he bought a run-down terraced house in Ipswich for £800. He now runs a property to hotels and pub group. His main company, Elizabeth Holdings, made £338,000 profit on £18.1m sales in 2004. We value the firm on its £30.98m net assets figure. Cattermole and his family own 95%. We can see nearly £9m of net assets in other smaller companies including Manor Investments. We value Cattermole and his family at around £39m.
£39m
Sidney Corob & Family
Corob Holdings
Corob, 82, bought his first property after the war when prices were depressed. He sold in 1979 and again in 1987, at the top of the market. He still has Corob Consolidated with much lower net assets of £28.4m in 2003. Private assets and other companies such as Sidney Trading and Corob Retail keep the Corob family wealth at £39m easily. He was awarded the CBE in 2002 for charitable work.
£39m
David Daly
Albany Homes
Dublin-based David Daly owns Albany Homes and Trident Home Builders, two of the most profitable house builders in Ireland. Daly, 55, also has a substantial house building operation in the UK. He developed Airside Retail Park near Dublin airport and owns Kelobridge in England. Albany and Trident made over £7m profit on £52m sales between them in 2003. Daly’s total interests are easily worth £39m.
£38m
Martin Oestreicher & Family
Moledene
Martin Oestreicher, 77, is a very low-key property man based in London. His family own half of Moledene, a commercial property operation in Euston (see page 90). Founded in 1974, Moledene made £198,000 profit in 2003-04. But it has £64m net assets and we value the business on this figure. That means the Oestreicher family stake is worth £32m. Other assets should take the family to £38m.
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|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
19 |
Albert Gubay |
650 |
|
23 |
David Sullivan |
575 |
|
49 |
Stanley & Peter Thomas |
250 |
|
225 |
David McLean & Family |
49 |
|
247 |
Martin & Louisa Morgan |
40 |
|
247 |
Brian Moss & Family |
40 |
|
285 |
Terry Johnsey & Family |
30 |
|
£38m Muquim Ahmed Naz Indian ready meals are the latest area to attract Muquim Ahmed, 51. Best known for his work in transforming the Brick Lane area of East London, he has bought a site in Canning Town and is building a factory there to make the ready meals. He came from Bangladesh in 1974 to study engineering at the South East London College then started helping his father export goods from Britain and Holland to Bangladesh. Business was good and he diversified into property, buying the Naz cinema in London’s Brick Lane. He was a millionaire at 26 and went into electrical wholesaling as well as expanding his property portfolio. He has £20m property interests with houses, a new warehouse and offices. His Café Naz restaurant chain turns over around £3.5m a year and is powering ahead. His other interests include a travel agency and a money exchange business. In all this adds up to around £38m of assets. |
£37m
Peter Gleeson
Gleeson Property Development
Dublin-based Peter Gleeson, 58, was a director and shareholder in the Jefferson Smurfit packaging group. He made around £17.2m when the company was sold in 2002. We can see other assets including the Gleeson Property Development Co with £1.5m net assets and a stake in an online gaming business, Gameaccount.com. With his property assets added Gleeson is worth £38m.
£37m
Harry Schimmel & Family
Moledene
77-year-old Harry Schimmel is a very low-key property man based in London. His family own half of Moledene, a commercial property operation in Euston. Founded in 1974, Moledene made a sharply lower £198,000 loss in 2003-04. But it has £64m net assets and we value the business on this figure. That means the Schimmel family stake is worth £32m. Other assets should take the family to £37m, just below partner Martin Oestreicher (see page 87).
£36m
Nigel Timmis & Family
Abbey Manor Group
Timmis’s training as a structural engineer must help. As managing director of the Yeovil-based property-to-construction group, Abbey Manor, Timmis, 44, has presided over a rise in profits to £5.8m on lower sales of £7.7m in 2003. With a strong balance sheet, the business is worth £35.7m on these figures; the Timmis family owns an 87% stake worth £31.1m. We can see another £5m of assets in four other companies.
£36m
John Elkington
Penhurst Properties
Penhurst Properties, a Kent-based property developer, showed around £27m net assets in its accounts for the year to April 2005. The business, founded in 1987 is 97.5% owned by John Elkington, 42. Around 80% of Penhurst properties are in the Battersea area of London. In addition to this there is a further £9m made up of other property companies, private property, trusts and past dividends, easily taking Elkington to £36m.
£36m
Robert Jolly & Family
Limes Developments
Limes Developments, a profitable Lincoln property developer, was started in 1986, and is owned by Robert Jolly, 68, and his family. In 2004 it made £5.1m profit on £9.4m sales and has £21.3m net assets. It should easily be worth £30m. We add another £6.3m to the Jolly family for the net assets of the separate Limes Estates. The two companies’ net asset total values the Jolly family at around £36m.
£36m
Fred Pritchard & Family
Pritchard Holdings
Fred Pritchard, 62, is a property developer in the Walsall area. With his family, he owns Pritchard Holdings, a property group with £32.5m of net assets in 2003, when it made £1.8m profit on £4.5m sales.
We can see over £3.5m of further assets in several smaller Pritchard companies, taking Pritchard and his family to £36m.
£36m
Richard Ross & Family
Regentsmead
Founded in 1991, North London-based property group Regentsmead is chaired by Richard Ross, 63. He owns 47% directly.
We presume his family also owns the rest held in trust. Regentsmead made £2.8m profit on £18.9m sales in 2003-04. It also has £35m of net assets.
We value the Ross family on the net asset figure. We can also see another £1m of net assets in other Ross companies such as Waygrove Properties. In all we reckon the Ross family is worth £36m. Always willing to lend a helping hand272£35mSir Geoffrey Leigh & Family Allied London PropertiesSir Geoffrey Leigh, 72, was a major London property dealer via quoted property group Allied London Properties. He is also active in helping a range of charitable causes and was a fervent admirer of Margaret Thatcher. In 2000, ALP was taken over by a consortium backed by Leigh, whose family had a 23.6% stake. Under the terms of the £138m deal, the Leigh stake was worth around £32m. Other assets will take the family to perhaps £35m.
|
£35m Sir Geoffrey Leigh & Family Allied London Properties Sir Geoffrey Leigh, 72, was a major London property dealer via quoted property group Allied London Properties. He is also active in helping a range of charitable causes and was a fervent admirer of Margaret Thatcher. In 2000, ALP was taken over by a consortium backed by Leigh, whose family had a 23.6% stake. Under the terms of the £138m deal, the Leigh stake was worth around £32m. Other assets will take the family to perhaps £35m. |
|
|
||
|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
38 |
Charlotte Townshend |
380 |
|
42 |
Harry Hyams |
320 |
|
64 |
The Jack Baylis Family |
194 |
|
100 |
John McCarthy & Family |
112 |
|
184 |
Kevin Heaney |
60 |
|
227 |
Mark Kay |
48 |
|
244 |
Nicholas Porter |
42 |
|
267 |
Nigel Timmis & Family |
36 |
£35m
John Finlan & Family
Morbaine Properties
John Finlan, 80, and his family own Morbaine Properties, a private property group based in Widnes. Started in 1963, Morbaine made a £305,000 profit on sales of £24m in 2003-04. But that was after the highest paid director took a £3.2m salary. We value it on its £29.4m of net assets. Past salaries and other assets take the Finlan family to £35m.
£35m
Tony Kilduff
Cheval Properties
Tony Kilduff, 54, is one of Ireland’s first technology millionaires. He chaired a Dublin-based software company, Kindle, which he founded in 1979, and sold for around £14m in 1991.
More recently he has led consortiums investing £250m in UK property through Cheval Properties and other firms in 2004-05. The Dubliner part-owns the Prada store on Old Bond Street in London and has a large stake in Healthy Living Centres and other interests. Combined, we reckon these add up to a £35m fortune.
£34m
Henry Bandet & Family
Prime Estates
42-year-old Bandet and his family own 64.5% of Prime Estates, a Hitchin-based property company which made a £2.7m profit on £5.8m sales in 2003. We value the business on its £50m net asset figure. That values the Bandet stake at £32m. Bandet, an American, also owns 78% of Hunting Gate Group, another property firm, with £2.2m of net assets. In all we value the Bandet family at £34m.
£34m
Harry Crosbie
Tora
In 1989 Harry Crosbie, 60, opened the Point Depot centre in Dublin, which became the most fashionable venue in the city. Two years later, the Irish government paid the entrepreneur over £4m in compensation for 5 acres of land at the North Wall – the subject of a compulsory purchase for a national sports centre.
Today he owns properties worth around £23m, mostly in Dublin’s docklands, and transport companies worth around £2m. Crosbie also owns the £2m Vicar Stret live music venue and still has half the £14m Point theatre in Dublin. We can see around £1.6m of net assets in the Tora Co in 2003. In all, Crosbie is worth around £34m.
£34m
Jeff Smith
Proudreed
Jeff Smith chairs AIM, the engineering company making cabins for aircraft and trains. After a difficult time early in 2004, it de-listed from the stock market in July 2004. Smith, 59, had a stake worth around £3.4m at the time. Smith’s main wealth is in a property company, Proudreed, which he owns jointly with Caspar Macdonald-Hall, another AIM director. It made £8.5m profit on £12m sales in 2003 and has over £58.1m of net assets, valuing Smith’s stake at perhaps £29m. In all he is easily worth £34m.
£33m
Morton Neal & Family
St Anselm Development Co
Morton Neal, 73, is managing director of St Anselm Development Co. Started in 1960, it is owned by the Neal family and trusts. The family was in construction and development during and after the war in a business founded by Neal’s grandfather, Harry, who died in 1951. In the 1980s and early 1990s Morton had a stake in the Savoy Hotel and sat on the board. He was also chairman of the Connaught. London-based St Anselm shows nearly £30m of net assets in its accounts. We value the business on this figure, adding £2.5m for the net assets of several smaller companies also owned by the Neal family.
|
278 £33m Peter Kershaw PK Investments Chartered surveyor Peter Kershaw, 52, made his name working on London’s Hays Galleria and the London Bridge City developments. A founding director of Sir Stuart Lipton’s Stanhope Properties, he later started the HQ Global Workplaces serviced office business which he sold to a US property giant in 1998 for £22.4m, making a further £10m when the business was sold again in 2000. Kershaw bought back the European operations of HQ for around £20m in May 2003. With sale proceeds and PK Investments, he is worth £33m. |
£32m
Malcolm Dagul
Dancastle Associates
Accountant Malcolm Dagul, 52, is a leading London-based property entrepreneur. From the early 1980s he has been dealing in and developing property through his family-controlled company, Shop Constructions (Holdings) which had £17m of net assets in its 2003-04 accounts. Dagul later ran Southend Property Holdings, a quoted property group, though he left in 1996 selling his stake for £15.2m. We can also see at least another £2m of net assets in smaller property groups. The Dagul family is easily worth £32m.
£32m
Matthew Faherty & Family
Overcourt
Overcourt, a London property company, saw its profits rise from £1.5m to £1.6m on £6.3m sales in 2003-04. Matthew Faherty, 56, is finance director and a member of the family that owns the business. We value the company on its £21.2m net assets. The family also owns three other companies including Hawcroft Court and Merinwell, which add another £10.5m of net assets. Cautiously we value the Faherty family at £32m.
£32m
Laurence & James Grant
Martin Grant (Holdings)
Laurence, 51, and James Grant, 48, run Martin Grant (Holdings) a Dorking-based property-to-farming group, well known in Surrey for its development work. Founded in 1974, the business made a healthy £3m profit on £50.2m sales in 2002 yet this fell sharply to £231.000 in 2004 on sales of £38m. The 2004 accounts show over £30m net assets and we value the business on that figure. The Grant family owns it all directly or via trusts. In addition, we can see several smaller companies with around £1.6m of net assets attributable to the Grant family. In all, the family should easily be worth £32m.
£32m
Patrick Vaughan
Pillar Properties
Patrick Vaughan, 58, and his partner Raymond Mould, (see page 83) set up a property company called Arlington in 1976 and sold it for £279m in 1989 to British Aerospace. They later ran Pillar, the quoted property group, which was floated in 1994 and later sold in May 2005 to British Land in an agreed £811m takeover. Vaughan had collected £9m from the sale of his shares in Arlington, followed by another £26m from his shares and options in Pillar.
Earlier share sale proceeds and past salaries take Vaughan to £32m after tax.
£31m
Neil Morgan & Family
Morgan Industrial Properties
Electronics engineer Neil Morgan, 47, and his brothers own and run Morgan Industrial Properties, a Derbyshire-based property group which made £2.7m profit on £2.9m sales in 2003. It has £20.7m of net assets and we value the business at around £21m on these figures. Other businesses include Pektron, which is easily worth around £10m on the back of £355,000 profit on £25.7m sales in 2003. Pektron is owned by the Morgans and it takes their value to £31m easily.
£30m
George Akins & Family
SJC 15
George Akins, 76, began as an on-course bookmaker, opening his first betting shop in Nottingham in 1960. The Akins family sold its betting shops in 2003 for £14m to concentrate on its casino, nightclub and property. Their main Nottingham-based company, SJC 15, made an exceptional £10.6m profit on £34m sales in 2003. It has £17.4m net assets. Another company, SJC14, showed £10.7m of net assets. With other assets, the Akins family is easily worth £30m.
£30m
Mel Cooper & Family
Mountcharm
Mel Cooper, 64, and his family own and run Mountcharm. In 2003, Mountcharm made a healthy £2.3m profit and had net assets of £17.5m. But in September 2004 a private syndicate called Citicourt Investment Partners bought the £80m Queensbury portfolio. With these proceeds to come, we value the Cooper family at perhaps £30m to allow for borrowings.278£ 33m
|
|
||
|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
33 |
Freddie Linnett & the Murphy Family |
430 |
|
37 |
David Wilson |
400 |
|
92 |
Tom Wheatcroft |
120 |
|
111 |
Charles Yeates |
100 |
|
159 |
Mel Morris |
70 |
|
196 |
Edelin Davis & Family |
57 |
|
197 |
Douglas Woolf & Family |
56 |
|
206 |
Charles Clowes |
53 |
|
214 |
Michael Pass |
50 |
|
233 |
Peter Gadsby |
45 |
|
267 |
Robert Jolly & Family |
36 |
|
284 |
Neil Morgan & Family |
31 |
|
285 |
George Akins & Family |
30 |
|
|
|
|
Capricorn |
32 |
|
Aquarius |
17 |
|
Pisces |
24 |
|
Aries |
24 |
|
Taurus |
43 |
|
Gemini |
28 |
|
Cancer |
25 |
|
Leo |
24 |
|
Virgo |
16 |
|
Libra |
26 |
|
Scorpio |
20 |
|
Sagittarius |
21 |
£30m
David Dangoor & Family
Monopro
David Dangoor, 56, is managing director of Monopro, a family-dominated property company based in London. The Dangoor family has at least 73% of the shares. In the year to June 2004, Monopro made £1.7m profit on £2.4m sales. We value the business on its £36.9m net assets. That puts a £26.9m value on the family stake. But a number of other small companies such as Discdale, add perhaps another £3m, taking the Dangoor family to £30m.
£30m
Julia Davey
Angel Group
Julia Davey, 48, owns Angel Group, a London-based property group which owns hotels and residential training centres in Scotland, the North East and the West Midlands. It also provides accommodation for asylum seekers.
The Angel Group, based in Docklands, was founded in 2000. It made a healthy £2.8m profit on £20.4m sales in 2003. With £25.2m of net assets, it is easily worth £30m. The group is entirely owned by Davey and she also has another £700,000 of net assets in companies such as Angel (London) and Angelic Interiors. In all, Davey is worth £30m.
£30m
Joseph Dwek & Family
IGP Holdings
IGP Holdings is a West London-based property group run by 55-year-old Joseph Dwek, a veteran property man who used to be on the board of the then quoted Newport Holdings.
IGP saw its profits fall from £822,000 to £384,000 on £5.7m sales in the year to July 2004. But its net assets shot up to £28.3m and we value the operation on that figure.
Dwek and his family own all the shares in the business and we value the family at £30m with other assets.
£30m
David Gibbons
Gibbons Holdings
David Gibbons owns a highly profitable property company, Gibbons (Holdings), based in Peterborough. In the year to September 2003, it made £10.8m profit and had £30.8m net assets. It is easily worth the asset figure. In addition, Gibbons, 54, also owns the separate Plowright Farms, with £1.4m net assets in 2002-03. It is a cereal producer.
In all, Gibbons is easily worth £30m allowing for a small holding in Gibbons (Holdings) by his charitable trust.
£30m
Peter Murphy & Family
C&G Properties
C&G Properties made a £383,000 profit on £2m sales in 2003-04. It is 87% owned by Peter Murphy, 60, and his family. C&G has £11.9m net assets while Murphy’s stakes in another three separate property groups take his total net assets we can see in his family to around £20m. But with a large London home and other assets we suspect Murphy is worth at least £30m.
£30m
John Ray
Ashley Group
In the mid-1970s John Ray, 57, started Rigblast, an engineering and maintenance company serving the North Sea oil industry. Though he sold part of the operation in 1996, he retains important business interests. He owns Ashley Group, a property to offshore services and transport group which made a £54,000 loss in 2003 on sales of £29m. It is easily worth its £19.3m net assets. He is worth around £30m in all.
£30m
Paul Smith & Family
TMX Spicerhaart
Paul Smith, 44, has built up TMX Spicerhaart to be the largest independent estate agency business in Britain.
Based in Colchester, Smith has adapted the internet and text messaging alerts to revolutionise the fast-growing TMX operation, and now has some 250 branches nationwide.
In 2003, Spicerhaart Group, the parent company, made £4.1m profit on £83.5m sales. It is easily worth £30m on these figures. Smith and his family own all the shares.
£30m
Eric Wright
Eric Wright Group
Eric Wright, 68, runs the Eric Wright Group, a Preston property to construction business.
In recent years he has been involved in some high profile commercial developments in the North West including extending the freight terminal at the airport. Wright owns just over half of the Eric Wright Group’s parent, Henmead. The rest is owned by a charitable trust.
The group is worth perhaps £52m on the back of £4.7m profit and sales of £121.9m in 2003. It has £52m of net assets. Other assets add £4m to Wright’s wealth, taking him to £30m. The going remains good for Johnsey
|
£30m Terry Johnsey & Family Johnsey Estates Johnsey Estates, run by its chairman Terry Johnsey, 74, is based in Newport, South Wales. The company owns Newport Retail Park and the Leeway industrial estate, as well as the Mamhilad Park Estate, near Abergevenny. Johnsey Estates is owned by trusts which we assume are controlled by the Johnsey family. It showed £28.3m net assets in its 2003-04 accounts. Johnsey is a keen racehorse owner with 15 horses and four broodmares. We value the family at around £30m with other assets. |
|
285 £30m Lisa Voice & Family Woolcastle The former partner of the late Billy Fury (Britain’s answer to Elvis) Lisa Voice, 52, is also a music publisher and property magnate. Fury died at her north London home in 1983. Her main company, Woolcastle, is a property investment operation, which made a £50,470 loss on £1.5m sales in 2003-04. But it does have £28.4m of net assets. The business is owned by Voice and her trusts. We can also see the separate Border Investments where she has a 60% stake in a company which has £236,000 net assets. In all Voice is worth £30m. |
|
|
||
|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
4 |
The Hon Mary Czernin |
1400 |
|
27 |
Jane Clarke |
500 |
|
33 |
Freddie Linnett |
430 |
|
38 |
Charlotte Townshend |
380 |
|
69 |
Janet Lefton |
165 |
|
85 |
Susan Prescott |
130 |
|
92 |
Phyllis Somers |
120 |
|
147 |
Judith Wilson |
75 |
|
155 |
Delia Grodner |
72 |
|
183 |
Ciara Byrne |
61 |
|
214 |
Jan Fletcher |
50 |
|
227 |
Elizabeth Abbott |
48 |
|
247 |
Carol Ainscow |
40 |
|
247 |
Louisa Morgan |
40 |
|
247 |
Anne Scrutton |
40 |
|
285 |
Julia Davey |
30 |
|
285 |
Lisa Voice |
30 |
