174 £130m
John Hindle & Family
Brookhouse Properties
An ambitious scheme for Preston has been put forward by 72-year-old John Hindle’s Brookhouse Properties. It is seeking planning consent for a £100m, 24-storey mixed-use tower, with 20,000 sq ft of offices, 65 flats, a hotel and a food store.
It is the sort of scheme that Brookhouse knows well. The Sale-based industrial and residential developer has worked on schemes from London to Glasgow. In 2001, its profits came in at £8m, while it had £92.6m net assets.
We can see 18 separate smaller Brookhouse companies. A complex share structure leads to the same parent, the Luxembourg-based Aggregate Co. We assume that the Hindle family is the ultimate beneficiary of Aggregate and it should be worth £130m.
183£125m
Edelin Davis & Family
Broadthorpe
Broadthorpe, the holding company for Loughborough building contractor William Davis, saw its profits soar to record levels in the year to May 2006. It made a £15.1m profit on sales of nearly £104m.
The 72-year-old firm saw an increase in business across all its divisions, which include housing and commercial developments. It has schemes across the Midlands and Yorkshire, and won four major projects in its home town in 2005-06. These included work to turn Loughborough’s rundown wharf area into a canal-side complex and a contract to create a £13m courthouse.
With over £86m of net assets, William Davis is easily worth £120m. Managing director Edelin Davis, 72, has only a 2% stake, but 98% of the shares are held in trust. We assume they are owned by his family, whom we value at £125m.
174 £130m
Thomas Jennings & Family
Cusp
The Jennings family’s Cusp property group recently spent £75m on buying a retail park at Kendal as part of a wave of spending by Ulster investors on the mainland.
The family also owns the Rotary Group, an electrical contractor based in Co Antrim. It installs heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment.
Current UK projects include London’s St Katharine Docks, Headingley cricket ground at Leeds, Brunel University and the British Museum.
Thomas Jennings, 53, is now chairman of the business,which was started by his father in 1954. It is easily worth £70m on the back of £8.3m profit on £163.3m sales in 2005. With £5m for dividends, the Jennings family is worth £130m.
174£130m
Tom Wheatcroft
Wheatcroft Land
The Donington Park racing circuit was sold recently for around £30m to a new company, Donington Ventures Leisure, and Tom Wheatcroft will be president of the operation. The firm will also assume responsibility for Wheatcroft’s Donington Grand Prix collection.
A life-long Formula 1 fan, Wheatcroft, 85, is also 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. With his £60m classic car collection, and the business interests, Wheatcroft is worth perhaps £130m, allowing for tax.
174 £130m
Tony Khalastchi & Family
Flodrive Holdings
Property investor Tony Khalastchi has a reputation as one of the sharpest private investors and auction room raiders around. He has built up a considerable and diverse portfolio, while trading and profit-taking with astute timing.
He has been a keen buyer of portfolios he considers either undervalued or capable of break-up, typified by the £200m Rank portfolio of casinos and bingo halls acquired with the Pears brothers last year. It was not the first time the two families had teamed up: in December 2003, they bought the 252-strong Punch Pubs’ portfolio for £57m a year later they sold 38 of the pubs, netting £15.2m.
Khalastchi’s family has a number of businesses but the best known is Flodrive, which recently became a trader of hotels. In January 2007, it was seeking more than £30m for a clutch of Scottish hotels it took over just four months earlier.
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.
Forty-six-year-old Khalastchi can afford it. Flodrive and his family’s other visible property group, Strandpark Properties, made over £12m profit and showed over £111m net assets in 2005-06. We value the businesses at £120m, and add another £10m for other assets.
182 £127m
Michael & Robert Slowe
J Leon & Co
The Slowe cousins – Michael, 72, and Robert, 70 – 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 2006, the firm made £6m profit on £9m sales, but its net assets rose to nearly £122m. The company is easily worth its net assets. We add £5m for dividends and other assets.
183 £125m
Frank Burke & Family
The BDL Group
BDL, a profitable construction and civil engineering group, made £3.4m profit on £51.7m of sales in 2005. Its subsidiary, BB Interiors, has £43.7m net assets in the same period. The Uxbridge-based operation is run and owned by Frank Burke, 59, and his family trusts, which also own Farmglade, a property company with around £23.4m net assets in 2005. Other assets and property revaluations take the Burke family to £125m.
183£125m
Heinrich Feldman & Family
Inremco 26
Feldman 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 made an £11.7m profit in 2005-06.
In addition, there is Castledock, which has £22.2m 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, 71, is now easily worth at least £125m.
183£125m
Richard Roche & Family
Westfield Investments
Richard Roche, 50, heads a family which used to own an Irish department store chain until the sale of nine of its stores to Debenhams in 2006.
The roots of Dublin-based Roches Stores go back to 1901, and its flagship store on Henry Street in Dublin opened for business in 1927. Under the terms of the sale, the Roche family received around £20m over three years and around £25m for the stock.
Crucially, the family has opted to retain control of its properties, which are valued at around £250m and are leased to Debenhams at £12m a year.
The family kept two stores, one of which was closed and the other leased to M&S. The family’s main company, Westfield Investments, showed nearly £72m net assets in 2005-06. It has two subsidiaries, Ittacsarf and County Bolunds, with nearly £119m net assets in 2005-06. A third small company, Coolanagh Investments, with nearly £5m net assets, takes the Roche family to perhaps £125m.
187£123m
Tony Pidgley
The Berkeley Group
Widely regarded as one of the UK’s shrewdest housebuilders and developers, Tony Pidgley’s reputation was made in the early 1990s when he sold his land bank at the top of the market, and cherry-picked the best sites back for a fraction of their price as recession struck.
The 60-year-old has a £26m stake in Berkeley, which he floated on the stock market in 1984. By early 2007, the shares were trading at an all-time high, valuing Berkeley at over £1.9bn. Berkeley generated nearly £476m in cash through 2005-06 – about half from the sale of its Crosby subsidiary to developer Lend Lease in July 2005.
The City likes the fact that Pidgley is positioning the group in urban regeneration and is returning cash to shareholders. As a result, Berkeley is able to press ahead with a £1.45bn share buy-back programme. Over the past two years, salaries, share sales and dividends have totalled well over £30m. With other assets, we reckon the former Barnardo’s boy is worth £123m.
188£122m
Sir Richard Sutton & Family
Sir Richard Sutton’s Settled Estates
Sir Richard Sutton’s Settled Estates had a good year in 2005-06. The family-owned farming-to-property company saw its profits rise from just £238,000 to £2.5m on £8.4m sales in 2005-06. It enabled the Sutton family to donate £12,000 to the Conservative Party.
Sutton, 70, inherited the title from his father in 1981. The family have valuable acreage in Lincolnshire, London and the West Country. He also leads Britain’s list of individual recipients of Common Agricultural Policy aid. His 6,500-acre farm in Berkshire and estates in Lincolnshire received just over £1m in EU subsidies in 2003-04.
Sutton will also play a crucial role in Grimsby Town Football Club’s plans for a new stadium, as it will be built on land he currently owns. We value the family at the 2005-06 net asset figure of £119m, adding nearly £3m for past dividends and other assets.
189£120m
Terence Cole
Marcol
Marcol was founded by Terence Cole and Mark Steinberg to exploit property opportunities through active management. Cole, 75, is a hugely successful London property man who, working with Steinberg, has built a formidable empire. Its growth has been largely achieved through strategic corporate acquisitions.
The catalyst – and the first of a number of joint ventures with Bank of Scotland – saw Marcol’s best-known subsidiary, City & General, buy a division of Burford for £250m in 2001 to create CGIS. It subsequently bought Robert Nadler’s and Nigel Ross’s Compco for £150m in 2003. The group also includes Industrial Securities, which specialises in business parks, warehouses and distribution space.
The pair have been shrewd in their dealings and sold off large parts of their portfolios while retaining some assets to work up in value.
With 360 directorships listed at Companies House, Cole’s holdings are diverse. The largest company we can see at Companies House is Compco Holdings, which made a £21.5m profit and showed over £159m of net assets in 2005-06. Cole has a 40% stake in its parent. But his other directorships should easily take him to a very conservative £120m.
189£120m
The Morris Family
Woodgavil Properties
The Morris family owns a property empire that started after the war as a housebuilder. Based in Surrey, the family owns at least 12 separate companies which we can identify, including Woodgavil Properties and Exe Valley Investments.
In all, these companies have net assets of over £30m. But sites in Water Lane, Exeter, and in Ashford in Kent particularly have increased sharply in value. As such, we now value the Morris family at £120m.
189£120m
Owen O’Callaghan
Elendale Investments
Established in 1969 in Cork, O’Callaghan Properties is involved in commercial, retail and residential projects in Ireland and the UK. It specialises in town centre development and is best known for Mahon Point, the £350m development in Cork.
Owen O’Callaghan, 67, who owns half of O’Callaghan Properties, also developed the Liffey Valley Centre in the west of Dublin. He has a share of a £106m trust, property in London and a stake in builder Moyglen. He is easily worth £120m.
189£120m
Peter Prowting & Family
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, 82, also made another £24m in June 2004, when the quoted Estates & General property group was sold to property tycoon Leo Noé.
Past dividends and other assets (including £10.3m net assets in Prowting Investments) keep the Prowting family at £120m.
189 £120m
Phyllis Somers
PS Webber
Phyllis Somers is the widow of Nat Somers, who died in March 1998. A Jersey-based tycoon, he had two passions – flying and business – which made his fortune.
Somers learnt to fly in 1936. He 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 death, we assign his fortune to his widow, 85. She is a director of small company PS Webber, and is also a generous donor to many charitable causes.
189£120m
Mark Steinberg
Marcol
Although by no means high profile, 48-year-old Mark Steinberg is the more market-facing partner in the Marcol empire he established with his partner, Terence Cole (left).
Marcol is the holding vehicle for several specialist companies across the industrial, leisure, retail and office sectors. These include CGIS, which was born out of the £250m takeover of a Burford subsidiary, City & General, Mango Hotels and Industrial Securities.
Steinberg also hit the back page headlines in 2003 when he was revealed to have backed Nick Sutton’s notorious acquisition of Fulham Football Club’s ground, Craven Cottage, from Mohamed Al Fayed. The deal was conditional on achieving consent for a 240,000 sq ft residential scheme, but the development has since been scrapped and the football club has moved back to the stadium.
As with Cole, Steinberg has over 360 directorships listed at Companies House, but we value him conservatively at £120m.
189£120m
Nicholas & Christian Candy
Candy & Candy Holdings
In seven years, the Candy brothers – Nick, 34, and Christian, 33 – have turned a £6,000 deposit on an Earl’s Court flat into a multi-million-pound empire dealing with the super-rich in London’s luxury property market.
Barely a week passes without a new record tumbling to a Candy-inspired move, but agents and rivals bemoan the fact that their spending sprees have “created an inflated market”: in February 2007, they put four flats – penthouses overlooking Hyde Park – on the market with an £84m price tag apiece they followed this with the £900m purchase of Chelsea Barracks, at four times the asking price, with a view to turning the 12.8-acre site into a luxury property enclave.
The brothers’ apartments tend to sell for £10m or more, and they recently branched out into luxury yachts and private jets. They do not have the firepower alone to bid for high-profile sites and have teamed up with wealthy backers ranging from the foreign minister of Qatar to Icelandic bank Kaupthing.
There are 22 Candy companies in the UK the main one, Candy & Candy Holdings, turned in a £3.8m profit on £6.6m sales in 2005-06. All in all, we reckon the brothers to be worth around £120m.
189£120m
Roger Wickens & Family
Store Property Holdings
Roger Wickens, 63, is a director of property group Store Property Holdings. Its profits rose from £2.2m to £4.1m on sales of nearly £14.5m in 2005-06, but the net assets leapt to nearly £107m.
Shares in the Chichester-based company are owned by Wickens and family trusts. We also add £9m to the Wickens family for past dividends and the £3.9m net assets of the separate Kingmere.
197£119m
Graham Duffy
Grantly Developments International
Property developer Graham Duffy grew up in Glasgow and studied in South Africa. After living in Canada, he now spends his time on development work in the UK, the USA and the Bahamas.
He had a difficult time in the late 1990s when negligence by a bank and its surveyor bankrupted him. But Duffy, 40, has bounced back.
His main company is Grantly Developments. It is working in Glasgow on a site which is at the heart of Glasgow’s bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. It is also working in the Bahamas. We can see around £116m of assets and development work owned by Duffy and add another £3m for personal assets, taking him to £119m.
197£119m
Jonathan Hitchins & Family
The Robert Hitchins Group
Gloucestershire’s single biggest building site will result in 2,650 homes at an old RAF base. The developer, which includes Robert Hitchins, has put up £9m to pay for part of a new bypass and other transport initiatives for the scheme.
Robert Hitchins is also active elsewhere locally. It recently sold two of its buildings at an office development near the M4 for £21.3m, and the Cheltenham-based developer is building business parks, new villages, and other developments in Wales and the South West. As a result of this activity, profits at the Robert Hitchins Group soared from £5.7m to £10.7m on £29.2m sales in 2005-06.
Started over 45 years ago by the late Robert Hitchins, who bought up large tracts of Gloucestershire after the war very cheaply, the company has developed more than 14,000 houses and over 1.5m sq ft of commercial property. The company, which is easily worth its record £74m net asset figure, is now run by his sons, led by Jonathan, 57. We add another £45m to the Hitchins family for other assets, including a £40m dividend paid out in 2003-04.
199£116m
Rupert Mucklow & Family
A & J Mucklow
In September 2006, Yuasa Automotive Battery Europe sold its 20.26-acre site in Tyseley to West Midlands developer A & J Mucklow for £8.9m. The major complex is set to be transformed. Mucklow plans 340,000 sq ft of industrial and warehousing accommodation, as well as a small number of houses. It is another sign of the firm’s skill in finding good sites on its home turf.
The business is now run by Rupert Mucklow, 44, who took over when his father, Albert, retired as chairman of the quoted Cradley Heath property group in June 2004. The firm was 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 housebuilding in the 1990s to concentrate on property. It has had some notable successes recently, including letting a speculative development six months before its completion date.
The Mucklow family’s near-44% stake is now worth £108m. Past salaries and dividends add £8m.
200£115m
Max & Malcolm McMullan
The Maxol Group
The Dublin-based Maxol Group is Europe’s biggest independent oil firm. The original company, McMullan Bros, was founded by William McMullan and registered in Dublin in 1920.
Maxol has a network of 380 service stations and 50 distributors, with a turnover of over £400m. The business is still owned by the McMullan family, led by brothers Max and Malcolm, aged 64 and 56. The family also owns half of developer Castletown. The oil and property assets are worth over £108m. Other assets take the McMullan family to £115m easily.
200£115m
Jack Morris & Family
Business Design Centre
The Business Design Centre in London’s fashionable Islington is becoming a smart venue for exhibitions. This will please the family led by Jack Morris, 51, chairman of its parent company.
In 2005-06, the Business Design Centre Group made £4.6m profit on £17.7m sales. Its net assets soared to £97m. Morris’s late father, Sam, started the business. Originally an oyster-opener in a City fish restaurant, he later built his business, City Industrial, into a leading shopfitting group round Britain and the world.
Sam Morris’s shrewd move came in 1981 when he turned the huge, derelict Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington into the magnificent Business Design Centre at a cost of £12m. The Morris family also owned Earls Court & Olympia, which they sold in 2004, making around £25m. In all, the Morris family should be worth £115m.
200£115m
William Rankin & Family
Hanro
Newcastle developer Hanro Group is planning a large-scale development adjacent to Newcastle United’s St James’s Park stadium.
The company is working on detailed plans for a £55m mixed-use scheme taking up most of a block bound by Strawberry Place and Leazes Park Road, less than 100m from St James’s Park.
William Rankin, 76, chairs Hanro which, in 2006, made £4.5m profit on £6.5m sales. We value the business on its sharply rising net assets of £109.2m, and add £5.8m to the Rankin family for other assets and past dividends.
200£115m
The Earl of Portsmouth
Grainger Trust
A revaluation of the property assets of the Grainger Trust and a takeover bid in 2006 have sent the shares of the Newcastle-based property group soaring. This is of immense interest to its largest shareholder, the 10th Earl of Portsmouth, 53, whose stake is now worth £64m.
Portsmouth lives in a country pile, with 3,000 surrounding acres, outside Basingstoke. He sold some land in 1986 and invested the proceeds in the Grainger Trust. With other assets, Portsmouth should now be worth £115m.
204£111m
Robin Clark & Family
Taylor Clark
It has been a good year for Taylor Clark, the London-based property, farming, hotels and investment group. Its profits have soared from £4.8m to £14m.
The business is largely owned by the Clark family, led by Robin Clark, 69, son of a prominent 1960s property developer. We value the business on its £168m net assets. The Underwood Trust, a charity, has a 34% stake, leaving the Clark family’s stake worth nearly £111m.
204£111m
Earl Spencer
Falconry Productions
Earl Spencer, 43, has a £40m plan to build 2,500 homes near Princess Diana’s grave at Althorp. The Dallington Heath scheme, near Northampton, has caused a storm because it would swallow up 400 acres of woodland and fields.
Spencer’s father, who died in 1992, left £88m in his will, but in 1997 Spencer pleaded poverty in a South African divorce court, arguing that most of his family’s then £98m fortune was tied up in the 8,500-acre Althorp estate. His personal assets, the court was told, were just £6m. In the end, he paid out £2m in a divorce settlement.
Spencer remarried in 2001 and, two years later, moved into a £4.5m West London home. He was left £2.8m by his mother, who died in 2004.
There is over £1m of net assets in two companies called Spencer Enterprises and Falconry Productions. We add £10m this year to Spencer for the potential Dallington Heath development.
206£110m
Paul Caddick & Family
Caddick Group
A new 100-acre business park in Scarborough is set to be built by the Yorkshire-based Caddick group. Founded in 1979, Caddick is a high-quality property-to-construction company. In the year to August 2006, its profits soared to £21.9m on £143.2m sales. With £52.5m net assets, the company should easily be worth £120m.
The group also shares ownership of the Headingley Carnegie Stadium, home of Leeds Rhinos and Leeds Carnegie rugby teams and Yorkshire County Cricket Club. The business is run and over 90% owned by Paul Caddick, 57. The family stake should be worth at least £108m. Other assets take the Caddick family to £110m.
206£110m
Sir Fraser & Gordon Morrison
MJM, Edgemor
A £600m tower in St Petersburg for Russian energy giant Gazprom is being designed by Scottish architecture firm RMJM. The parent of RMJM – 56% owned by Sir Fraser Morrison, 59 – is in fine fettle with profits of £2.1m on £34m sales in 2005-06.
Morrison has been having a good run of late. Early in 2006 peace broke out between Morrison, former chairman of construction and property company Morrison Construction, and AWG, the water utility. The two were about to go to court over AWG’s allegation that Morrison overstated the profit of his construction operation, which was bought by AWG for £262.5m in 2000. After some rather tough language, the two sides settled out of court, with Morrison paying AWG’s legal bill of up to £8m.
The settlement enables Morrison to concentrate on his MJM and his Edgemor property operation.
Both he and his younger brother Gordon, 56, were directors of Morrison Construction, and got £57m in cash and 3% of shares in the AWG takeover. Other assets, estate companies and MJM add around £20m. In all, the Morrisons would be worth well over £100m after tax. But with the costs in the AWG case taken into account, we put them at £110m.
206£110m
Sir John Ritblat & Family
British Land
Sir John Ritblat’s retirement from business lasted just two weeks. Having stepped down in December 2006 as chairman of British Land, the company he built up into one of the biggest and most successful in the UK, 72-year-old Ritblat resurfaced in early January when he joined forces with his younger son, Jamie, to spearhead a £2.6bn property investment fund.
The new venture will reunite the father-and-son team, regarded as two of the brightest entrepreneurs in the property industry.
Ritblat started his career aged just 16 under the tutelage of legendary property agent Edward Erdman, and later created Conrad Ritblat. After seeing the bomb-ravaged Bond Street and Berkeley Square in the 1950s, he was inspired to dedicate his life to real estate and development.
He has been the visionary behind some of the UK’s biggest projects and deals – including Broadgate in the City, the Regent’s Place office campus in Euston, and the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield.
Ritblat was knighted in 2006 and, in November that year, as he prepared to leave British Land, he sold most of his stake for nearly £57m, retaining shares worth around £10m.
We value the Ritblat family at a very conservative £110m.
206£110m
Stuart Wall
Opal Property Group
Manchester property business Opal Property Group nearly became leaderless in March 2006 when Stuart Wall, its MD and founder, was flying his Cessna 182 home from Dundee. The aircraft’s engine failed 5,500ft above Northumberland, and Wall’s life was saved only by quick-thinking flying instructor Steve Clarehugh, who used his car headlights to guide the plane down as it approached an unlit aerodrome.
Wall and his co-pilot, Keith Potter, were lucky to escape unhurt after the plane bounced off a fence.
On the business front, Opal showed an £8.5m loss on £45m sales in the year to September 2006 but its net assets leapt from £81.6m to £109.5m. Opal is the developer behind the £32m luxury Wilmslow Park student hall of residence.
Opal also has student accommodation sites in Bradford, Huddersfield, Leicester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Plymouth and Wolverhampton. In Manchester, it owns and operates The Place, an upmarket apartment-hotel. It also provides affordable accommodation for key workers such as NHS staff.
Opal is entirely owned by Wall, 56, and we value him slightly above the net asset figure.
