76 Hawken Xiu Li
£267m
Renhe Commercial Holdings
Based in London, where she has married an Englishman, Xiu Li is the leading shareholder in a Chinese property group called Renhe Commercial Holdings, which specialises in underground shopping malls. She has been on the board of the company since 2007 and her fortune was apparent after the company floated on the Hong Kong stock market in 2008.
Reuters reported in July that Renhe’s liquidity rating had deteriorated from “less than adequate” to “weak” as defined in the rating agency’s criteria. Consequently, it predicts that Renhe’s sales will remain depressed and therefore its liquidity will continue to deteriorate further over the next six to 12 months.
A Chinese literature graduate, Xiu Li has a 49.7% stake in Renhe. Its shares have been under pressure as the Chinese property market cools and it is now worth £538m. Her stake is valued at £267m.
77 Bert & Maurice Allen
£266m
Slaney Meats/Bewley Hotels
Bert Allen and his brother Maurice are prominent Wexford tycoons. Ownership of their Slaney Meats operation was transferred in 2010 to a British Virgin Islands company called Lotan Holdings. The last accounts in 2008 showed more than £71m net assets.
From its profits the Allen brothers built a property portfolio through which they netted around £190m when they sold their Bewley hotel chain in 2007. The Allens reinvested some of this in German and Scottish property.
They also own and operate the Linden Food Group, one of Ireland’s biggest food processors.
Other assets include hotels, 18.7% of Gael Electric, an energy company, and a £10m commercial building in Düsseldorf, Germany.
The brothers also own land around the Irish seaside resort of Courtown and are moving into bio-energy, having developed a wind farm on the Wexford coast. They should now easily be worth £266m.
78 Christopher Moran
£251m
Chesterlodge
Insurance and property tycoon Moran was granted planning permission in January for a 59-turbine wind farm on his 48,000-acre Glenfiddich estate near Aberdeen.
Moran, who has bounced back from an earlier turbulent career, is best known for the restoration of the 15th-century Crosby Hall on the banks of the Thames, which he bought in 1988 for £100,000 and is now worth £100m.
Chesterlodge, his main property company, showed a £3.4m profit on £12.1m sales in 2010-11. It is worth its £231m net assets. We add £20m for his London home (after restoration costs are deducted).
79= Manfred Gorvy & family
£250m
Hanover Acceptances
Gorvy sticks close to his South African roots, owning the biggest citrus fruit grower and processor in the country. But this is only a small part of an international portfolio.
An accountant, he runs a highly successful property, food and financial services group called Hanover Acceptances based in London, which he founded in 1974. The company lost £3m in 2011.
Gorvy was born in 1938 to a prosperous middle class family in South Africa, and after school went on to graduate with a commerce and accountancy degree from Wits University in Johannesburg in 1959. In 1961 he qualified as a chartered accountant.
The business – with more than £251m net assets – is owned by a parent called Quadriga Holdings SA. It is worth the net assets. We assume that the Gorvy family, well represented on the board, is the ultimate owner and value the family at £250m with past dividends.
79= Alan Lewis
£250m
Hartley Investment Trust
Alan Lewis is a church-going conservative who also happens to have a black belt in karate. He has a fourth contrasting interest, however; property and investments. He sees being a businessman as a good way to express his faith, suggesting that one can use business “as a platform to set examples”.
Lewis came to prominence in the early 1980s through the battle to control Illingworth Morris, the Yorkshire-based textiles group. Since then he has diversified into other areas such as property, forestry and natural resources.
His Hartley Investment Trust and separate Hartley Property Trust showed £49m net assets in 2010-11. His British property portfolio is growing and worth well over £100m.
In addition, he has 4,000 acres of prime development land in Florida, where gas has been discovered, and forestry in Russia, which is equivalent to the size of Wales. Lewis is worth a conservative £250m.
81 Lord Iliffe & family
£245m
Yattendon Investment Trust
Yattendon Group had a challenging 2011, although it managed to cut its loss from £4.6m to £2.1m on sales down £6m at £102.9m. The Reading-based property, marina, media and agriculture operation is owned by the Iliffe family, which has solid links to the Midlands.
Iliffe’s property client base includes Kate Middleton’s parents’ business, Party Pieces, which rents three barns on Iliffe’s Yattendon Estate.
The Yattendon Estate covers 9,000 acres in Berkshire and comprises farmland given over to dairy, arable and beef and substantial commercial woodland. It is one of the largest private producers of Christmas trees in the UK, harvesting more than 50,000 trees every year.
Iliffe inherited the title from his late uncle in 1996. After selling its Birmingham papers in 1987 for £60m, Yattendon still has more than 40 local newspaper titles and also owns Channel TV.
We value the company on its £238m net assets and the family at £245m.
82 Michael Clare
£242m
Clarenco
Mike Clare, the colourful founder of beds retailer Dreams, is investing £12.5m in his three Scottish country homes by adding spas to the sites. Clare’s leisure company, Clarenco, spent about £10m snapping up Ackergill Tower, near Wick, Carberry Tower, near Musselburgh, and Kinnettles Castle, near Dundee.
Clare has invested £92m in property, which is now worth around £132m. He has also put £5m into his charity, The Clare Foundation, which aims to help other charities become more efficient and entrepreneurial.
He sold Dreams in March 2008 for a reported £230m, some 23 years after he started it. After taking an HND in business studies Clare first went into the furniture trade in High Wycombe, working his way up to area manager. In 1987, he took a lease on a shop in Uxbridge and opened as the Sofa Bed Centre, since renamed Dreams. Clare and his family owned it all.
He reinvested £20m in the firm under its new owner, private equity firm Exponent. His investments and other assets should take him to perhaps £242m after tax.
83= David Gabbay & family
£240m
O&H Capital
London-based property group O&H Holdings is owned by David Gabbay and partner Eli Shahmoon. In late 2011, it secured a £78m loan from German lender pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank. O&H followed this with a $108m loan from the US Prudential Mortgage Capital Company in June.
O&H seems in fine fettle, which will make it attractive to lenders. Its net assets rose smartly in 2010-11 from £300.7m to nearly £420.6m. It also made a £51.4m profit on £130m sales – a whopping return.
In February, O&H announced it had been granted outline planning permission for 350 new homes south of Milton Keynes. The secretary of state confirmed that the site, Newton Leys, is a sustainable location for growth. The area will now offer 2,000 homes, as well as shops, employment areas, schools, community facilities and more.
The parent company has been reorganised, but we assume that the Gabbay and Shahmoon families own half each. In the present climate, we value the business on the net assets.
In all, with other assets, we reckon that Gabbay and his family must be worth around £240m.
83= Eli Shahmoon & family
£240m
O&H Capital
Eli Shahmoon is the partner of David Gabbay in property group O&H Holdings, which showed almost £420.6m net assets in its 2010-11 accounts.
In August 2012, O&H secured its second loan from German lender pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank for £25m to refinance four London properties. The properties include mixed-use offices, shops and flats in Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Finchley.
The Shahmoon family owns half of the business. In the current climate, we value the business on the net assets.
We reckon Shahmoon and his family are worth around £240m.
85 Alastair & Michael Powell
£235m
Cable Properties & Investments
Cleveland Cable, Britain’s biggest cable distributor, was started in 1977 by the Powell brothers, Alastair and Michael, who own all of the Middlesbrough-based company.
But it is their ownership of the Teesside-based Cable Properties & Investments that gets them onto this list. Cable Properties has a portfolio of more than 110 buildings let across the North East and North Yorkshire. The latest addition to their portfolio is a purpose-built call centre, the Wayfarer, in Sunderland.
Profits at Cleveland Cable fell in 2010-11 from £26m to £22.8m, although sales were up sharply at £213m. However, it had £157m net assets.
The property operation, Cable
Properties & Investments, showed more than £68m net assets in the same period. Adding nearly £5m of net assets for two smaller companies, we can see £230m net assets in all. Other assets take the Powells to £235m.
86= Sten Mortstedt & family
£230m
CLS Holdings
Sten Mortstedt’s CLS Holdings secured planning permission in June for a 224,000 sq ft hotel and student flats in Vauxhall, south London, and is progressing a second application to build a further 1.65m sq ft in two residential towers at Vauxhall Square.
Mortstedt feels confident about the future of CLS, having refinanced £117m of debt in May this year.
About half of the firm’s business is conducted in the euro, but despite its falling value having a negative impact on the group’s net assets per share, things are still looking positive. It now has liquid resources of more than £130m.
Mortstedt, a low-key Swede, and his family trusts have a £171m stake in CLS, which floated on the London stock market in 1994. Share sales of more than £95m and other assets take the family to perhaps £230m after tax.
86= Nigel Wray
£230m
Prestbury
Nigel Wray runs the private equity part of the Prestbury property operation that he controls with business partner Nick Leslau.
Wray is also the largest shareholder in the Domino’s Pizza UK & Ireland business, with a stake now worth £59m. Since 2007 he has also sold around £96.5m worth of his shares in Domino’s. Wray has stakes in 15 quoted companies aside from Domino’s, worth around £43m in total.
Starting as a banker and later share tipster, he has made a series of shrewd moves in the worlds of property, media and communications since the early 1980s that have earned him a fortune.
Wray also chairs Saracens, the top-flight rugby club, where he has invested £20m since 1996 and plans to invest another £10m towards the £20m cost of a new stadium.
Wray has more than 47% of Prestbury Investment Holdings, with £61.8m net assets in 2011. Wray’s stakes, share sales and private assets should keep him at £230m after tax.
88 Sir Stanley & Peter Thomas
£225m
Atlantic Property Developments
Merthyr Tydfil’s Leisure Park was one of the flagship developments from Peter Thomas who, with his brother Sir Stanley, built up a large snack and pie business. Peter’s Savoury Products, based in the South Wales valleys, was sold in 1988
for £75m.
The family then built the TBI property to airports group, netting around £106m when it was taken over in 2004.
Stanley was knighted in the 2006 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to business and charities in Wales.
A Spanish development, in which Peter had a 40% stake, was sold in 2005 for £75m. The Thomas property group, Atlantic Property Developments, has current development activity valued at £100m. In all, the Thomas family is worth around £225m.
89= Manny Davidson & family
£220m
BL Davidson
Manny Davidson started in the London property market in 1964 with Asda Property Holdings. It floated on the stock market in 1985, and was taken private in a £232m deal in 2001.
Although Davidson, a big Tory party donor, was chairman of Asda at the time and recommended the bid, not everyone was happy at the price because Asda
was sold at a discount of 22% on its asset value.
The Davidson family’s stake was worth £253m when it was taken over entirely by British Land in 2006. Other assets and share sales take the family to £220m after tax.
89= Gerald Ronson & family
£220m
Heron Corporation
Gerald Ronson’s investment club was given the go-ahead in June to redevelop a 12-storey Marylebone office building into a residential scheme.
Ronson Capital Partners (RCP), an invitation-only fund for wealthy investors set up by Ronson in 2009, intends to redevelop International House on Chiltern Street, W1.
Westminster council said it has granted planning permission for the scheme, paving the way for the RCP’s debut project, acquired last year for £63m from Lloyds Banking Group.
Ronson is also moving ahead rapidly with other flagship schemes: he topped out the City’s first major residential development in 30 years last April. The 36-floor The Heron, will be completed in 2013.
Meanwhile, Ronson’s £500m Heron Tower in the City is now ready for use. Ronson put £44m of his own money into the development and the Oman government backed him in late 2006.
Yet his Heron operation nearly went bankrupt, a victim of the early 1990s property downturn.
But Ronson bounced back and made hefty gains on buying and selling properties.
In 2011, parent company Heron Property made a £24m loss, but had £327m net assets. His growing Snax 24 petrol retailing business showed nearly £44m net assets in 2011. But it is worth at least £100m. Ronson recently revealed that over the past 25 years he has given away £35m to charities. He is easily worth £220m.
His charitable work resulted in a CBE in May – not bad for a chap who more than 20 years ago was imprisoned for his part in the Guinness share support operation.
91 Sam Morrison
£212m
Corbo
Sam Morrison, one of Northern Ireland’s top developers, started by selling leather jackets from the boot of his car, progressing to renting his first retail shop in Ballymena – and expanded to four retail stores within a short space of time. By 1998, he had moved into property.
Corbo sold its Longwood Retail Park in Newtonabbey, near Belfast, to Scottish Widows Investment Partnership in
2010, netting £48m. It also sold Newry’s Damolly retail park for an initial payment of £28.4m.
Morrison’s property company, Corbo, showed £211.3m net assets in 2010-11 when it made a hefty £44.4m loss after cutting the value of its assets; £40m of this loss resulted from the sale of three properties – the Longwood Retail Park, Damolly retail park and the Marks & Spencer building on Donegall Place in Belfast.
Morrison’s speciality through the years has been retail development and retail warehouse developments in particular.
He has a number of other shopping centres including Ballymena. We value Morrison at £212m.
92 Martin Ainscough & family
£205m
Ainscough Investments
Martin Ainscough has issued a rallying call to Greater Manchester businesses to help people struggling to find work. The aim is to create employment and training opportunities for people from the region who have been jobless for a long time.
Ainscough, who has his own charity, The Martin & Judith Ainscough Charitable Trust, has joined forces with The Network Fellowship for the initiative. Outside his charity work, Ainscough is now investing heavily in property.
The family fortune came from Ainscough Crane Hire, a Wigan-based company founded in 1976 by Gerard Ainscough. His sons, led by Martin, took over in 1984 and later sold it for £255m to a management team in 2007. The Ainscough family had around 90% of the shares.
We can also see around £14.5m net assets in various Ainscough companies, including Ainscough Investments. After tax, the family should be worth perhaps £205m.
93 Joseph Brennan & family
£202m
Joseph Brennan Bakeries
Family-owned Joseph Brennan Bakeries is controlled by the multimillionaire Brennan family. The £64m operation is Dublin’s biggest bakery, famed for its Brennan’s bread. Brennan Bakeries lost an appeal against a high court ruling introduced in January 2011 that its packaging was too similar to that of rival McCambridge.
The Brennans, however, retain some substantial property assets worth £130m and have had investments in the building that houses the Versace shop in London’s Bond Street and the Hamleys building in Regent Street.
Their property company, Joe Brennan & Son, has a range of commercial and residential properties and development sites, all based in Donegal.
Other assets take the Brennan family, led by Joseph Brennan, to £202m in today’s market.
94= Kevin & Michael Lagan
£200m
Lagan Holdings
The Bank of London and the Middle East recently provided £5.75m to Lagan for a development in Biddenham, Bedfordshire.
The Lagan brothers, Michael and Kevin, took over the Belfast-based construction operation established by their father in 1960.
They have steadily expanded into construction-related businesses trading within five groups: Lagan Holdings, Lagan Cement, Kingscourt Bricks, Lagan Homes and Lagan Developments.
The business is involved in road
building, property development, housebuilding and waste management and has advanced cement works and
prime quarrying and asphalt assets.
We can see around £200m net assets in various Lagan companies in 2010-11, including Lagan Holdings.
The Lagan quarrying assets were reckoned to have a potential sale price of more than £200m at the height of the boom and represented around a quarter of the business. But in the current climate, we reckon the Lagans are worth the net asset figure.
94= Michael Oglesby & family
£200m
Bruntwood Estates
Property group Bruntwood nearly filled its Plaza building in June with 16,500 sq ft of offices let to an outsourcing specialist. That meant the iconic Liverpool development was then 85% full.
Bruntwood was started by Michael Oglesby, who left school at 16 and became an apprentice plumber to his father. He later went to college to do a degree in building. Today he is one of the most high-profile construction tycoons in the North West.
The share structure of the various Bruntwood operations is complex, but the main family operation, Bruntwood Ltd, made £11.2m profit on £99m turnover in 2011. It is worth its £152.2m net assets. Other assets take the Oglesby family to £200m. They would be higher but for the hefty charitable donation of £750,000 Oglesby makes every year through his charitable trust.
96= The Astor family
£198m
Sableknight
Prime minister David Cameron’s wife, Samantha, is the daughter of Lord Astor, and it has been suggested that she earns considerably more than her husband’s £130,000 pa. The couple are rumoured to be worth in excess of £30m. They have denied this, however.
The Astor family’s main asset was the former Times newspaper headquarters, next to Blackfriars station in London. Working with a partner, the Astor family company Sableknight developed the site into the Thames Court office complex in the late 1990s.
Lord Astor has a home reportedly worth £2m on Jura in the Inner Hebrides, which is owned by a company registered in the Bahamas.
Sableknight made a £1.5m profit in 2010 when its net assets rose to nearly £178m. It is worth its net assets figure. In the past five years, Sableknight has paid out £23m in dividends. We value the wider Astor family at £198m after tax.
96= John Hindle & family
£198m
Brookhouse Properties
Brookhouse, a Sale-based industrial and residential developer has worked on schemes from London Docklands to Glasgow. It has 1.5m m2 of retail development, as well as regeneration and housing projects. It has been in business since 1932.
The company website reports that it has a £300m property portfolio, net assets of £139m and a rent roll of £14m. In 2011 it made a healthy £9.6m profit on £19.6m sales. It is owned by a Luxembourg-based trust, but we assume the ultimate owner is the Hindle family. Though it has £226m net assets we cautiously value the Hindle family at £198m.
98= Irvine & James Sellar
£190m
Sellar Properties Ltd
Shard London Bridge, Europe’s tallest mixed-use building, designed by architect Renzo Piano, soars 1,017ft above London Bridge station and has just been completed. Sellar, the developer of this iconic building, has nurtured the project through planning committees, public inquiries and funding negotiations, and has a 20% stake in the project, which is backed by four Qatari investors.
Not bad for a former market trader who became king of Carnaby Street fashion before selling up in 1980 and moving into property.
In 1991, Sellar’s quoted property group went bust and he lost £28m. But he has fought back since then. Through his Sellar Property Group, established in 1992, he has built an investment portfolio of £500m in the UK and €100m in Europe and a development portfolio with a gross value in excess of £3bn.
He works with his son James on property developments. With the tower now a reality, we value the Sellars at £190m.
98= Alan Murphy
£190m
Nikal Investments
Manchester-based property group Nikal recently appointed a design and planning team for the second phase of the £600m Masshouse scheme in Birmingham. Masshouse won enterprise zone status earlier this year.
Nikal, which showed just £125,000 net assets in 2010, is bankrolled by tycoon Alan Murphy, whose wealth 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 manufactured toilet rolls. In 1997, after AM had grown sharply on the back of £30m investment in new equipment, Murphy sold part of his stake for £100m, and two years later, the rest for £50m.
With the property deals and other investments and personal assets, we reckon Murphy should be worth £190m.
100 Neil Taylor & family
£189m
Millbourn
Former plastics engineer Neil Taylor moved into computer games during the 1990 recession through his Game computer games business. In 1998, Game floated on the stock market and the family made £33m. Taylor made a further £15m when Game was sold a year later.
Since then, Taylor and his two brothers have built a German property portfolio numbering more than 2,000 apartments, mainly concentrated in Berlin. This is worth “nine figures” and has done particularly well. Dublin-based Taylor exited many of his quoted investments at the top of the market in 2007.
He has also made a fortune on currency dealing, financial investments and bonds. We value the Taylor family at £190m.
