2009 was never going to be pretty for property’s super rich. What is clear in this latest – and perhaps most revealing yet – Estates Gazette Rich List is that it was a financial bloodbath for most of these industry titans.
Last year was no picnic. A collective wealth of £98bn in 2007 dipped to £90bn in 2008. But that single-digit decline has turned into a 25% plunge over the past 12 months as the wealth of the top 250 people in property dived to £69bn.
And it’s not just the numbers that have turned. The make-up of the list has also undergone substantial change. Depleted asset values and increased reliance on borrowing (which tells its own story) have cost many their places on the list.
Winners – and fewer than one in 10 of those on the list have grown wealthier – include the big five aristocratic London landlords and two of property’s most colourful characters.
As members of the Rich List themselves will be thinking: here’s hoping for a better 2010.
Damian Wild, editor
1) The Duke of Westminster
£6,500m
Grosvenor Group
2008: £7000m (-£500m)
Grosvenor Group, the property giant controlled by the Duke of Westminster, 57, posted its worst results for 16 years in 2008.
The group, which owns swathes of Mayfair, Belgravia and Knightsbridge, reported pretax losses of £593.9m last year, against profits of £524m in 2007. Write-downs of £536.7m included a hefty hit at its Liverpool One development.
The Paradise Street project had already suffered nearly £200m in write-downs, largely due to revaluations and cost over-runs in the previous three years.
But while chief executive Mark Preston admitted that “this is a challenging time for the property industry and inevitably Grosvenor has been affected”, he felt that the impact of the current downturn “has been cushioned by our well-diversified portfolio, low gearing, and steps taken since 2007 to curb acquisitions and reduce our development exposure”.
The group is now working on only three major projects under development – the residential element of Liverpool One and sites in Australia and Vancouver.
The group’s net asset value fell in 2008 7.4% to £2.7bn. With the private estates outside the group added, we cut our overall valuation of Westminster to £6.5bn, down £500m on the year. He can console himself that he became a grandfather in May, when his daughter Lady Tamara Grosvenor produced a son.
2) David Reuben & Simon Reuben
£3,300m
Global Switch
2008: £3,300m (No change)
The Reubens’ main property company, Aldersgate, had £530m written off by the end of November 2008, knocking its value down to £2.4bn. In addition, their Reubros financial investments arm lost £320m, cutting its assets to £2.2bn.
But the brothers have always been able to spot value and make a profit by trading assets. In July 2007 they shared a £150m profit on the £494m sale of Shell Mex House on London’s Strand. In the same year, they took full control of fast-growing data-centre business Global Switch. And in May 2009, they were reported to be in talks with an American hedge fund to sell a stake that effectively valued the business at about £1.9bn.
The Reubens, David, 71, and Simon, 68, have been active in British property for the past decade after making their fortune in Russia in the 1990s, where they were dubbed the “metal tsars” for their role in restructuring the aluminium industry there.
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, which ended in 1999, earned them at least £1.3bn.
The success of Global Switch has helped the Reubens to weather the fall in property values. Allowing for debt, we value them at £3.3bn.
3 Sean Quinn & Family
£2,295m
Quinn Group
2008: £2,750m (-£455m)
Losing more than £800m by secretly buying 15% of Dublin’s Anglo Irish Bank in the 24 months before its shares collapsed last year would sink most families.
But for serial entrepreneur Sean Quinn, and his five children, absorbing the biggest loss in Irish investment history was fairly painless.
Their insurance-to-building products Quinn Group made a £314m loss in 2007 but has £718m of net assets, a comfortable cushion.
The group’s building materials business is now worth less than a third of its peak, with the more recession-proof insurance, packaging and property development in emerging markets dominant.
Some of the spectacularly mistimed gamble on Anglo Irish can be largely written off against tax on the group’s past profits. But the write-off and less buoyant business saw the value of the Fermanagh-based Quinn Group fall £1.2bn last year to £2.1bn. We deduct the record £2.8m that Quinn Insurance was fined last year by the Irish financial regulator for non-disclosure of loans to the Quinn family related to their Anglo Irish investment.
Quinn, 63, who was personally fined £170,000, also had to resign as chair of the insurance company but remains executive chair of the overall group.
He is investing profits in shopping centres, offices and warehousing in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore in India, DIY hypermarkets and retail in Russia, and property in Eastern Europe. Increasingly, the children are holding these newly acquired assets in their own names and outside the main Quinn Group.
4) Earl Cadogan
£2,000m
The Cadogan Group
2008: £2,700m (-£700m)
For much of 2008, house prices in the more elegant parts of London defied the downturn. By December, agents were reporting a 15-20% decline in values, although they are starting to rise again.
As owner of 93 plush acres locally, Earl Cadogan will no doubt be hoping that the downturn is not too prolonged. Fortunately, his estate is in good nick to face a downturn. New developments have helped strengthen his company, Cadogan Group. The crowning glory is the £150m redevelopment of the old barracks and sports ground at Duke of York Square on fashionable Kings Road.
The foundation of the Cadogan Estate was laid in 1713 when the physician Sir Hans Sloane bought the Manor of Chelsea. In 1717, Sloane’s younger daughter Elizabeth married Charles Cadogan, later the Second Baron Cadogan of Oakley.
The present Earl Cadogan, 72, began his career at merchant banker Schroder Wagg and took on the management of the family’s property portfolio in 1974. Having inherited the title from his late father in 1997, Cadogan has presided over a hefty investment programme covering the Cadogan acreage. In 2008 Cadogan Group saw a 31% rise in profits to £40.4m, with rental income rising 14.7% on the back of the new developments. But the group’s net assets fell from £2.6bn to £2.1bn.
Cautiously, we cut our valuation of the business back to £1.8bn, but past dividends, quoted investments and personal property and estates should take Cadogan to £2bn.
5) Mark Pears
£1,500m
William Pears Family Holdings
2008: £1,500m (No change)
The Pears family pulled off a coup in January 2009 when it bought the Trillium outsourcing business for £750m from Land Securities. The price was around £250m less than LandSec had hoped to achieve. But the deal reflects the strength of cash-rich groups like the Pears in this difficult market.
The family empire was started by the grandfather and father of the Pears brothers, in 1952. They had assembled a Hampstead-based property portfolio that now embraces thousands of London homes, flats, and office blocks. The three young Pears were propelled to run the empire when their father, Clive, died in his early fifties.
Mark, 45, is managing director of the family’s main company, William Pears Family Holdings, but there are at least 20 separate companies, which showed profits of more than £72m and net assets of nearly £778m in 2007-08.
The Pears family also owns fund management group Talisman and set up property outsourcing and services company Telereal with Trillium in 2001 to buy the BT portfolio. They took full ownership of Telereal in 2005.
The Pears also own properties such as the Coutts Bank building on the Strand and were founding investors of the Piccadilly eaterie The Wolseley, although they sold out a few years ago.
The Pears portfolio has been valued at £6bn. The Pears also collected dividends of £40m in recent years and nearly £82m in 1996. But in the current climate we stick with last year’s £1,500m valuation, allowing for borrowings.
5) Eddie & Sol Zakay
£1,500m
Topland Group
2008: £1,500m (No change)
Sol Zakay, the billionaire property tycoon, has quit Britain after the introduction of a 50% tax rate on high earners.
He recently resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of Topland Group and the UK Topland companies to join the group’s offshore parent company as a consultant.
The Topland business, built with his brother Eddie, will remain in the UK. Eddie, 59, is to become chairman of the UK businesses and stay in England.
Sol, 57, will concentrate on finding global opportunities for the Topland group. In the summer, Topland was among the underbidders for an £800m UK portfolio put up for sale by Aviva Investors.
The property crash has not cramped the style of the Zakay brothers. Late in 2008 they bought a 15-strong portfolio from a Spanish retailer for £289m. But the main Zakay company in Britain, Topland Group, nearly doubled its losses in the year to May 2008 from £16.7m to £29m.
The brothers launched their business during the 1980s property boom before expanding into the American and Middle Eastern markets. They made much of their fortune in the UK through a series of multi-million-pound deals with chains such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco.
The Zakays have around 157 directorships and their total portfolio worldwide is valued at around £4bn. In all, after stripping out borrowings, the Zakay family should still be worth £1.5bn.
7) Ian Livingstone & Richard Livingstone
£1,400m
London & Regional Group Holdings
2008: £1,880m (-£480m)
Always canny deal-makers, the Livingstone brothers sold a Moscow office investment to a Finnish investor for $185m in July 2008, a yield below 9%.
They wouldn’t get that price today. Ian, 47, who began life as an optician, purchased and built up the David Clulow chain, which now owns more than 50 outlets and is overseen by the Optika Clulow Group, which he still chairs.
Younger brother Richard, 44, was a chartered surveyor for Richard Ellis and the pair formed London & Regional in the early 1990s, buying distressed assets in the midst of the commercial property crash. The brothers shun publicity but their empire stretches from Russia in the east to the Turks and Caicos Islands in the west. It includes the old Marks & Spencer headquarters on Baker Street, which they redeveloped and let to BDO Stoy Hayward and Knight Frank.
They own more than 60 hotels with around 10,000 bedrooms, more than half of Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront shopping development, and a string of health clubs, including David Lloyd Leisure.
Their main company, Loopsign, which paid out a £230m dividend in 2007, actually made a £3.2m loss that year though its net assets rose to £1.6bn. But in the current climate we cut its value back to £1.1bn, adding £300m for other assets and that dividend.
8) John Whittaker
£1,360m
Peel Holdings
2008: £1,300m (£60m)
The property market may be flat on its back but that has not stopped John Whittaker. In June 2009 he emerged as a 3% shareholder in Forth Ports, the quoted ports group. It follows his earlier stake-building in Land Securities, Britain’s largest property group, in June 2008, now worth around £300m.
Whittaker, 67, has also upped his stake in UK Coal, Britain’s biggest coal mining group, to 28%, valued at nearly £49m.
But his main focus of late has been the North West. Here, he has huge land and infrastructure holdings around the Manchester Ship Canal. He wants special planning powers granted to speed up his vision of a £50bn Ocean Gateway development along the canal.
The low-key Whittaker nearly became a Catholic priest but went into the quarrying business before moving into property. In the 1980s, he came to the City’s attention when he fought a long and sometimes bitter battle to take over the Manchester Ship Canal Company.
It owned the land on which his hugely successful out-of-town shopping complex, the Trafford Centre, is built. Whittaker has branched out into other areas including ports, airports and alternative energy.
He took his Peel operation private in 2004 and, soon after, split up his empire into separate companies. His two main firms had £2.07bn net assets in 2007-08. Whittaker’s share of the net assets is £1.14bn.
His other assets, including personal property and the quoted stakes in LandSec and UK Coal, should take him to £1.27bn.
9) Baroness Howard de Walden & Family
£1,070m
Howard de Walden Estates
2008: £1,550m (-£480m)
The Howard de Walden-owned Welbeck Land appointed a private bank in June 2009 to raise a £100m war chest to take advantage of the depressed market.
Welbeck aims to raise the money for the three key areas of its business: development, investment and asset management, and the strategic land division.
The Howard De Walden estate will provide an initial £20m and the total cash raised will be used to fund projects across all market sectors.
The family can afford it. It had a bumper pay day in 2007-08 with a £150m dividend from its main company, Howard de Walden Estates. The dividend came after 14 of its larger properties were revalued, generating a £140m surplus. The family is led by the 10th Baroness, 74, the eldest of four daughters of the late Lord Howard de Walden, who died in 1999.
It owns 90 acres in Marylebone, which is now seen as the new Notting Hill and is making serious money for the family.
In 2007-08, Howard de Walden Estates Holdings’ profits came in at £55m on £55.5m sales and showed £281.8m net assets. In addition, over the past 14 years, the family has clocked up more than £260m in dividends.
The family trusts also own most of Welbeck Land, which saw its profits drop sharply to £187,000 on £63.1m sales in the same period. With nearly £22m net assets, it is highly active in property development round the country.
Despite the jump in dividends at Howard de Walden Estates, the family and business cannot be immune from the current property downturn.
We value the family’s business assets at £900m and add another £170m for past dividends and other property after tax.
10) Sir David & Sir Frederick Barclay
£1,000m
Ellerman Investments
2008: £1,600m (-£600m)
Taking a large stake in Intercontinental Hotels has not been a particularly profitable investment for the Barclay brothers. Their stake has lost value in the economic downturn and is now worth £244m.
Still, the low-key twins have been busy investing in their businesses, which include hotels, property, mail order and The Daily Telegraph. At the start of the year, they bought the brand name of collapsed high street chain Woolworths and some sub-brands, such as Ladybird Clothing, through their Shop Direct Group for £7m.
Shop Direct, owner of high street mail-order group Littlewoods, has resurrected the Woolworths name as an internet-only business.
The twins, 74, started on the road to wealth in the 1960s London property market. Their first coup came in 1983 when they bought Ellerman Lines for £48m. They later sold the assets, making over £250m.
Their companies are having mixed fortunes at present. Littlewoods showed a strong performance at Christmas with sales up 9%. But the 2007 accounts of Ellerman Investments, which includes the Barclays’ flagship concern, London’s Ritz hotel, revealed losses of £25m, compared with £8.7m in 2006.
However, we can see more than £1.6bn of net assets in the 2007-08 accounts of the main operating companies. With much lower hotel, property and media values this year, we cut the value of the Barclays to around £1bn.
11) Viscount Portman & Family
£950m
Portman Estates
2008: £1,300m (-£350m)
Viscount Portman appointed former Cluttons managing partner Gareth Clutton as the new chief executive of the Portman Estate late last year.
Clutton took over from Hugh Seaborn, now working for Viscount Cadogan in Chelsea, who for eight years worked wonders revitalising the 110 acres owned by Portman north of Oxford Circus.
The work is not finished. A revamp of Portman Square in central London is planned, following an estate-wide review. Portman, 51, has been trying to improve the image of his 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 because many of its properties were out on long leases. These are coming to an end and the estate is taking a more proactive role in development, spending £40m on an investment programme that includes projects such as Portman Village, the name for two shopping streets in the heart of the estate.
As well as the London estate, Portman owns a rag bag of rather obscure assets, including 17,000 acres at Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, Australia.
Other assets include a share in commercial properties in Manhattan in New York and Palm Beach in Florida. There are few signs of family wealth in its two companies – Brickleton Group and Portman Settled Estates – with over £700,000 net assets between them in 2007-08.
Despite the improvements on the estate, we cut its valuation to £900m in the current climate.
We add another £50m for family assets including its Herefordshire estate and a holiday home in Antigua.
12) Bernard Lewis & Family
£920m
Lewis Trust Group
2008: £920m (No change)
The Lewis Trust group saw its profits fall in 2008 from £150m to £107m, though sales rose from £888m to £966m. The Lewis family, which owns the retailing to property and hotels group, is headed by chairman Bernard Lewis, 83.
By the mid-1960s, with the Kings Road in Chelsea seen as the centre of fashion, a chain of stores acquired by Lewis was renamed Chelsea Girl.
In 1987, the first River Island store was opened and within four years all the Chelsea Girls had been rebranded as River Island. River Island performed strongly in 2008 with profits up 5.4% to £161m, offsetting falls elsewhere in the group. Overall, the Lewis Trust’s net assets rose from £849m to £908m.
The Lewis family and trusts own all of the business, which we value at £800m in the current climate.
Dividends and other property assets should add perhaps £120m after tax.
13) Roger & Peter De Haan
£840m
Saga Leisure
2008: £840m (No change)
Roger De Haan, 60, who still works 50- to 60-hour weeks in “retirement”, set up the Creative Foundation to buy run-down properties in the faded port of Folkestone.
The plan was to renovate them to a high standard and let them to artists at lower than commercial rents; the vibrant atmosphere would, in turn, attract businesses and further investment.
The foundation has spent £26m buying and renovating 45 properties, and the continuing operation will be funded increasingly by rental income.
The aim is to have 100 properties and 800-900 tenants by 2010. That De Haan can afford such generosity is due in no small measure to his late father, who developed Saga out of the family’s Folkestone hotel after the war.
He filled the rooms off-season with pensioners, and so popular did it prove that he took it forward and developed Saga as a holiday company for the elderly.
Roger De Haan took over the running of the company in 1984 and sold up in October 2004 to a private equity business in a £1.35bn deal. By then it had developed far beyond its original holiday operation.
De Haan was characteristically generous with the proceeds and gave £15m away to staff.
After the deal was completed, many newspapers, including the Financial Times and other quality papers, talked about De Haan as a billionaire. We take a slightly more cautious line.
After stripping out any debt we allow at least £400m for tax as Roger De Haan has firmly set his back on becoming a tax exile because of his commitment to Folkestone.
His brother, Peter, 57, had been finance director, but now runs his own business in wine and marketing; this is worth perhaps £120m.
In addition, Roger bought Peter out of some of his shares in an earlier £81m deal. In recent years, the De Haan family has also taken out around £30m in dividends from Saga.
Any of the recent spending on Folkestone should easily have been offset by rising investment income. So, allowing for that £400m tax bill (which would buy a lot of new schools or hospitals) and charitable donations, we reckon the De Haan family should be worth £840m.
14) Gerald Hines
£800m
Hines Europe
2008: £1000m (-£200m)
American developer Gerald Hines, 83, has survived at least five recessions to grow one of the largest property operations in the world.
The current climate is inevitably causing the company some local difficulties. In San Francisco, for example, Hines and an investment partner handed an office block back to their lenders earlier this year after the anchor tenant went bust.
Hines must be glad that a few close calls in the 1970s led him to adopt the model that the company uses today – instead of taking all the risk itself, it shares the ownership of its investments and developments with institutional partners.
The son of a steelworker and a school teacher from Gary, Indiana, Hines also hedged his risk by spearheading a global expansion.
Hines has built up a network of offices in 16 countries and developed 247m sq ft of property worldwide since the company was founded in 1957. Today, it has more than 71m sq ft under development around the world and controls assets valued at around £15bn. The group manages a total of 120m sq ft, around half of which is Hines-owned, and half is on behalf of third parties. The third-party managed portfolio is valued at around £8.6bn.
For the past 10 years Hines has been based in Mayfair and the company has become active in Britain. European investments could feature in a recently announced opportunity fund.
In 2000, a Forbes analysis suggested that Hines was worth around £1bn, and possibly a lot more. In the current climate we clip that figure back to £800m.
15) Eddie Healey & Family
£750m
Stadium (Holdings)
2008: £1,150m (-£400m)
British Land sold a 50% stake in its Meadowhall shopping centre near Sheffield for £587.7m to investment company London & Stamford and an unidentified partner in February 2009. Meadowhall was valued at £1.4bn in September 2008, so British Land took a sizeable hit with the sale.
Even so, that value reflects what a goldmine Eddie Healey and partner Paul Sykes created. Their £1.17bn sale of Meadowhall in 1999 netted Healey around £420m for his 60% stake (taking account of £470m of debt in the sale price).
Having reinvested some of the Meadowhall proceeds, we can see around £650m of net assets in the 2007 accounts of three Healey family companies, including Stadium Holdings.
But the jewel in his crown is CentrO, Europe’s largest shopping centre built on 196 acres of an old steelwork site on the Ruhr in the late 1990s. With its success and scarcity value, it should easily be worth £300m on its own in the current difficult climate.
In all, Eddie Healey, 71, should be worth perhaps £750m, allowing for any double counting.
16) Lord Sugar
£730m
Amshold
2008: £730m (No change)
Profits soared from £16.5m to over £71m at Lord Sugar’s Amshold Group in the year to June 2008.
Now a television celebrity through The Apprentice programme, which has 9m viewers, Sugar, knighted in 2000 for services to business, was recently created a peer.
Sugar, with a hugely successful business career for over 40 years, is now working for Labour with a role in fostering enterprise.
A Hackney tailor’s son, he was best known until The Apprentice as the former chairman of Spurs and for starting Amstrad in 1968, which he built into a leading consumer electronics group selling phones and computers. But following the £125m sale of Amstrad in July 2007, his business activity is largely concentrated in the property field. He was prominent in football from 1991 to 2001 as chairman of Spurs but has now relinquished involvement with the club.
Sugar, 61, should have received around £36m for his Amstrad stake and £25m for his Spurs shares. He still has a stake in the £100m Viglen computer operation. But he has at least £400m worth of property held either via Amshold or overseas.
Amshold itself has £272m net assets in 2007-08, and has been a hefty investor in property around Mayfair. In addition, he has £150m of cash, and personal assets including property in London, Florida and Spain, taking Sugar to £730m.
17) Jon Hunt
£660m
Foxtons
2008: £662m (-£2m)
Jon Hunt reckoned the time to start buying property again would be “when there’s blood on the street, but it’s drying, it’s stopped flowing”.
He is an expert at timing, having sold the London-based Foxtons estate agency at the height of the boom in early 2007 for £375m. Foxtons, under its new private equity owner, has had a tough time in the downturn.
Thus far, Hunt does not seem inclined to buy it back even for a fraction of the original sale price. But he is starting to dip his toe into the market again.
Hunt, 56, has come a long way since his days at Millfield, the private school in Somerset to which he won a sports scholarship for tennis and rugby.
He left after O levels and tried his hand in the army, but did not see it as a long-term career.
He had a stint of part-time employment, including one job as a car washer in California, but his talent for business came through when he joined an independent estate agency in Woking, Surrey.He worked there before striking out on his own.
A formidable estate agent, Hunt also took Foxtons into America but the business folded as the American housing market collapsed.
Hunt has also built up his own residential and commercial property portfolio, which includes London homes and a Suffolk estate. He apparently turned down an unsolicited offer of £200m for his seven-storey townhouse in Kensington Palace Gardens in May 2008.
With personal assets added, these are worth £335m. Adding in his Foxtons proceeds, Hunt is now worth around £660m.
18) John Magnier
£560m
Coolmore Stud Farm
2008: £740m (-£180m)
Irish racing tycoon John Magnier and his business partner JP McManus have been quietly building a stake in troubled pub group Mitchells & Butlers. The duo have been buying shares through their Elpida vehicle since late 2007 and have almost doubled their stake to 17.6% in the recent months. That stake is now worth £210m.
Much of Magnier’s wealth stems from horse breeding and property.
He controls the Coolmore racing empire, with studs in Co Tipperary, Kentucky and Australia, but such is the parlous state of racing finances that we cut its value to just £140m.
With McManus and fellow Irish tycoon Dermot Desmond he has a stake in Barchester, a profitable nursing home operation. He and MacManus, plus another partner, Aidan Brooks, have a large property portfolio held in Sloane Capital.
Magnier, 61, also has homes in Spain, Ireland, Barbados and Switzerland. But, in the downturn, we cut his worth this year to £560m.
19) Peter Jones & Family
£556m
Emerson Developments (Holdings)
2008: £695m (-£139m)
Peter Jones reckons the diverse nature of Emerson Developments’ portfolio and its strong rental income should enable it to mitigate the effect of the property downturn.
The Alderley Edge-based company was started by Jones, a former joiner, who moved into housebuilding in Cheshire 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. Jones, 74, has also been active in the north of England with developments such as the successful Lowry Outlet Mall.
Emerson Developments (Holdings) saw its profits fall from £43.3m to £34.7m on nearly £180m turnover in 2007-08 when its net assets increased sharply to over £694m. Another company, PE Jones (Properties), had around £45.9m of net assets in 2007-08. Jones and family trusts own all the shares in both. We would normally value the businesses on their £739m total net assets but, in this climate, we cut that back to around £540m, adding £16m for other assets and property.
20) Paul Sykes
£550m
Highstone Group
2008: £550m (No change)
Paul Sykes has been moving out of property into sustainable forestry investments, the conservation of rainforests and the preservation of wildlife habitats, through his newly formed Highstone Foundation Charity.
Sykes, 66, was the second developer in London Docklands, put up the first out-of-town cinema in Britain at Salford Quays, and developed business parks in Wakefield, Leeds and Rotherham. But it is the development of the Meadowhall Centre outside Sheffield that brought him national acclaim.
Some 1,500 acres of a redundant steelwork site adjacent to the M1 in the Don Valley were turned into a new out-of-town centre by Sykes and his partner, Eddie Healey. They sold Meadowhall in 1999 for £1.2bn. His redevelopment work was carried out by his Harrogate-based Highstone Group. It is in fine fettle, with £250m net assets in 2007-08. In all, after tax and hefty charitable donations, we put Sykes at £550m this year.
21) Leo Noé & Family
530m
F&C REIT
2008: £750m (-£220m)
One of the more low-key property men in Britain, veteran investor Noé has nevertheless been personally wooing investors for the £300m fund he launched in May 2009 to take advantage of the property downturn. The Devonshire UK Opportunities Fund will be managed by F&C REIT Asset Management, of which Noé is chairman.
The F&C REIT business manages around £8.5bn of real estate from the UK to Israel to India. Noé owns just over a third of the F&C assets.
But the downturn is also creating problems for Noé, 56. Earlier this year, Pinton Estates, an investment vehicle of F&C REIT, was placed in the hands of Deloitte after it failed to collect enough rent to make a half-yearly payment on a £70m bond. It is secured against a £75m portfolio. The latest accounts for Pinton, for the year ended 31 March 2008, reveal a £6m loss.
While we can see around £87m of net assets in a number of firms owned by the Noé family, such as Agra, Flathost and Landmaster Properties, the extent of their deals and investments indicates more substantial wealth. However, given that values have fallen sharply, we cut Noé’s worth to £530m.
22) Prince Charles
£520m
Duchy of Cornwall
2008: £667m (-£147m)
Prince Charles’s most high-profile property move this year involved not his estate but the Qatari-owned Chelsea Barracks redevelopment in west London. His widely publicised disapproval of the modernist Lord Rogers-designed scheme for the site led to it being scrapped.
The Duchy of Cornwall, founded in 1344 by Edward III, delivered its regular bounty to the prince in 2007-08. It produced a virtually unchanged surplus of £16.5m despite the fact that the value of freehold property fell by £23m from £583m to £560m. The worth of the 10,000 homes owned by the Duchy across 23 counties fell by 11% to £147m. Shops and offices fell by a similar percentage to £132m. But land for development crashed by 34% to £32m.
However, these losses, totalling £37m, were partly offset by a £14m gain in the value of the 54,000 ha of farmland. We cut the asset value by £60m to £500m and add £20m for personal assets, taking 60-year-old Charles to £520m.
23) Tony Gallagher
£500m
Gallagher UK
2008: £500m (No change)
Midlands developer Tony Gallagher, 58, has a substantial investment programme in Europe and has acquired more than 3m sq ft of retail space in Germany.
In Britain, his company Gallagher UK owns land with planning consent for 6m sq ft of commercial development. It has an investment portfolio extending to over 2.7m sq ft of retail parks. Gallagher UK also owns or controls land with planning consent for around 32,000 residential plots throughout the UK.
We can see £303m of net assets in the 2007-08 accounts of three of Gallagher’s main companies, Countrywide Developments, GW305 and Ashflame.
Gallagher has various other interests in a finance/consultancy business. We still value him conservatively at £500m.
23) Peter Green
£500m
Luscar
2008: £650m (-£150m)
Having made serious money from his investment in the Savoy Hotel Group in 2004, Peter Green joined the same consortium to bid £530m for some prime real estate in London’s Knightsbridge, near Harrods, two years later.
Green invested through a Cypriot company, Misland, and has a 20% stake. Green’s father was a Manchester draper who later developed a chain of grocery shops which were sold in 1965 to Tesco.
But Green’s life was to change completely in 1975 when he went on a cultural trip to China. There he met Mary-Jean Mitchell, daughter of Sir Harold Mitchell, reckoned at the time to be one of the top 20 richest Britons. Green settled with his bride in Bermuda, at the £10m family mansion, while her father groomed her to take over the business.
Green was effectively shut out at that period. But Sir Harold died in 1983, and then, tragically, Mary-Jean was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988 and died two years later at 38. Green was effectively left in charge of the family business with their two sons.
In 1996, much of the family’s Canadian mining operations, held via Luscar, were sold in a £300m deal. The Green family invested around 10% of their proceeds in a new Luscar, which itself was taken over in 2001 in a £600m deal, netting the Green family perhaps £50m profit.
In 1996, the Green family also made a £60m profit from selling its stake in a small energy company. Green moved the management of his substantial business affairs from Bermuda to Dublin in 2000. Greenaap, one of his main investment vehicles, is run out of Dublin.
Family properties in Bermuda, London and the like, plus remaining assets in Canada and the profits from his recent London deals, would normally keep Green at £650m. But with the collapse in asset values, we knock him back to £500m.
23) Jim Mellon
£500m
Regent Pacific Corporate Finance
2008: £700m (-£200m)
One of the biggest property owners in the Isle of Man, Jim Mellon has invested in solar power. He says it will be “bigger than the internet within five years”, adding: “Solar power will be as cheap as oil and gas without the subsidy.”
Mellon wrote a book predicting the current recession two years before it happened. And in May 2008 he took a stake in a small company called Emerging Metals, which looks for minor metals used in applications such as solar panels.
Mellon, 52, has investments in the Far East and Germany. He is based in the Isle of Man, where with 450 staff, he is one of the largest employers.
But with asset values under pressure, we cut him back to £500m this year.
23) Sir Anwar Pervez & Family
£500m
Bestway (Holdings)
2008: £717m (-£217m)
Profits at west London-based Bestway fell in 2007-08 from £58.3m to £52.1m, though sales rose to a record £1.48bn.
Pervez, 74, built Bestway into an 11-shop chain and then, in 1976, he turned to cash and carry with his first depot in west London.
It was tough going at first but he built up a business empire with interests in banking in Pakistan, as well as property, rice milling and cash-and-carry wholesaling in the UK.
In the current climate we value parent company Bestway (Holdings) at around £500m. Pervez, his family and trusts have around 51% worth £254m.
Bestway also has a separate property operation – Palmbest – with around £500m of net assets. Pervez’s stake there will be worth £200m today. We add £35m for past salaries and other business assets. In all, the family is easily worth £500m today, but it would be much richer if Pervez did not give large amounts to charity every year.
27) Benzion Freshwater & Family
£495m
Daejan Holdings
2008: £780m (-£285m)
Daejan Holdings warned at the start of the year that it was seeing an increase in the number of void units, particularly in the retail and office sectors.
In spite of its rock-solid balance sheet and very conservative approach to borrowing, the company has not been immune to the property crash and now has a market cap of £451m, a sharp improvement since early 2009.
This will please the chairman and managing director, Benzion Freshwater, 61, whose family has a 79% stake in the London-based property group. That stake is now worth £356m.
Freshwater’s father, Osias, arrived in London three days before the second world war as a penniless refugee. In 1957 he took over Daejan, which had been created in 1935 to exploit Dutch East Indies plantations.
When he died in 1976, he was London’s biggest private landlord with 20,000 tenants.
Benzion Freshwater has 279 directorships we can see in a complex web of companies. Aside from the stake in Daejan, there are three other main companies – Highdorn, Metropolitan Properties and Centremanor – which had £872m net assets between them in 2007-08 but, allowing for double counting and any charitable stakes, we cut the net assets attributable to the Freshwaters to perhaps £400m.
However, we also hack that back further – to around £100m – to allow for the continuing uncertainty in the market.
We have ignored a host of minor companies to allow a safety margin in case we have not been ruthless enough in culling for our double counting.
To the £455m business wealth, we add to the Freshwater family £40m for past dividends, taking it to around £495m.
28) The Duke of Bedford
£490m
Woburn Abbey
2008: £490m (No change)
The Duke of Bedford surprised the property community in April 2009 by purchasing the offices of Time Out magazine in Tottenham Court Road for £14.1m from Land Securities. The 340-year-old Bedford Estate in London owns around 180 buildings in Bloomsbury, but this is the first deal to make a splash for years. For the Bedford Estate is probably the quietest of the inherited London estates.
The 47-year-old duke and a group of wealthy investors have put nearly £20m into buying up New Zealand property. Nearer home though, the new £200m Center Parcs holiday village on his Woburn estate in rural Bedfordshire is on course for a late 2010 opening.
Though we can see just £12m of net assets in three family firms, including Woburn Enterprises, the house and grounds are worth £100m. But the art treasures inside, including 24 Canalettos, are worth £300m. We halve this to allow for any inheritance tax in the event of a sale. We stick with a £490m valuation.
29) Albert Gubay
£480m
Anglo International Holdings
2008: £550m (-£70m)
Isle of Man-based Albert Gubay has revived plans for a major retail development on Edge Lane in Liverpool.
The Kwik Save founder wants to overhaul the run-down Edge Lane retail park and create a 1m sq ft development linking up to 12 neighbouring sites around Edge Lane Drive, Mill Lane and Rathbone Road.
In May 2009, Gubay’s Derwent Holdings hired Manchester architect AEW to draw up fresh designs. Derwent has been at loggerheads with Liverpool city council over its Edge Lane holdings since 2007, when it submitted initial plans for the £200m redevelopment of its existing retail park. Those plans were put on the back burner.
The low-key Gubay, who is based on the Isle of Man, is an active developer. Born in North Wales, he went into business on his own after serving in the navy.
Spotting that the public, tired of rationing, would want some luxuries in drab post-war Britain, he started selling sweets from the back of a lorry.
He then moved into retailing and made his first fortune through the Kwik Save discount supermarket chain.
He sold the chain in 1973 for £14m. Today, however, the main element to Gubay’s fortune is his £300m property portfolio.
In late 2004, he accepted an £80m offer for his Total Fitness chain of health clubs. These proceeds take Gubay’s cash and other assets to £200m. We value him at £480m until the Liverpool issue is resolved.
In November 2006, Gubay, 81, gave away £1m of his fortune to help fight breast cancer.
30) Ronald Hobson
£470m
METROSE PROPERTY
2008: £470m (No change)
In September 2005, Ronald Hobson and his partner Sir Donald Gosling sold their property company, Metrose Property, for £112m to Invesco UK Property Income Trust.
A little more than a year earlier they sold Consolidated Property Investments for £77m. Hobson, 88, should have made around £97m from the two deals.
Hobson originally teamed up with Gosling after the war to build car parks on old bomb sites. They sold the parent company, National Parking Corporation, in 1998, collecting around £290m each.
Huge dividends prior to that, plus the recent property company sales, keep Hobson at £470m this year.
31) Sir Donald Gordon & Family
£465m
Liberty International Holdings
2008: £840m (-£375m)
Sir Donald Gordon was sanguine about a share issue at Liberty International in April 2009. The company raised over £620m to strengthen its balance sheet at a difficult time for property companies.
Gordon and his family interests saw their stake diluted from 21.7% to 16.5%. Gordon did put £40m into the pot but said: “My petty cash is limited, I am not putting my full amount in but am perfectly happy. I will be slightly reduced but it is not important. I will still be the largest shareholder.”
The property slump hit Liberty’s value hard, though the shares have recovered recently and the company is now worth around £3.2bn.
The South African-born tycoon, who stepped down from the chairmanship of the shopping centre owner in 2005, is now life president of “the company I love”, as he put it.
Gordon, 79, who started a South African life insurance operation in the 1950s, has focused on British property through Liberty International since 1980.
The London-based shopping centre specialist is revamping Covent Garden through subsidiary Capital & Counties. It also has big plans for a mixed-use redevelopment at Earls Court.
The Gordon family’s stake in Liberty International is now worth £527m.
Deducting his huge charitable donations over the years, we reckon Gordon and his family should be worth £465m.
32)
Richard Caring
£450m
Caprice Holdings
2008: £450m (No change)
Richard Caring’s Caprice Holdings, which runs his portfolio of London restaurants – including The Ivy, J Sheekey and Le Caprice in the West End, Daphne’s in South Kensington and Scott’s in Mayfair – defied the credit crunch by more than doubling its profits to £6.1m in the year to June.
Meanwhile, Caring, 61, is busy buying upmarket eateries and nightclubs in London. In January 2008 he bought the trendy Soho House club in a £105m deal. That followed his £90m purchase of the upmarket Annabel’s in June 2007.
His property investments in one of the trendiest parts of London have led some to name him the “Lex Luthor of Mayfair”. With his trophy assets, his £15m north London home and proceeds from the sale of his stake in fashion designer Amanda Wakeley, plus interests in other businesses such as a £4m stake in quoted Carluccio’s restaurant chain, Caring is hugely asset-rich and we value him at around £450m.
32) Sir Donald Gosling
£450m
METROSE PROPERTY
2008: £450m (No change)
With partner Ronald Hobson, Sir Donald Gosling started the National Parking Corporation (best known for its yellow signposted NCP car parks) in 1948 as post-war Britain started to recover.
They built it up until 1998 when they sold the business, netting around £290m each. They had collected hefty dividends over the years and invested in other properties.
Gosling, 80, had a 40% stake in a property company, Consolidated Property Investments, which was sold in 2004 for £77m. More recently, Gosling and Hobson sold their Metrose property operation for £112m. So affording his 245ft yacht Leander is no problem for Gosling, who still has a £5m stake in a small firm, Hildane Properties.
In all, after hefty charitable donations to the Gosling Foundation, he should be worth at least £450m.
32) Jack Petchey
£450m
Trefick
2008: £800m (-£350m)
Jack Petchey, the “father of the timeshare”, is hoping to sell his Petchey Leisure operation this year for £80m.
The 84-year-old investor needs to release some cash if he is to take full advantage of opportunities thrown up by the downturn. Not all of his stock market investments have turned a profit. Through his Trefick investment vehicle he sold his 28% stake in Rugby Estates last September to Laxey Partners for around 25% less than the price he paid for it six months earlier.
But the canny East End-born property investor can afford it. In 2006 and 2007, Petchey sold around £225m of stakes in six companies including a pub chain, Aston Villa football club and car dealership Reg Vardy.
Petchey plans to give the bulk of his fortune to charity through the Jack Petchey Foundation.
Today we can see more than £25m of stakes he holds in companies. His quoted investments have yielded around £400m. Timeshare and property interests take Petchey to £450m.
32) Jack Dellal
£450m
Allied Commercial Holdings
2008: £580m (-£130m)
It is Alice Dellal, granddaughter of “Black Jack”, who makes the waves in the gossip columns these days. But what would one expect for someone whose godfather is Mick Jagger?
An up-and-coming model, Alice is the face of high street fashion store Mango and body of luxury lingerie brand Agent Provocateur. But Black Jack keeps a very low profile, aside from occasional forays into the property market.
In July 2007, he showed his mettle when his consortium sold Shell Mex House in London for £490m just a month before the credit crunch and property crash. It had been bought for just £327.5m in 2002. A dealmaker whose prowess is only matched by his astonishing virility, 86-year-old Dellal became a father again for the ninth time in his late 70s.
He made his mark in the early 1970s, selling his Dalton Barton bank for £58m, and he went on to become 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.
His main company, Allied Commercial Holdings, turned in a £3.6m loss on £6.4m sales in 2007-08 while its net assets also fell to £56.4m. With the recent fall in asset prices we cut Dellal back to £450m in the current climate.
32) Sir David Murray
£450m
Murray International
2008: £600m (-£150m)
Rangers ended the 2008-09 season in the Scottish Premier League as champions by four points over rivals Celtic.
This will have pleased Sir David Murray, though he resigned as club chairman and a director in August. The club is likely to be sold in the near future with a price-tag of up to £180m.
The son of an Ayrshire coal merchant, Murray 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,” Murray recalled later.
He grew his Murray International metals-to-property operation into a hefty business which made £20.5m profit on £542m sales in 2007-08.
Murray International, with Rangers included, is worth perhaps £240m in the current climate, valuing Murray’s stake at £160m.
His property portfolio,which includes large tracts on the outskirts of Edinburgh plus investments in London and Europe, is worth another £250m.
With personal investments and other property assets, Murray, 58, is worth around £450m.
37) Freddie Linnett & The Murphy Family
£445m
Charles Street Buildings (Leicester)
2008: £450m (-£5m)
One way to survive the property downturn is to let buildings to the government. It works a treat for Charles Street Buildings (Leicester), where 17% of its rental income comes from HMG.
Charles Street likes these covenants so much that in 2007 it bought a £45m government building in London SW1. Profits at the group fell from £41.2m to £35.2m in the year to November 2008. Despite the severe downturn, net assets at the family-owned property group rose £70m to nearly £449m.
But the company warned in its 2008 annual report that the effect of the recession would be felt more in 2009. Freddie Linnett 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, 59, inherited their stakes.
As 2009 looks like being a difficult one for Charles Street, we value the business at £399m, £50m under its latest net assets. Other assets and nearly £75m of dividends from 1995 to 2007 inclusive, take Linnett and the Leicester-based Murphy family to £445m after tax.
38) Lord Ballyedmond
£440m
Norbrook Laboratories
2008: £570m (-£130m)
Lord Ballyedmond – founder and owner of the world’s leading veterinary pharmaceutical company – comes from farming stock. After leaving school, he went to New York where he worked for a pharmaceutical operation. In 1969 he returned to Ireland to establish Norbrook.
It made around £965,000 profit on £103m sales in 2006-07, the most recent accounts show. But adding in the highest-paid director’s pay of £3.65m to the bottom line takes the profit to £4.6m.
Ballyedmond (whose title is the name of his Co Down castle) is also a leading backer of the Tory party, stumping up over £1.1m in the 2001 election campaign. He left the Ulster Unionists to join the Tories in the House of Lords in the summer of 2007. In the current climate, Norbrook is worth perhaps £250m.
Ballyedmond’s extensive property and land interests include a villa in Cannes, a Cumbrian estate, estates in the Republic of Ireland and property in Belgravia. But with property prices falling sharply, we cut Ballyedmond back to £440m this year.
39) JP McManus
£430m
Martinstown Stud
2008: £560m (-£130m)
A former bookie, JP McManus and his business partner, Irish racing tycoon John Magnier, have been quietly building a stake in the troubled pub group Mitchells & Butlers.
The duo have been buying shares through their Elpida vehicle since late 2007 and have almost doubled their stake to 17.6% in recent months. That stake is now worth £210.
McManus, based in Geneva, is one of the top racehorse owners in Ireland, with more than 100 horses in training and a stud in Co Kildare. He is reckoned to have made £250m over the years from playing the foreign exchange markets.
With Magnier, he had a £227m stake in premiership football club Manchester United, until they sold out to new United owner Malcolm Glazier in May 2005, netting a £90m profit.
He shared a £125m dividend from the Barchester Healthcare group in 2006 and also shared the £132m proceeds from the sale of a fitness chain. McManus is also active in the property field through Sloane Capital, in partnership with Magnier and Aidan Brooks, the Limerick property developer.
Sloane was busy at the height of the boom, so will certainly have seen the values it bought at eroded. As part of a world wide expansion it bought a prestige Paris office and retail site for £439m, Bloomingdale’s department store in New York for £35m and two streets of luxury shops in Los Angeles for £150m.
Sloane also has a castle in Dublin, Unilever House in London and the Hilton Hotel at Canary Wharf. With a share of the Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados and an adjacent £21m villa, McManus, 58, is easily worth £430m.
40) Chris Lazari
£425m
Lazari Investments
2008: £680m (-£255m)
Chris Lazari, the Greek Cypriot-born property mogul, has had a tough time in the recession.
His London-based portfolio was valued at £1.274bn at March 2009 (down 17.5%) but this was much better than the market average (down over 30%) in 2008-09. Lazari’s skill in upgrading buildings and getting good tenants paid off.
As a result, profits at Lazari Investments actually rose in 2008-09 from £18.4m to £26.7m. This 45% rise was achieved on the back of falling interest rates on Lazari’s £924m of borrowings, and a 10% increase to £77m in rental income. The profits were also boosted by the £24.1m sale of a hall of residence, The Arcade, on London’s Holloway Road, at £1m above book value.
Lazari, 63, had been growing the business with the acquisition of Greater London House in Camden for £165m and the Met building in Percy Street, W1, for £107m in late 2007.
But the recession had a disproportionate effect on the net asset figure for the group, which is our preferred valuation tool in this climate. Net assets at Lazari Investments fell from £612m in 2007-08 to £357m in 2008-09.
We add another £68m to his portfolio for cash and personal property, taking Lazari to £425m.
41) David Sullivan
£400m
Roldvale
2008: £500m (-£100m)
David Sullivan is planning to leave Birmingham City if a successful Hong Kong takeover of the Premiership club materialises.
He would be leaving with the Blues in mid-table at the start of the 2009-10 campaign.
However, the club’s finances show some distress: the Blues made a £3.8m loss in the six months to the end of February 2009.
A sale of the club to a foreign buyer is one way to somebring badly needed investment to St Andrews where Sullivan, 60, and the Gold brothers have underwritten the Blues for 16 years.
Sullivan’s stake in Birmingham is now worth £18.4m.
His other business ventures are having a tough time. Roldvale, his main company, turned in a £723,000 loss in 2008, but he can’t really complain – his dividend and salaries in recent years come to more than £54m.
Sport Newspapers, publisher of lurid tabloids, was sold in August 2007 for around £50m, although Sullivan has recently bought back a stake.
But property is where Sullivan has been active, although we clip back his portfolio to £300m this year as a result of the credit crunch.
Even Sullivan’s home is adding to his fortune: it cost him the princely sum of £7m to build his Essex mansion 14 years ago. Not long ago, he turned down an £18m offer for the property.
But it was soft porn, and latterly football, that have brought him to public prominence. He owns the biggest chain of licensed sex shops in Britain, the 90-strong Private Shops empire.
With his property portfolio and other assets, Sullivan is worth £400m.
41) Terry Bramall & Family
£400m
Keepmoat
2008: £450m (-£50m)
Terry Bramall’s late father and a partner set up Doncaster-based Keepmoat in 1931. In 1968, after a stint with Taylor Woodrow, Bramall joined what was still a modest operation. The business started to move forward in the 1970s when, alongside new building, local authorities started to refurbish their housing stock.
Bramall realised that refurbishment work was much more profitable than new-build and Keepmoat began to carve out a niche reputation.
The family built it into one of the UK’s biggest regeneration specialists and a major provider of social housing before selling up – just before the downturn.
Bramall’s family had a 72% stake with trusts in the company which was sold to the management in a £783m deal in August 2007.
That valued the Bramall family stake at £563m. But allowing for tax on the sale proceeds and any debt built into the price, we cut that back to £430m.
Bramall, 66, has other assets and past dividends which would normally add another £20m, but with asset values plunging, we cut him back to £400m.
41) Clarke Family
£400m
C Le Masurier
2008: £500m (-£100m)
The Clarke family, now the largest private landowner on the island of Jersey, has large tracts of St Helier, retail outlets and pub sites across Jersey. The death in 2001 of patriarch Fred Clarke led to a major refocusing of this secretive family business with the aim of raising asset values. But in light of tumbling property values, we cut the Clarke assets to £400m.
44) Mark Dixon
£382m
Regus Group
2008: £350m (£32m)
Mark Dixon unveiled a 25% increase in profits at the Regus serviced office operation for 2008, causing the shares to jump sharply. Dixon reported a strong demand for Regus products as companies sought more flexible office space in a tough market.
Dixon’s stake is now worth £342m. A former sandwich and later hamburger salesman, he formed Regus in 1989 with the sale proceeds of earlier businesses. It floated on the stock market in 2000.
The shares soared initially, making Dixon, 49, a billionaire on paper. But his wealth collapsed six years ago when the shares went into freefall after over-expansion. Dixon nursed the business back to health.
With other assets and share sale proceeds (including a £36m sale in September 2009), he is easily worth £382m after tax.
45) Mike Jatania & Family
£380m
Lornamead
2008: £850m (-£470m)
Lornamead, the personal care business, has recently started up a company in India, which is seen as a key market. The London-based company likes nothing better than snapping up well-known but tired brands or “corporate orphans” from multinational companies and burnishing them with astute marketing and investment.
Lornamead now owns brands such as Yardley, Harmony and Vosene. In the past five to six years, the group has grown sharply through a series of 36 acquisitions. Lornamead made its most high profile purchase in 2005, snapping up Yardley for a reported £60m.
Mike Jatania, 44, joined the company in 1985 and he became chief executive five years later. He co-owns the business with brothers George, Vin and Danny.
In 2007-08, Lornamead Group made a £10.7m loss and showed nearly £121m net assets. We value Lornamead’s world-wide operations at around £300m in the current climate.
Aside from the Lornamead operation, the Jatanias have also built up a property portfolio in the Paddington and Elephant & Castle areas of London. We add £80m for this.
46) Michael Evans & Family
£350m
Evans Property Holdings
2008: £350m (No change)
Evans Property Group made the most of the boom years, selling £600m of investments between 2005 and July 2007. At the same time, the family-owned business pretty much stopped buying, prompted by “a feeling that the market was getting a bit daft”, Evans’ managing director John Bell told EG.
But it is now starting to see value, buying a Leeds office let to a law firm at a 7.5% yield earlier this year.
It was the late father of Michael Evans who, having refused to go into the family’s tailoring operation, started Evans of Leeds as a transport firm and then moved into housebuilding and property. Today, the family is heavily involved in development all over the north of England.
The Evans family – led by Michael Evans, 73 – took the company private in 1999 in a deal which valued it then at £164m. Recently, the firm has been reorganising its structure and no accounts have yet been filed for the new Evans Property holding company.
It is owned by companies with the name Brightsea followed by initials (for example Brightsea EP, Brightsea FP). Between them they had a huge £1.6bn of net assets in 2006-07.
We assume that there may be some duplication of assets here and value the Evans business slightly below the last net asset figure of £320m for the last parent company. We add say £30m for other assets and past dividends to the family.
46) Steve Morgan
£350m
Redrow Group
2008: £430m (-£80m)
Steve Morgan is now captain of Redrow again and is focusing on turning the ship around after the mistakes of the boom years.
He founded the housebuilder in 1974, floated it 20 years later and then sold most of his stake before leaving in 2000.
Before returning as chairman in March this year, Morgan had built up a £116m stake.
Morgan, 57, also owns Wolverhampton Wanderers, the Championship winners and newly promoted to the Premier League for the 2009-10 season.
Thwarted in a multi-million takeover of his beloved Liverpool, Morgan paid just £10 to Sir Jack Hayward to take over at Molineux in 2007, but promised to invest £30m.
After training in civil engineering at Liverpool Polytechnic, Morgan started work with a local contractor.
Then came the big break. In the recession of 1974, his employer decided to pull out of civil engineering, but was stuck with an unwanted £25,000 contract in Penley, North Wales.
“I told them I was happy to leave and do the work for them as subcontractor. I borrowed £5,000 from my father to set up, and made £5,000 profit on the job after paying my father back.
“That’s 100% return on capital in three months.”
Morgan sold £240m worth of shares when Redrow floated and afterwards when he left the board in 2000.
He also had a £100m stake in the De Vere leisure group, which was the subject of a bidding battle in 2006.
In addition, Morgan recently shared £75m sale proceeds on a Spanish development with another Welsh tycoon, Peter Thomas.
Morgan’s latest venture is Harrow Estates which, aside from property investments, specialises in buying derelict land, cleaning it up and selling it on.
After allowing for reinvestment of his Redrow money, his Jersey property, and his developments, Morgan is worth perhaps £350m in the current difficult climate.
46) Roy Richardson & Family
£350m
Swiftfire
2008: £450m (-£100m)
The death of Don Richardson in 2007 robbed the Midlands of one of its greatest developers. With twin brother Roy, Don Richardson had made a name for building shopping centres, most notably Merry Hill in the Black Country.
The twins sold Merry Hill in 1992 for a £50m profit. Since then they have been involved in scores of flagship projects in the Midlands. Their main company, Swiftfire, turned a £2.7m profit into a £1m loss in 2008, while the net assets fell slightly to £145.2m.
We value the business at around £120m. Yet after the acquisition of the European assets and taking account of other deals and £54m of salaries in recent years, we reckon the Richardson family, now led by 79-year-old Roy alone, is easily worth a net £350m.
49) Nicholas Candy & Christian Candy
£330m
Candy & Candy Holdings
2008: £120m (£210m)
In the past decade Nick and Christian Candy have turned a £6,000 deposit on an Earl’s Court flat into a multi-million pound property empire in some of the world’s most exclusive postcodes.
Backed by Arab money, the brothers started buying and making over properties from Moscow to Monaco, from London to the Middle East. They bid for virtually every major site up for sale in prime areas of London, driving prices up to levels that ordinary property developers thought insane.
The 30-something Candys are developing One Hyde Park near Harrods, and could make a £1bn-plus profit on the venture. But they have had setbacks on other sites as crumbling property values take their toll.
Their main Guernsey-based company shows £244m net assets while a British firm, Candy & Candy Holdings, is worth £50m on the back of £7m profit on £20.6m sales in 2007-08. Other assets and cash take them to £330m.
49) Sir John & Peter Beckwith
£330m
Pacific Investments
2008: £450m (-£120m)
Sir John Beckwith, 62, and his brother Peter, 64, made their first fortune in property, netting around £80m when they sold their London & Edinburgh Trust property firm in 1990 just before the crash.
Sir John recently teamed up with ex-Lehman Brothers banker Gerald Parkes to invest in property across Europe. He has two main investment vehicles – Pacific Investments and Red River Capital. In 2007-08 the two companies made a healthy £77m profit.
Peter has invested in property and theatres. He has a stake in the Ambassador Theatre Group, a fast-expanding operation that made a £1.5m profit on £65.1m sales in 2007. It has £19m net assets and could be worth £24m, valuing his stake at £3m. In addition, he has £8m of net assets in small property firms.
Adding hotels in France and Sir John’s investment in the Model Frontiers fashion agency, a £300m valuation would seem appropriate for the Beckwiths’ business interests, with £30m added for private assets.
51) Ardeshir Naghshineh & Family
£320m
Targetfollow Group
2008: £400m (-£80m)
Naghshineh was the biggest loser when the Woolworths retailing chain collapsed. He had a 10% stake in the business and believed it could have been kept going as a viable concern.
Naghshineh, 57, is giving up the day-to-day control of his Targetfollow property company to concentrate on long-term strategy.
He is best known in property circles as the owner of Centre Point, the famous London tower block, which he bought in 2005 for £85m.
Naghshineh founded Norwich-based Targetfollow in 1992 as a property group. Today, it has a substantial portfolio of office, industrial and retail buildings.
It showed £329m net assets in 2007-08. We can see another £30m of net assets in smaller Naghshineh firms. In the current climate, we cut Naghshineh’s value to £320m.
52) Bob Edmiston
£300m
IM Properties
2008: £420m (-£120m)
Bob Edmiston put £2m into Coventry’s Grace Academy, which opened in September 2008.
An accountant by trade, Edmiston has built the IM Group into one of Britain’s biggest importers of Far Eastern cars.
IM Group made a £12m loss on £398m sales in 2008 but showed net assets of more than £136m. In the current climate for car dealerships, however, we value the company at perhaps £80m.
The separate IM Properties made £13.4m profit on £40.3m sales in 2008.
With £239m net assets, the company should be worth £200m in today’s climate.
Since 1998, Edmiston, 63, has had nearly £79m in salaries from IM Group.
We add just another £20m as he has been extremely generous with his charitable donations.
52) Trevor Hemmings
£300m
Northern Trust Group
2008: £1030m (-£730m)
Preston North End’s new Invincibles Pavilion will turn Deepdale into a 25,000-seater stadium. The Lilywhites were in contention for promotion from the Championship but financial pressures are intense too.
Last year the club made a £3.2m loss on a £7.9m turnover. In all, Preston North End is valued at under £3.6m on the stock market. Yet its biggest shareholder is also one of Lancashire’s richest men. Trevor Hemmings has a 28% stake in the club.
Hemmings, 74, started out as a brickie’s apprentice locally in Leyland, later building his own housebuilding firm, selling it for £1.5m in the early 1970s to the late Sir Fred Pontin. Hemmings became his right-hand man in the Pontins leisure operation.
When Pontins was taken over, Hemmings assembled a management buyout in 1987. Within two years he had sold the business to Scottish & Newcastle for a large share stake. He must love Pontins as he bought it back again for under £30m in 2000. He kept that S&N stake and in January 2008, it was worth £218m when S&N agreed a £7.8bn takeover.
Along the way, Hemmings had sold down his stake and invested the proceeds in a burgeoning property and leisure empire. Blackpool Tower cost him £74m in 1998, while two years later he bought Littlewoods’ pools operation from the Moores family for £161m. His main holding company, the Northern Trust Group, saw its net assets fall from £285m to £248m in 2007-08.
We can see another £38m worth of stakes in other quoted companies, including Arena Leisure. Hemmings has also invested in pubs and has Trust Inns with £168m net assets in 2007-08.
But the combination of the banking crash and the severe property downturn has taken a huge toll on Hemmings’ wealth. We cut him back to £300m this year.
52) Brian Kennedy
£300m
Weatherseal Holdings
2008: £350m (-£50m)
Brian Kennedy trained as a bank manager only to quit at 19 to become a kitchen salesman. But his original wealth came when he ran Farouche Cuisines, which was sold in 1988, netting the young Kennedy £1m.
He went into double glazing and has built up a home improvements empire including Weatherseal Windows and Space Kitchens & Bedrooms.
Kennedy bought the well-known brand Everest in 1999 for £47m then sold part of his stake to management in 2003 for £63m. After that, he added to his shareholding to take it up to 66%.
Then in 2007, Kennedy sold a 25.1% stake to Hutton Collins in a deal which valued the company at £150m.
In May 2006, he bought the troubled Ultraframe conservatory-maker for £29m and some plastics operations from Heywood Williams in 2005 for £20m. Ultraframe has been revived under Kennedy’s ownership.
Meanwhile, his expansion continued in 2008 with the purchase of the Zenith Staybrite double glazing brand and, later in the year, the troubled Space Kitchens brand.
Kennedy has also diversified into property and, in 2002, sold his mobile phones business to Dixons for £31m. In all, his companies led by his main parent operation, Latium, turned over £500m in 2008. In the current climate, though, we cut the value of the business assets to £250m. With his private assets added, Kennedy, 49, is easily worth £300m.
52) Laurence Kirschel
£300m
Consolidated Developments
2008: £350m (-£50m)
Soho landlord Lawrence Kirschel is building a triangular hotel development close to Covent Garden, WC2. The 30,000 sq ft hotel and leisure scheme, which is bounded by Moor Street, Old Compton Street and Charing Cross Road, will have 35 bedrooms, shops and seven flats.
Kirschel has received approaches to buy his London property portfolio over the years, but says he is not selling and is focusing instead on developing his increasingly attractive portfolio in Soho and Holborn.
It includes Tin Pan Alley, one of the last undeveloped sites in central London, and developments in Soho. He is transforming Tin Pan Alley into a new cultural quarter for London.
Momentum for the Tin Pan Alley development around the Tottenham Court Road area is gathering pace with London Underground and the planned Crossrail line involved.
Kirschel, 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.
We can see £187m net assets in the 2007-08 accounts of Consolidated Developments and other smaller operations, all owned by Kirschel or where he has a stake.
But these asset values do not take account of Kirschel’s substantial holdings in Soho. We value Kirschel, 46, at £300m.
52) Caspar MacDonald-Hall
£300m
London & Cambridge Properties
2008: £400m (-£100m)
London & Cambridge Properties, one of Britain’s largest private property companies, saw its net assets fall from £620.5m to £579m in 2007-08, while profits were virtually unchanged at £36.5m.
It is a leading developer of industrial estates. MacDonald-Hall has a 40% stake in London & Cambridge plus a number of other property assets. He also has half of Proudreed, a Southampton property investor, with £181.6m net assets, so his stake there should be over £90m.
Then there is a 45.5% stake in Ringmerit, which had £212m net assets in 2008. We can see £232.7m of net assets in other small companies he owns or where he has stakes. In all then there are nearly £480m net assets attributable to him.
Macdonald-Hall, 58, is also a non-executive director at AIM, the delisted aviation group, where he had a £6m stake. Aim was founded by his father in 1970 and MacDonald-Hall was sales director when it floated on the stock market in 1982. He is also regularly listed by Field magazine as one of the 50 best shots in Britain.
In all, with past dividends, he would normally be worth £550m, but these are not normal times and we value him at £300m.
52) Charlotte Townshend
£300m
Addison Developments
2008: £350m (-£50m)
The property crash has not prevented Charlotte Townshend from snapping up bargains. In July 2008 her Ilchester Estates company bought the Yeoman Industrial Estate in Bournemouth for £13m. The estate will add to Townshend’s already considerable portfolio.
Townshend, 54, has 20 choice acres round London’s exclusive Holland Park, and 15,000 acres in Dorset, where she has her main home. She also had 3,000 acres in Nottinghamshire, but these have been sold for £9m.
We can see six farming and estate companies, including Addison Developments and Ilchester Estates, which together showed £20m net assets in 2007-08.
Townshend is the only person in Britain, apart from the Queen, who is allowed to own swans. They are kept at Abbotsbury, her Dorset estate. We value Townshend at £300m this year.
52) Harry Hyams
£300m
Walton Investment Co
2008: £322m (-£22m)
Harry Hyams will no doubt be pleased that the gang who raided his Wiltshire home and made off with £30m of art and antiques in early 2006 received long sentences two years later.
Hyams, who has made his fortune from property, is still involved in business even at the age of 81. We can see six small property companies with around £17m of net assets. Hyams is also involved in the £200m revamp of Newcastle city centre.
Best known for the 1970s-built, 35-storey Centre Point 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.
He made a further £98m when MEPC itself was taken over in 2000. His estate, the net assets in the small Hyams companies and his art should easily take him to £300m in the current climate. We assume that insurance will cover the art losses.
59) Michael Oglesby & Family
£295m
Bruntwood Estates
2008: £190m (£105m)
Michael Oglesby, the chairman of Manchester’s Bruntwood Property Group, believes the North West region will emerge stronger from the economic crisis, as badly run companies from all sectors go to the wall. Bruntwood is easily the busiest developer in Manchester.
Bruntwood owns more than 80 office buildings in the North. In 2008 it bought several sites in the area. The company is keen to foster links with local communities and donates 10% of profits to local charities. Each of its 400 staff takes two days off a year to work with local communities.
It was in 1970 that Oglesby, 70, moved from Scunthorpe to Manchester, forming Bruntwood five years later. The company saw profits fall from £13.5m to £11.5m on £87m sales in the year to September 2008. Net assets came in at £394m.
In the current climate, we value Bruntwood at £275m. Other assets, plus smaller but separate Bruntwood operations, take the Oglesby family to £295m.
60) Sir Michael Smurfit & Family
£294m
Jefferson Smurfit
2008: £398m (-£104m)
Sir Michael Smurfit left Smurfit Kappa in 2007 after 53 years. He had grown the company into Europe’s largest integrated packaging outfit.
It refloated on the stock market in March 2007, worth £2.3bn. Its value plummeted in 2008, though it has since recovered slightly and is worth £1.2bn. Smurfit’s remaining stake is now worth £62m.
Smurfit also received £7.7m when he left the firm in 2007, as well as a very generous pension.
But it is outside his day job that Smurfit, 73, has made his money. Even here he has been hit hard. The value of his half-share in the Ryder Cup venue, the K Club, and other property he bought from Smurfit Kappa has nose-dived. The slump in stock and commercial property values would have seen his other assets fall by at least 20% to £204m.
Smurfit invests widely in growing Irish private companies, including Ballymore International, one of Europe’s largest urban regeneration property companies. This year he is a lot poorer at £294m.
61) William Ives & Family
£282m
Rainham Steel Group
2008: £275m (£7m)
William Ives, 66, started Rainham in 1973 as a new and reusable steel supplier, and it expanded rapidly in the boom of the 1970s. In the 1980s, the company diversified and started to target builders.
The parent company, Rainham Steel Holdings, made £7.6m profit on £117.3m sales in 2007-08, but adding in directors’ pay takes the profit to around £17m.
It should make at least the same again in what has been a very difficult 2008-09. Staff have been laid off at the firm’s Scunthorpe facility, the first time that this has happened in 35 years.
The Essex-based company, which is owned by Ives and his family trusts, has a strong balance sheet and should still be worth £150m, even in today’s climate.
Property companies and other assets easily take Ives to £282m.
62) Yianis Christodoulou
£280m
Octagon Assets
2008: £400m (-£120m)
Luxury flats are being added to Southend’s Palace Hotel, which is being redeveloped by Yianis Christodoulou. It shows the ingenuity of developers like Christodoulou as they try to grapple with the worst property crash in living memory.
Christodoulou is the second largest freeholder at Canary Wharf, with 2m sq ft of assets there. Not bad for a young man who, after the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, had to flee his homeland to start a new life in Britain.
He saved up to buy his first property, a north London studio flat, and by 1994 he was investing and developing in the market full-time. His Yianis Holdings made a £4.5m profit on £66m sales in 2007-08, when its net assets rose to nearly £324m.
Christodoulou, 44, warned in his 2007-08 annual report that the value of the group’s property portfolio would fall in the short term. As a result, we cut him back to £280m.
62) Keith Miller & Family
£280m
Miller Group
2008: £280m (No change)
Edinburgh-based housebuilder and property developer Miller Group had to cut its British workforce in 2008 from 2,000 to 1,400 as the housing market slumped.
Sales dropped 9% to £404m, while losses came in at £33.8m in the six months to the end of June 2009. The company sold a minority stake to Bank of Scotland Corporate in April 2008 for an undisclosed sum. Run by chief executive Keith Miller, 60, nephew of the co-founder James Miller, the company continues to work on projects that include retail developments in Portugal, Denmark and Hungary.
In March it won a £54m contract to build the first phase of the £600m Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine being developed on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
The HBOS deal valued the whole business at around £500m, but the market has deteriorated sharply since then and we cut our valuation of the Miller family stake to perhaps £250m at best.
Past dividends (£43m from 1997-2006) and other assets take the family to £280m after tax.
62) Sean Mulryan
£280m
Ballymore Properties
2008: £510m (-£230m)
Sean Mulryan lodged plans in May for two towers (of 194 and 134 metres high) in London’s Docklands as part of the vast Wood Wharf joint venture project.
The scheme will have 1,400 homes and 465,000 m2 of offices, built over the next 15 years. Ballymore, Mulryan’s company, has a 25% stake in it.
Mulryan, 55, decided to sell his family home in Tallaght in 1982 and move into rented accommodation, 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 firms. Ballymore has secured contracts worth over £2bn to redevelop the Wood Wharf site and another £200m deal to develop a site in Luton. Mulryan owns all the business.
Ballymore showed a £5.3m profit on £407.2m sales in 2007-08. With a strong balance sheet and nearly £88m net assets, it is still a valuable operation. Mulryan’s other assets include a Kildare stud. But with the property crash in Dublin, we cut him back to £280m.
62) Stephen Vernon
£280m
Green Property
2008: £420m (-£140m)
Stephen Vernon’s Green Property operation has been defying the property downturn with a string of acquisitions in Britain.
It snapped up a portfolio of properties previously owned by Achilleas Kallakis’s Pacific Group, including the Telegraph Media Group HQ in London’s Victoria, the 20-storey Market Towers in Vauxhall and government-let offices Apollo House and Lunar House in Croydon.
A chartered surveyor by trade, Vernon lives and works in Dublin. He joined Green in 1993. Nine years later, it was taken private via a £700m deal. Vernon, 59, set about selling £1bn of assets to pay down debt and give his backers a return on their money. Vernon’s personal stake in the business has increased from 2% to 32%. Green Property has a strong portfolio of assets, including the Blanchardstown shopping centre, one of Ireland’s biggest retail complexes.
The Green Property portfolio was valued at £1.2bn at its peak. In its June 2007 accounts, Green Property made an £8.3m profit and showed just £312.2m net assets.
With Irish property prices collapsing at a record rate, we cut the value of the portfolio to around £888m. That puts a £280m value on Vernon’s stake.
66) David Wilson & Family
£275m
Wilson Bowden
2008: £245m (£30m)
David Wilson is returning to his roots. He has started a new building company, called Davidsons.
Wilson joined his dad’s small Ibstock building business in 1961. Wilson Bowden prospered and was floated on the stock market in 1987. In May 2007, Wilson sold the company to rival Barratt Developments in a £2.2bn deal.
It netted £727m for Wilson and his family in a mix of cash and Barratt shares. Barratt shares have recovered slightly in recent months and his stake there is now worth nearly £52m.
The cash element of the deal, and £98m of share sales and dividends over the years, take Wilson, 67, to £275m after tax.
67) David Gabbay & Family
£250m
O&H Capital
2008: £300m (-£50m)
David Gabbay mothballed plans to develop property schemes in Mayfair in November 2008. Work on the 135,000 sq ft project at Grafton Street and Bruton Lane has been delayed for at least 12 months.
But 65-year-old Gabbay and his partner Eli Shahmoon have substantial assets in their O&H property operation. It saw its net assets fall from £511m to £478m in 2007-08.
In the current climate, we value the business at around £400m and reckon Gabbay and his family must be worth around £250m with past salaries and dividends.
67) Kevin & Michael Lagan
£250m
Lagan Holdings
2008: £875m (-£625m)
Brothers Michael and Kevin Lagan, who rank among the top construction tycoons in Ireland, took over the Belfast-based 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.
These are involved in road building, property development, housebuilding and waste management. They also have advanced cement works and prime quarrying and asphalt assets.
Michael, 59, and Kevin, 54, are on track for around £57m profit on £478m sales in 2007-08.
The valuable quarrying assets alone were once reckoned to have a potential sale price in excess of £200m.
But these figures do not take into account the recent catastrophic downturn in the Irish construction sector. As such, we cut the value of the Lagan operation to around £250m this year.
67) Sam Morrison
£250m
Corbo
2008: £380m (-£130m)
Sam Morrison started out by selling leather jackets from the boot of his car; he progressed to renting his first retail shop in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, and, within a short time, he had expanded his business to four stores.
By 1998 he had moved into property and one of his sons took over as MD of the retail business called SVM Textiles, which now has 19 clothing stores across Northern Ireland.
Morrison’s speciality through the years has been retail development. He has a number of shopping centres, including Fairhill Shopping Centre in Ballymena and a large retail warehouse development outside Newry.
But in the current climate, and with Corbo net assets having fallen to £349m in 2006-07, we value Morrison at just £250m this year.
67) Anthony Lyons
£250m
St James Capital
2008: £355m (-£105m)
The O2 retail centre in Finchley Road, north London, was taken over by Lyons in April for £92.5m.
Lyons is also active in pubs and restaurants. His excellent timing was apparent in July 2007 when just a month before the credit crunch, he sold a stake in Earls Court & Olympia, the west London-based exhibitions group, to property giant Liberty International. The deal valued the exhibition operation at £380m.
A property developer and agent, Lyons led the takeover of Earls Court & Olympia in May 2004 for £247m, in a deal backed by Nomura. He had a 60% stake and still owns around 30%. He is also director of St James Capital, a property investor with £1.5m net assets. It has also netted around £45m profit from the break-up of The Brewery on Chiswell Street, EC1, which it bought in 2005.
Lyons, 42, also owns Anthony Lyons Investments, which went from a near £23m profit in 2006-07 to a £32,000 loss in 2007-08. In the current climate, we clip Lyons back to £250m this year.
67) Sir John Madejski
£250m
Sackville Properties
2008: £350m (-£100m)
Reading FC owner Madejski also has an 85% stake in Sackville Properties, which in September 2009 won the support of Reading council for Station Hill, a major mixed-use development opposite the railway station. The scheme incorporates 800,000 sq ft of offices with 900 flats, shops and an arts and leisure complex.
Madejski’s other interests include publishing, the local Reading 107FM radio station, a bottling plant in China and the Goodhead printing group.
Despite the heavy cost of the football club, it is now an attractive asset and Madejski is willing to sell. But having dropped to the Championship, the club is worth somewhat less and we cut Madejski, 68, to £250m this year.
However, he will be cheered that the £13.2m sale of the Degas sculpture The Little Dancer Of 14 Years, at Sotheby’s in January this year, realised twice what he paid for it five years earlier.
67) Andreas Panayiotou
£250m
Ability Developments
New entry
East End-born property entrepreneur Andreas Panayiotou was very canny in his timing when he sold £205m-worth of his residential portfolio in March 2007 – just before the property downturn took hold. That was part of a big sale process by his company, Ability Developments. Its annual report outlines £485m of sales since that year end.
Panayiotou, 43, is now investing heavily in a hotel empire, including the Hilton Liverpool and Dunblane Hydro. In December 2008, Ability bought a site at the grade I-listed Syon Park in west London to develop – for around £40m -a 151-bedroom Hilton hotel. It is due to open by Christmas 2009.
Ability Group has invested more than £300m in hotel assets. The total value of Panayiotou’s portfolio and assets is put at £640m. Ability Developments itself made £3.4m profit and showed £114.5m net assets in 2007. The accounts of other companies which should show more net assets remain confidential. Until we can see them, we are cautious and value Panayiotou at £250m. With more openness we could easily go higher, but not until more balance sheets are available.
67) Eli Shahmoon & Family
£250m
O&H Capital
2008: £300m (-£50m)
Eli Shahmoon, 72, is the partner of David Gabbay in the London-based property-to-construction group O&H Holdings, which showed around £478m net assets in its 2007-08 accounts.
With O&H mothballing a Mayfair development in November 2008 because of the credit crunch, we cut our valuation of the business to £400m.
The Shahmoon family owns half. Past salaries, dividends and other assets should take them to £250m.
67) Marquess of Salisbury
£250m
Gascoyne Cecil Estates
2008: £250m (No change)
The seventh Marquess of Salisbury takes a low profile today. Apart from hosting the Hatfield House Country Show in August, he rarely makes the news.
His main farming company, Gascoyne Cecil Farms, reduced its losses from £215,000 to £9,661 on sales up from £1.7m to £2.4m in 2007-08, when it showed £4.8m net assets. Salisbury also has a smaller company, Perlpart Developments, showing just £284,000 net assets in 2007-08.
Shrewdly, he is also developing the family’s London acreage around Leicester Square. The family’s company, Gascoyne Holdings, owns the freehold to the Hippodrome nightclub, where a casino company has been in talks to take over the lease and spend £8m transforming the run-down, grade II-listed building into a members-only casino and cabaret club.
The London estate, American land, the two stately homes with their surrounding 10,000-plus acres and the art collection keep Salisbury, 63, at £250m.
75) Alan Lewis
£225m
Hartley Investment Trust
2008: £250m (-£25m)
Alan Lewis chairs Leeds-based J&J Crombie, best known for its legendary gents’ woollen topcoats favoured by generations of city slickers and heads of state.
Lewis made his first fortune by dealing in repossessed cars, but 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 British property portfolio, principally old industrial sites in Yorkshire, is worth at least £100m. In addition, he has 4,000 acres of prime development land in Florida, where gas has been discovered, and forestry in Russia.
With other banking and property assets added in Britain, America and Spain, Lewis, 71, is worth perhaps £225m.
75) Sir Stanley & Peter Thomas
£225m
Atlantic Property Developments
2008: £285m (-£60m)
Vans are the latest investment opportunity for Sir Stanley Thomas, who was knighted in the 2006 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to business and charities in Wales. In May 2008 he took a controlling stake in Vans Direct, Britain’s leading van supplier.
The Thomas family money comes originally from the much more mundane world of pies. Brothers Stanley, 68, and Peter, 66, built up a large snack and pie business – Peter’s Savoury Products – which they sold to GrandMet in 1988 for £75m.
The family then went on to build the quoted TBI group, involved in property and airports. There was a near £106m payout for the family late in 2004 when TBI was taken over in a £551m deal with Spanish infrastructure company Abertis.
The family also has commercial property investments, including a 300-acre golf development outside Cardiff. In addition, a Spanish development, in which Peter had a 40% stake, was sold in 2005 for £75m.
Another £40m in other Thomas ventures such as Atlantic Property Developments, take the family to perhaps £225m.
77) Robert Adair
£220m
Melrose Resources
2008: £330m (-£110m)
Melrose Resources, the Edinburgh-based oil exploration group, began life in 1992 when Oxford geology graduate Robert Adair bought Pentex’s oil and gas interests for £13.6m.
Seven years later it listed on the London Stock Exchange with a value of £36m. But following a string of acquisitions and significant finds in Egypt and Bulgaria its market value rose to £440m in mid-2008.
In June 2008 the company hit the headlines when it emerged that it had trumped Russia’s gas behemoth Gazprom to snatch a £60m Bulgarian government gas storage contract.
During the year, Melrose successfully executed a number of important development and exploration projects in Egypt, Bulgaria and the US. But the later collapse in the oil price hit Melrose shares hard. They have since recovered somewhat and the company is now worth £400m.
Adair, a low-key Scot who trained at Arthur Andersen, has a stake now worth around £200m. Outside the oil industry, Adair also chairs Terrace Hill, a quoted property group, where he spends half of his time. The shares of the Glasgow-based commercial property operation have languished for much of the last 18 months.
In the six months to April 2009, the firm posted a loss of more than £30m. Adair’s stake there is now worth £20m. In all, Adair should easily be worth £220m.
77) Lord Iliffe & Family
£220m
Yattendon Investment Trust
2008: £250m (-£30m)
Lord Iliffe, 65, who inherited the title from his late uncle in 1996, owns Yattendon Investment Trust, which, in 2008, showed profits of £24.6m on £130.5m sales. Net assets stood at £266m.
Yattendon, which had sold its Birmingham papers to an American publisher for £60m in 1987, has more than 40 local newspaper titles and also owns Channel TV, plus property and marina interests.
In the current climate we value the Iliffe family at £220m.
77) Paul Newey
£220m
Ocean Finance
2008: £245m (-£25m)
Loan and mortgage group Ocean Finance was snapped up in November 2006 by US insurance giant AIG, for an undisclosed sum. But it was reckoned to have been around £200m, which would have been good news for Paul Newey, Ocean’s 41-year-old founder.
Ocean Finance had net assets of £235m in 2006-07, when it made £4.9m profit on £60.3m sales. This makes the £200m mooted sale price seem realistic. We add another £20m for other Newey assets, property and businesses, including Marlborough Loans.
77) Gerard O’Hare
£220m
O’Hare Developments
2008: £302m (-£82m)
Dr Gerard O’Hare says he is not making a penny from the huge queues of shoppers coming from across the Irish border to shop at his Quays shopping centre in Newry. They may be taking advantage of the pound’s cheapness relative to the euro, but parking is free at the Quays and it is O’Hare’s tenants who are raking in the money.
O’Hare, 51, boosted his US interests with two investments in the New York commuter belt valued at over £125m in July 2007.
81) Elliott Bernerd
£219m
Chelsfield Investments
2008: £276m (-£57m)
Heavyweight backing from the Middle East in January 2009 enabled Elliott Bernerd to beat off competition to land the American embassy site in London’s Grosvenor Square.
When the Americans leave for a new embassy, the old site will be redeveloped in a £500m scheme. Clearly, the property slump has not deterred veteran property entrepreneur Bernerd from doing deals.
In December 2007, Chelsfield Partners, which he set up with another veteran, Sir Stuart Lipton, joined with the Bank of Scotland to launch a £216m French property fund.
Bernerd, who has been fighting cancer, famously ran another Chelsfield operation, which he had founded in 1986, floated on the stock market in 1993 and then took private in May 2004, pocketing £45m from selling part of his stake.
He reinvested the rest, worth around £56m, in the firm. Five months later, Bernerd, 64, sold the business, turning his £56m into £82m. In the current climate we cut Bernerd back to £220m.
82) Peter & Alicia White
£210m
Dublin Land Securities
2008: £211m (-£1m)
Peter White is the former principal of Whites Auctioneers and of Whites on the Green, the upmarket Dublin restaurant that is now known as Shanahan’s.
He bought a property portfolio from Irish Life in 1982. It included commercial properties, residential units and greenfield sites. Several of the 3,500 properties are situated in prime Dublin locations.
In March 2007 Barry Lyons and Graham Kenny, partners in Dublin law firm Lyons Kenny, acquired the portfolio, which was reckoned to be worth £270m.
The deal represented the largest transfer of property in Ireland in the last 25 years.
White, 69, and his wife Alicia, 66, have a number of directorships including Dublin Land Securities, with £8.8m net assets in the year to July 2007. Proceeds from the sale should give them a wealth of at least £210m.
83) Alastair & Michael Powell
£205m
Cleveland Cable Co
2008: £260m (-£55m)
Established in 1977 by brothers Alastair and Michael Powell, Cleveland Cable is a North East-based cable distributor. It has invested in logistics, measurement and service technologies and has built massive distribution and exporting capabilities from its 12-acre headquarters in Middlesbrough.
The firm’s range of specialised cables are sold to multiple markets, supporting fire, security and communication systems in challenging environments, such as underground or offshore.
Cleveland Cable saw its profits fall from £37.6m to £27.2m on sales up from £192m to £217m in 2007-08. Net assets rose from £98.6m to £117.8m.
A property operation, Cable Properties & Investments, showed nearly £71m net assets in the same period. Between them the two firms showed nearly £189m net assets.
We value the companies together at £190m. Alastair, 57, and Michael, 52, own all the shares in both. Past dividends and other smaller firms take them to around £205m.
84) Steve & Clive Boultbee Brooks
£200m
Boultbee Land
2008: £300m (-£100m)
London-based Boultbee is the largest private owner of UK shopping centres. But it is in the Nordic region that Boultbee has really done well in recent years. Apart from its Swedish centres, Boultbee owns the main shopping centre in Helsinki – the £228m Kamppi.
Boultbee, founded by the Boultbee Brooks brothers – Steve, 48, and Clive, 46 – has more than 90 companies, the biggest being Boultbee Construction with £186.5m net assets in 2006, but it has not escaped the downturn unscathed.
Boutlbee bought a batch of 10 shopping centres in Sweden from the Swedish government in mid-2007 at the top of the market. But after intense talks with lenders, Boultbee signed a SEK975m (£78m) strategic refinancing of three of these centres with German lender Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen. The transaction enables repayment of the existing Lehman Brothers debt facility and will fund upcoming capital expenditure.
Based at a houseboat on the Thames at Cadogan Pier in Chelsea, Boultbee is seeking shopping-centre investments, sale-and-leaseback transactions and industrial opportunities.
In June 2009 Boultbee made its first UK purchase in five years. It exchanged contracts with Threadneedle to buy a 50% stake in the Treaty shopping centre in Hounslow, which makes it the sole owner of the mall. It paid around £15m – a yield of 9%.
In the current climate, we cut the brothers back to £200m, allowing for any debt.
84) Manny Davidson & Family
£200m
BL Davidson
2008: £260m (-£60m)
Manny Davidson lost his trusted lieutenant in February 2009 when Jonathan Rose joined the William Pears Group as group property director to take advantage of opportunities thrown up by the economic downturn.
Rose spent more than 12 years with the Davidson family, working with Manny and his son Gerald, at Wolfe and Asda Properties.
Davidson, 78, started in the London property market in 1964 with a company called Asda Property Holdings, named after his mother Annie Sarah Davidson.
He floated the business in 1985, before taking it private in a £232m deal with British Land in 2001 which saw it renamed BL Davidson. It showed £440m of net assets in 2005 when it made a £12.4m profit. The Davidson family’s 50% stake was worth £253m when it was taken over entirely by British Land (which had the other 50% already) in the summer of 2006.
Davidson has also owned other choice assets. The takeover of the Leopold Joseph merchant bank in early 2004 netted him £5m for his stake.
Other assets such as Fungo, a property company, and Wolfe Securities, add £20m, taking the Davidson family to £200m.
84) Patrick Doherty & Family
£200m
Harcourt Developments
2008: £250m (-£50m)
Donegal developer Patrick Doherty’s most high-profile work is the £700m redevelopment of the Harland & Wolff shipyard, where the Titanic was built.
Doherty has given most of Harcourt to his children. In all, the value of his projects in Dublin, Barbados and London totalled around £1.5bn in 2007.
Harcourt went from a £1.4m profit to an £8.8m loss but it has more than £100m of net assets. Doherty, 67, also has substantial hotel, transport and property assets in the Caribbean.
In all, the Doherty family should easily be worth £200m.
84) Charles Kenny & Family
£200m
Grimwade
2008: £275m (-£75m)
Charles Kenny’s sons, Conor and Kevin, submitted plans in December 2008 for a £150m office and embassy development in Dublin.
Charles, 73, heads Shoalwater and the Clancourt Group, whose shares are held by Jersey-registered companies. Their most recent development is Park Place on Hatch Street. Park Place offices set a near record rent of over €500 per m2 in 2005.
The Kenny family own most of Clancourt Group, owner of office blocks in the city’s Harcourt Street. The company is unlimited but its main subsidiary showed £247m net assets in its last filed accounts for 2005.
Clancourt started the largest single speculative development in Dublin for many years – a £200m scheme near St Stephen’s Green. With other assets, we value the Kenny family at £200m in today’s difficult economy.
84) David Mabey & Family
£200m
Mabey Holdings
2008: £260m (-£60m)
Mabey & Johnson supplies modular bridges and the next country it is eyeing for a deal is Azerbaijan.
The company already supplies around 1,000 bridges a year to countries as far afield as Eritrea and Papua New Guinea, and it is supplying the British Army with replacements for its ageing Bailey bridges in a 15-year deal. In addition, a Welsh subsidiary is supplying steel for the Olympic site in London.
The company was started after the war by Bevil Mabey, who bought up spare Bailey bridges from the army. The parent company is Mabey Holdings, a Reading firm with 13 offshoots that specialise in plant hire, steel fabrication, property and construction-related operations.
David Mabey, 48, chairs the family-owned operation and, with more than £200m in net assets and large dividends in the past, we value the family at £200m.
89) Jim McGettigan
£195m
McGettigan
2008: £210m (-£15m)
Jim McGettigan, 72, owns Bonnington Group in London and property interests worth more than £120m via his McGettigan company in Dublin.
Despite scaling back his Dubai interests, he still plans to open the Bonnington Tower hotel and 900 residences at Jumeirah Village.
He sold the Parliament Hotel in Dublin for around £16m and the Bonnington Hotel in London for £74m. His firm made a healthy £21.5m profit in 2007-08 and showed £26.7m net assets.
In all, McGettigan should easily be worth £195m after tax.
His Newry-based Parkergreen International bought 500 acres of residential building land in New Jersey for £75m, and a shopping mall in Connecticut for £50m.
He has also acquired a mixed bag of investment and development assets in Central and Eastern Europe. But it is in the north of Ireland that O’Hare has made his fortune. In 1997, he left his family building firm in his native Newry to work on his own property developments.
Adding personal property and assets, O’Hare should be worth around £220m, even with the collapse in asset values.
90) Sten Mortstedt & Family
£190m
CLS Holdings
2008: £170m (£20m)
Sten Mortstedt’s CLS property group gave £48m back to its shareholders in January 2009.
Since its 1994 flotation the company has returned £308m to shareholders in this way. It still has £130m in cash for potential purchases in what Morstedt calls “an exceptionally difficult economic environment”.
CLS – a former investor in the Shard of Glass development at London Bridge – has been active selling surplus properties in the UK, France and Sweden, while also buying others in Germany.
The low-key Mortstedt, 69, has been on the board of CLS as chairman since 1994.
The shares have recovered sharply since the worst of the crash and the Mortstedt family’s stake is now worth nearly £133m.
Share sales of more than £93m (including £22.5m in the recent share buyback) and other assets, take the family to perhaps £190m after tax.
90) Richard Emanuel
£190m
The Real Corporation
2008: £267m (-£77m)
Richard Emanuel will be glad that he has concentrated on Holland for his retail activity. It is a market which has been far less affected by the recession than Britain.
He has created a 370-store consumer electronics, telecom and computer retail chain – the largest in Holland – through a series of acquisitions. The Dutch assets of his Interactive Telecom Solutions company have now been absorbed into the larger Dexcom Holdings, which made £22m profit in 2006, the latest accounts.
Now based in Monaco, Emanuel, 41, is one of Scotland’s youngest entrepreneurs. In eight years from 1991 to 1999, he built DX Communications into one of the largest mobile phone retailers in Britain. He founded the Glasgow-based operation with a £3,000 overdraft and sold it to Cellnet in September 1999 for £42m.
Aside from his European operations, he has a mobile phone repair company in the UK. He has also built up a large property portfolio, including a £10m house on the Cote d’Azur.
He has half a dozen property companies under the Real Corporation name, with at least £30m of net assets. But he is not immune from the collapse in asset values and we cut Emanuel back to £190m this year.
92) The Duke of Buccleuch & Family
£180m
Buccleuch Estates
2008: £180m (No change)
Buccleuch Group, the property arm of the Buccleuch family, is a 50% partner in a York development that will transform the city’s historic West Offices site. It is one of two being considered by York council as a home for its new headquarters.
The partnership with a local developer highlights the ambitions of the Buccleuch Group, which extend beyond the 10th duke’s huge landholdings. He inherited the title and vast estates from his father in September 2007. The immensely popular ninth duke, Europe’s largest landowner with 277,000 acres, left £320m in his will published in December.
The art treasures and antique furniture were valued in the will at £224m. But we cut that back to take account of any likely tax bill should the new duke want to sell. In his case it would be 40%, so our valuation is £134m. The late duke did not live to see the return of his prize artwork, Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna with the Yarnwinder, stolen in August 2003 from Drumlanrig Castle. It was recovered a month after he died.
In 2008 the parent company, Buccleuch Estates, showed nearly £119m net assets. In all, we value the new duke, 55, at around £180m.
92) Harry Dobson
£180m
Rambler Metals & Mining
2008: £250m (-£70m)
Scottish mining entrepreneur Harry Dobson was one of the backers of a proposal to build a £1.5bn oil refinery in Newfoundland, eastern Canada.
But the project was put under bankruptcy protection as the credit crunch worsened and finance dried up. It will not make a big dent in Dobson’s wallet.
He made a £31m profit when he sold his 17m Manchester United shares to new owner Malcolm Glazer in May 2005 for £51m.
In Ireland, Dobson is known as a great racing man, with 40 horses in training and a track record of profitable property deals.
He owns 187 acres of Dublin land, which he bought in the 1980s when no one wanted it. Currently, he is working on a residential scheme for a 160-acre site at Clonburris in west Dublin. Dobson, 61, should be worth around £180m.
92) Alan Murphy
£180m
Nikal Investments
2008: £200m (-£20m)
MyBuro is the latest property venture to be backed by 60-year-old Alan Murphy. His Nikal property operation has backed the first myBuro serviced office development in the Cheshire town of Altrincham.
Nikal is also developing a £30m site in Salford Quays with a private equity company, showing that it is not afraid to stick its head above the parapet in a difficult property market.
Murphy’s wealth though came from more prosaic sources – loo rolls. His AM company was sold for £150m. With the property deals, other investments and personal assets, we reckon he should be worth £180m in today’s market.
92) Gerald Ronson & Family
£180m
Heron Corporation
2008: £250m (-£70m)
Work has now started in the City on Gerald Ronson’s £500m Heron Tower. Ronson is putting up £44m of his own money and the Oman government backed him in late 2006 to finance what he calls a “six-star” scheme.
After seven years in the making, the 794 ft structure will be ready in 2011 when the economy should be recovering. Even so, Ronson is cautious in his plans. Next to the 37-storey tower he is developing Heron Plaza, but he is now looking to turn that into a five-star hotel development rather than yet more offices. This is why Ronson is regarded in property circles with awe for his ability to do a deal.
When Heron sold a Quay development in Glasgow in late 2005 for £61.5m, it was the last part of a property portfolio Ronson had disposed of, making a total profit of around £80m on the way. He should also have made at least £50m from buying in 2003 and selling in late 2006 a stake in the housebuilder Crest Nicholson.
In 2007 Heron International, the parent company, made £85m profit and showed £407.1m net assets. The net asset figure has fallen nearly £32m, showing that even Ronson is not immune from the recession. But some consolation was a £12.9m salary in 2007.
Outside Heron, Ronson has the Snax 24 petrol retailing business, which has £40m in cash and made £3.5m profit on £228m sales in 2008. It is easily worth at least £60m. We now value Ronson, 70, at around £180m.
92) Stuart Wall
£180m
Opal Property Group
2008: £200m (-£20m)
Opal Property Group is defying the deep downturn. The Manchester-based company is the biggest provider of high-quality student accommodation in Britain and is getting bigger: it added 1,688 beds in the year to September 2008 and plans another 2,189 for 2009.
Opal also provides affordable accommodation for key workers such as NHS staff.
The company, founded in 1982 by Stuart Wall, made an operating profit of more than £25m on sales of £98.9m. It does have hefty borrowings, which pushed it into a loss of £24.6m, but with net assets of £209.5m, Wall, 58, should be worth perhaps £180m.
97) Terence Cole
£175m
City & General Group
2008: £175m (No change)
Marcol was founded by Terence Cole and Mark Steinberg to exploit property opportunities through active management.
Cole is a hugely successful London property man who, working with Steinberg, has built a formidable empire. Its growth has been largely achieved through corporate acquisitions. It spent £400m on acquisitions between 2001 and 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 is Compco Holdings, which showed more than £170m net assets in 2007-08. Cole has a 40% stake in its parent; this and his other assets take him to a conservative £175m.
97) Kevin McCabe & Family
£175m
Scarborough Property Group
2008: £200m (-£25m)
Australia’s Valad Property Group announced in September that it would raise A$56.5m (£30.6m) through a rights issue to pay the outstanding money it owed to Kevin McCabe.
The debt relates to Valad’s £250m acquisition of the bulk of McCabe’s property empire in the UK and Europe a month before the onset of the credit crunch. McCabe’s proceeds from the sale should have been around £150m.
The Sheffield United chairman owns a 3% stake in Valad and intends to remain on the board as the director with the largest shareholding. McCabe, 61, has said he now plans to spend more time in Sydney to help Valad on its future strategy.
McCabe’s separate Scarborough International company showed £58m net assets in its 2007-08 accounts. Sale proceeds and the Valad stake are worth perhaps £100m after tax. McCabe’s other interests, such as Forsythia, should take him to at least £175m.
97) Jonathon Lyons & Family
£175m
JE London Properties
2008: £275m (-£100m)
The Lyons family, led by Jonathon, 58, owns very large property holdings in Notting Hill and Kensington, held in part through JE London Properties.
The family also has an extensive art collection, and the late Jack Lyons sold a Monet Waterlilies at a Christie’s auction in Manhattan for nearly £15m. Jonathon runs the family companies, which include the private equity Albion Group.
The family has personal property in Miami and houses in Switzerland and London.
There is not much sign of asset wealth in JE London Properties or Jlc (London), which had nearly £1.2m of net assets between them in 2007-08, or in any of the half-dozen directorships held by Jonathon. But many of the London freeholds were worth at least £2m each at the top of the bull market. They will be worth much less now and, as a result, we cut the Lyons family wealth back to £175m.
97) Mark Steinberg
£175m
City & General Group
2008: £175m (No change)
Mark Steinberg is a low-key but hugely successful London property man, with over 360 directorships listed at Companies House. Working with partner Terence Cole, Steinberg has built a formidable empire.
The largest company we can see is Compco Holdings, which showed more than £170m net assets in 2007-08, when it made £18.3m profit. Steinberg, 50, has a 40% stake in its parent. But his other directorships should easily take him to a very conservative £175m.
101) Lord Foster
£170m
Foster Holdings
2008: £250m (-£80m)
Foster & Partners, the London-based architectural consultancy, warned its staff in February that “a significant decline in work within the practice” would lead to the loss of up to 350 jobs.
It will be a bitter blow for founder Lord Foster, regarded as one of the world’s great architects. He had an 85% stake until he sold a 40% share to 3i, the private equity giant, in May 2007. The deal valued the business then at around £300m.
Foster, 74, should have received around £120m and be left with a stake worth £135m at the time.
Though the company made a £49m profit on £142m sales in 2007-08, it is not immune from the savage downturn. We cut the value of Foster’s remaining stake to £40m. With past salaries and property assets he should still be worth around £170m after tax.
101) Joseph Brennan & Family
£170m
Joseph Brennan Bakeries
2008: £172m (-£2m)
Profits at family-owned Joseph Brennan Bakeries, the producer of Brennans Bread, approached £3.6m on £45.7m sales in 2007.
The company, which is controlled by the multi-millionaire Brennan family, is Dublin’s biggest bakery, famed for its Brennan’s bread. The Brennans however retain some substantial property assets worth £135m, including the Versace shop on London’s Bond Street.
Other assets, such as Century Finance, take the Brennan family to £170m in today’s market.
101) Manfred Gorvy & Family
£170m
Hanover Acceptances
2008: £220m (-£50m)
South African-born accountant Manfred Gorvy, 71, runs a highly successful London-based property, food and financial services group called Hanover Acceptances, which he founded in 1974.
Its residential and commercial property portfolio, held through the subsidiary Dorrington, is reportedly valued at more than £550m. The group also includes African Realty Trust which, it claims, is southern Africa’s biggest citrus fruit grower.
Hanover Acceptances saw its profits fall sharply in 2007 from £17.3m to £8.4m on £588m sales in 2007. The business, with £261m net assets, is owned by a Luxembourg-based parent called Quadriga Holdings SA.
It should be worth £150m, but we assume that the Gorvy family, well represented on the board, is the ultimate owner, and so we value the family at £170m with past dividends.
104) Henry Moser & Family
£165m
Jerrold Holdings
2008: £200m (-£35m)
Jerrold Holdings’ Blemain operation specialises in secured lending to both residential and commercial property customers.
The parent, Jerrold Holdings, saw its profits rise from £56.6m to £68.7m on sales of nearly £166m in the year to June 2008.
Barclays Private Equity invested £113.5m for a 30% stake in September 2006. Despite the recent investment and the hefty profits, we cautiously value the business at £200m in the current climate.
That values the Moser family stake at £140m. Past dividends should add £25m.
104) Ken Rohan
£165m
Airspace Investments
2008: £125m (£40m)
Profits at Irish property company Airspace Investments soared from £6.9m to £26.3m in 2007, when it showed £117.3m net assets.
This will have pleased owner Ken Rohan, a veteran property man from Wicklow.
Rohan is involved in the industrial sector, concentrating on the north side of Dublin.
Airspace owns the Grand Canal Plaza office complex in Dublin, which houses BT Ireland’s HQ, and has stakes in a number of business parks around the capital as well as a range of other interests in Ireland, Britain and Barbados.
Rohan also has a strong UK property portfolio. He worked in 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, 65, became managing director of the group in the 1970s. We can see another £3m net assets attributable to Rohan in other smaller companies. In all, he should be worth £165m.
104) Irvine & James Sellar
£165m
Sellar Properties
2008: £190m (-£25m)
Building work is under way at the site of the Shard of Glass, Europe’s tallest mixed-use building – which will soar 1,016ft above London Bridge Station in 2012.
The £2bn tower is the culmination of nine years labour for Irvine Sellar, 71, the developer of this iconic building, who has nurtured the project through planning committees, public inquiries and funding negotiations. He has a 20% stake in the tower, which is backed by four Qatari banks.
But with asset values down, we cut Irvine, who works on property development with his son, James, 36, back to £165m this year.
104) Nigel Wray
£165m
Prestbury Investment Holdings
2008: £210m (-£45m)
In January 2009, Domino’s Pizza, the quoted pizza delivery company, announced that some of its directors, including Nigel Wray, had pledged their shares as collateral for personal loans.
Wray – the property and sports entrepreneur – has used about two-thirds of his 16.7% shareholding in Domino’s Pizza in this way. His stake is now worth £77m, so around £50m of that has been pledged.
In June 2008, he sold £17m worth of Domino’s shares to follow on from an earlier sale in 2007 of shares valued at £18.5m.
Wray also has stakes in 16 quoted companies, worth £22m. He has made a series of shrewd moves in the worlds of property, media and communications since the early 1980s ,which have earned him a fortune.
Working with Nick Leslau, Wray has played an important role in the property market.
He has over 47% of the Prestbury Investment Holdings vehicle run by Leslau. In 2007, it made a £3.7m loss when its net assets fell slightly to £159.5m. Wray’s stake in Prestbury is worth £60m in the current climate.
The share sales at Domino’s, his stake there and other quoted stakes plus private assets, add around £105m, taking Wray to £165m.
108) Sir Euan Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe & Family
£160m
Calthorpe Estates
2008: £184m (-£24m)
The recently completed £40m Calthorpe House office development is part of Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe’s plans to revive the leafy Edgbaston area of Birmingham. The jewel in the crown of Calthorpe’s plans is undoubtedly the £110m Edgbaston Galleries retail scheme.
Calthorpe, 43, has done a lot of work to clear the site, but the development has been shelved for now. The Calthorpe Holdings operation saw its net assets rise to £21.6m in 2007-08. Calthorpe also has interests in America and property in Europe. Conservatively, we cut our valuation to £160m.
108) Eliasz Englander & Family
£160m
Citywise
2008: £185m (-£25m)
Property developer Eliasz Englander, 77, negotiated two deals with directories group Yell in Reading last October. Since then, Englander has completed a flagship office and retail scheme on a quarter of its trophy asset Holborn Links in central London, after buying it for £118m in 2000.
The family owns Holborn Links through Citywise, with nearly £131m net assets in 2007. With other smaller firms and net assets totalling £100m, the Englander family is easily worth £160m.
108) Peter Horton & Family
£160m
Hortons’ Estate
2008: £195m (-£35m)
Peter Horton, 40, now leads the Horton family on the board of Hortons’ Estate as deputy chairman, following the retirement of Michael Horton as chairman in 2008.
The family-owned company remains one of the Midlands’ largest property investment and development companies with a portfolio across the retail, leisure, office and industrial sectors.
It made a record £8.8m on £19.4m sales in the year to September 2008, but the net assets fell sharply from £191.2m to just under £150m. In the period from 1996-2008, the family has had £33m of dividends before tax.
We value the company at £140m, slightly below the net asset figure, and add more than £20m for past dividends and other assets after tax to the Horton family.
108) Brian Scowcroft & Family
£160m
Alard Properties
2008: £180m (-£20m)
Scowcroft has more than 100 tenants occupying around 1.5m sq ft of new or refurbished buildings at his Kingmoor Park on the site of an old RAF base.
Even so, the net assets of the Kingmoor Park Properties operation fell in 2007-08 from nearly £43m in 2006-07 to about £34m. It is seven years since Scowcroft started his property development company, Alard Properties, and he plans to acquire 5m sq ft 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 to create more than 1,300 jobs. It is the flagship in his business park portfolio, which includes sites in Stockport and Leigh, as well as an operation in Wrexham.
Alard, which employs eight people and 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 into 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, 53, a qualified chartered accountant, went into industrial sites as he had the capital to acquire the land cheaply.
In all, with the success of Kingmoor Park, the earlier Swinton proceeds and personal assets, we now value the Scowcroft family at £160m, allowing for falling asset values.
108) Gary Widdowson
£160m
GM Metal Recycling
2008: £160m (No change)
Gary Widdowson spent £25m on a 2,000-acre Norfolk estate in September 2008. He can afford it. His father founded GD Metal Recycling, with one depot in north London. But it was Gary, 51, who became the scrap metal king of London.
In February 2006, he sold the renamed Metal & Waste Recycling to Barclays for an undisclosed sum, but it was reckoned to be up to £120m. Widdowson kepta 22% stake. Metal & Waste Recycling processes about 700,000 tonnes of scrap metal.
Widdowson has diversified into property through Kenninghall Holdings, with around £20m of net assets, and owns a private dock on the Thames and another waste company, Total Waste Management. He is biding his time over investing in property and other assets until the effect of the credit crunch becomes clearer.
But Essex-based Widdowson, an international showjumper in his youth, has had hefty salaries and dividends and he should easily be worth £160m.
113) John Lynch & Family
£152m
John Lynch Builders
2008: £203m (-£51m)
John Lynch, 60, chairs the family-owned John Lynch (Builders), an Ayr-based property-to-construction group which has been built up over the past 38 years.
The group had £11m of net assets in December 2007. But under Lynch’s shrewd management, significant land holdings in Scotland, built up over the years, are currently worth around £111m.
Other assets, such as farms, investments and properties, take the Lynch family to around £152m.
114) Graham Wylie
£150m
Technology Services Group
2008: £180m (-£30m)
Graham Wylie bought the Royal Bank of Scotland’s former headquarters in Edinburgh for £16m in February 2009, demonstrating how cash-rich buyers can take advantage of falling property values.
They do not come much more cash-rich than Wylie. In October 2003 he sold a large chunk of his stake in Sage, netting £116.5m. He was left with 3% at the time but we can’t find him listed as a shareholder today and assume he may have gradually sold those shares, netting perhaps an additional £79m.
He started a new company, Technology Services Group, which is growing fast. In five years it has bought 21 firms. In 2007, it made a £2.9m loss on £33.7m sales. Wylie aims to achieve annual turnover, within the next three years, of £100m through acquisitions.
His other businesses include a country house hotel and golf course, bought from his old university with £8m net assets.
Wylie, 50, is also making his name as a racehorse owner, with around 90 in training.
But horses are hugely expensive and, with the collapse in asset values, we value Wylie at £150m this year – until TSG makes serious money.
114) John Berkley & Family
£150m
Berkeley Leisure Group
2008: £62m (£88m)
John Berkley, 75, chairs The Berkeley Leisure Group, a largely family-owned mobile home operator and property developer based in Yeovil.
In 2007 its profits raced ahead from £10.6m to £18m on sales of £24.3m, mainly as a result of a one-off gain from an asset sale.
The company has freehold properties worth £56.8m but states in its 2007 annual report that they are worth around £100m more than the book value.
The shares are largely owned by Berkley and his family.
They take little out of the business and, taking other assets into account, we value the family at £150m.
114) David Coffer
£150m
St James Capital
2008: £170m (-£20m)
With a career spanning more than 35 years in the property and leisure sectors, David Coffer, 62, is now heavily involved in the Earls Court & Olympia exhibition centre. The centre’s value soared after his property investments operation, St James Capital, backed by Nomura International, bought it in May 2004 for £245m.
In July 2007 a 50% stake was sold to property giant Liberty International. The deal valued the exhibition operation at £380m. Coffer has a 20% stake now worth at least £50m.
He also has other business assets including DCL, Coffer Corporate and Riding House Properties, and owns the building at Portland Place which houses Davis Coffer Lyons leisure agency business.
His personal assets were valued at £80m last year. But this year, with asset prices dropping fast, we trim Coffer’s wealth to £150m.
114) Zac Gertler & Family
£150m
Gertler Properties Services
2008: £250m (-£100m)
Zac Gertler, 53, runs the British operations of a low-key German property family. The Gertlers made their fortune developing offices outside Frankfurt in the 1960s.
The family moved into the London property market in the early 1990s recession, spending up to £110m buying up sites at rock-bottom prices. Within four years, those investments had grown by 40% in value.
The Gertler family’s portfolio is concentrated in central London and should easily be worth £150m.
114) Aneel Mussarat
£150m
Classic Properties (Manchester)
2008: £205m (-£55m)
Aneel Mussarat’s MCR group spent £85m on property in 2008 despite the global financial crisis. While many developers are scaling back activity because of lack of funding, Manchester-based MCR Property Group has kept on buying. As a result, by early 2008, the value of MCR’s portfolio hit £1bn – £700m of investment assets and £300m of developments. The commercial space alone was generating a rental income of £17m a year.
Mussarat is also planning to build a 28-storey tower on the Manchester-Salford border costing £90m.
We can see around £130m of net assets in the 2007-08 Mussarat companies, but with his other development work we value him at £150m, reflecting the difficult times.
119) David Pearl
£147m
Structadene
2008: £244m (-£97m)
A decision to stop buying and to concentrate on managing its West End-focused portfolio enabled David Pearl’s Structadene to boost turnover and profits last year.
Turnover increased by 9% to £102.5m during the 12 months to 30 September 2008, while pretax profit rose from £2.6m in 2007 to £4.5m. But net assets fell sharply from £287.5m to just £152m in the still difficult climate.
Pearl said that many of the properties bought by the group over the past five years were reversionary, and that uplifts in rents were now feeding through. Rental income increased by 18% during the year from £62.5m to £73.7m.
The long bull market proved very fertile for him: “I might have some regrets about one or two buildings I bought at the end of the run but I made so much on the way up, it doesn’t really matter. It’s no good being greedy,” he said recently, after Structadene stopped buying properties in 2008 to concentrate on managing what it has.
At 63, Pearl remains a keen cyclist and speeds round central London viewing properties.
We value Structadene at £140m. Pearl’s stake is worth £143m, and we add £4m for his stakes in smaller companies and his past salaries.
120) Francis & Shamus Jennings & Family
£146m
Cusp
2008: £156m (-£10m)
One of Northern Ireland’s leading companies, the Rotary Group, was taken over by Australian firm Hastie Group in a deal worth almost £100m in February 2008.
The Newtownabbey-based business installs service systems. It has worked on international ventures from Abu Dhabi to Antarctica. Shamus Jennings, 55, is now chairman.
The family also owns the Cusp property group, which recently spent £75m on buying a retail park at Kendal as part of a wave of spending by Ulster investors on the mainland. Cusp reckons its property portfolio is worth £500m. After borrowings are taken care of, it showed £91.2m net assets in 2008, but we cut its value to £60m in the current depressed climate.
After tax on the Rotary proceeds and past dividends, the Jennings family should be worth £146m.
121) Michael Herbert & Family
£145m
Lebreh
2008: £170m (-£25m)
One of Michael Herbert’s property companies made a £15m profit in six months buying and selling what was dubbed Edinburgh’s ugliest building.
Herbert, voted Northern Ireland’s top property man in 2006, is also a restaurant tycoon. Herbel Restaurants, based in Belfast, holds the largest Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in Europe and also acts as a franchise for Häagen-Dazs ice cream. The business has also opened in the Irish Republic and Scotland. Herbel made a £4m profit on £62.5m sales in 2007 when it had net assets of £72.6m, and we value the business at £60m.
Herbert, 52, has also gone into property development in Belfast and Scotland in a big way. His Lebreh operation had nearly £117m net assets in its 2007 accounts. In all, he is easily worth £145m.
122) Christopher Moran
£144m
Chesterlodge
2008: £200m (-£56m)
Insurance and property tycoon Christopher Moran may have to launch a charm offensive on his 48,000-acre Glenfiddich estate near Aberdeen.
Locals have grumbled about his commitment to the local community, but he now needs their support for a 57-turbine wind farm. Moran can expect an estimated £1.5m a year in rent from the Dutch-owned developer if the Dorenell Wind Farm gets planning permission.
Moran, 61, who made his fortune in Lloyds and on the stock market in the 1980s and 1990s, has made even more in property since then. His London acquisition, Crosby Hall, has been valued by Moran at up to £100m. Chesterlodge, Moran’s main holding company, saw its net assets hit £208.7m in 2007-08. We value it at around £140m, and add £4m for other assets, including Crosby Hall (after deduction of restoration costs).
123) Surinder Arora & Family
£140m
Arora Holdings
2008: £160m (-£20m)
Arora Holdings went from a £3.1m profit to a £1.7m loss on £44.4m sales in 2007-08. The company’s net assets fell slightly to £149.8m from £152.1m. But the depressed property sector is presenting opportunities for Arora, 51.
He bought £40m of assets near Gatwick airport from BAA and Morley’s Airport Property Partnership in June 2008. In the current climate, Arora Holdings should be worth £130m. Other assets and property take the Arora family to £140m.
123) Susan Prescott & the Austin Family
£140m
Ethel Austin Properties Holdings
2008: £180m (-£40m)
Value fashion chain Ethel Austin was rescued in May 2008 by a fashion entrepreneur, Elaine McPherson. But by then the Austin family had finally severed its links with the Liverpool-based chain, having netted £9m from selling its last 7.5% stake in the firm in 2005.
The family, represented here by Prescott, 57, initially sold the operation for £55m in 2002 to a management team, but had kept that 7.5% stake. After the first sale in 2002, the Austin family also kept its extensive property assets. Indeed, it has thrived by investing in property in the UK and America. In all, we can see two Ethel Austin property companies, with over £184m of net assets between them in 2007. Adding the proceeds from the buyout should take the Austin family to around £250m. But allowing for double counting, we value the family at £140m.
125) Julia Davey
£131m
Angel Group
2008: £131m (No change)
Julia Davey started out as an estate agent before branching out into the renovation and sale of apartments.
In 10 years of hard work, she has built the Angel Group, a London-based property operation. Currently, the Angel Group is involved in major projects in London and Eastern Europe, Cyprus, and Israel.
It is also building up a chain of smart boutique hotels and top-level wedding venues.
The group made a £3.7m profit on £31.1m sales in 2007-08. It showed £63.1m net assets and, with the separate £7m company Angelic Interiors added, the business assets should be worth more than £100m.
Davey owns it all and we add another £50m for property and personal assets.
With a planning application for a landmark 42-storey tower in London Docklands, known as Number One, at an advanced stage, we can keep Davey at £131m.
126) Charles Clowes
£130m
Clowes Developments
2008: £145m (-£15m)
East Midlands entrepreneur Charles Clowes bought Wilson Bowden Developments’ 290-acre industrial and distribution portfolio for the knock-down price of £46m in late 2008.
As chairman of Clowes Developments, 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 made £1.9m profit on £11.4m sales in 2008-09.
It has £58.6m net assets but reports in the property press suggest that Clowes is looking to sell up for £300m. In the current climate, we settle for a £130m valuation.
126) Cyril Dennis & Family
£130m
Rumford Investments
2008: £130m (No change)
Cyril Dennis seems to like French hotels. In March 2009, he spent over £23m acquiring the 403-bedroom Le Méridien Beach Plaza hotel in Monte Carlo. In nearby Antibes, he is converting the former Le Provençal Hotel into 60 apartments.
Dennis, 65, has a good pedigree in shrewd property deals. He sold a 3.3-acre site on the Isle of Dogs for £47m in September 2006. Nine years previously, he bought the site for just £2m.
In 1994, Dennis sold 75% of his property portfolio to Legal & General for £116m, netting a £50m profit. Today, we can see 45 small companies with around £50m net assets. With developments in the pipeline and the profit from the Isle of Dogs sale, we keep the Dennis family at £130m.
126) John Dunsdon & Family
£130m
Coldunell
2008: £170m (-£40m)
Esher-based property company Coldunell saw its profits fall slightly in 2007-08 from £6m to £5.8m on sales up from £10.1m to £11.5m. But its net assets continued to grow, from £150.4m to £155.6m.
The business is run by John Dunsdon and owned by his family and trusts. Dunsdon, 57, is renowned as one of the shrewdest operators in the property auction market. We value the company below its net assets at £100m but add £30m for other assets.
126) Lord Harris & Family
£130m
Carpetright
New entry
Lord Harris, 67, has a new shareholder with very deep pockets at his Carpetright retail chain.
Last May, software tycoon Bill Gates took a £15m stake in the Essex-based company, a fraction of his £30bn fortune. Gates’ stake has jumped to £28m in recent months. The Harris family stake is now worth £104m.
The separate Harris Ventures private investment company saw its net assets rise from £54.2m to £57.3m in 2007. It has a hefty property portfolio held in partnership with Tony Gallagher. With other assets, and past salaries/dividends, the Harris family is still easily worth £130m.
126) Nick Leslau
£130m
Prestbury Investment Holdings
2008: £200m (-£70m)
Nick Leslau managed to float his Max Property Group on the stock market in May 2009 valued at £220m. It was the first flotation of the year in London and raised £20m more than planned.
Max intends to exploit the weakness in the UK property market by picking up bargains. The shares have held up well and the company is now worth £265m, valuing Leslau’s stake at £24m.
After training as a chartered surveyor, Leslau teamed up with Nigel Wray to build Burford Group into a £1bn business. In 1997 he started his Prestbury operation, which he co-owns with Wray.
The pair had been selling off properties well before the credit crunch as Leslau correctly anticipated the property slump. In the 2007 annual report of their property group, Prestbury Investment Holdings, Leslau writes as chairman that he was “relieved” to have sold off the properties and redeployed the money elsewhere.
Even so, Prestbury Investment Holdings saw its net assets fall from £163.4m to £159.5m in 2007. In the current climate we value it at £120m. Leslau, 50, has a near 52% stake worth £62m. But the profits from past deals, his Max stake, hefty dividends of more than £40m since 2000 and his personal property assets, such as a £30m London home, easily take Leslau to £130m even in today’s market.
126) Chris Marshall & Family
£130m
Marshall Holdings
2008: £136m (-£6m)
Profits fell in 2008 from £16.3m to £5m, on sales down from £114.8m to £107.2m, at Chris Marshall’s company, Marshall Holdings.
When he does a deal the rest of the market sits up and takes notice. Marshall, 70, heads the Leeds-based firm that has made great inroads into city shopping-centre development in Glasgow and Newcastle.
Despite the economic conditions, Marshall Holdings’ net assets rose from £153.7m last year to just under £160m in 2008, demonstrating its resilience.
We value the family at £130m.
132) The Baylis Family
£125m
JT Baylis
2008: £175m (-£50m)
The family-owned shopping-centre company, JT Baylis & Co, showed £5.3m profit on £10.9m sales in 2007-08 when the company also had net assets of nearly £159m.
Jack Baylis died in September 2005, leaving £96.2m in his will. But with shopping-centre values down sharply, we value the family at around £125m.
132) Anthony Brotherton-Ratcliffe & Family
£125m
Croudace Holdings
2008: £155m (-£30m)
It’s been a tough time for the Croudace Homes business. In 2008, Croudace went from a £31.7m profit to a £28.4m loss on sales down nearly £36m at £93.7m.
But the Caterham-based company still has more than £77m of net assets. A planned £100m sale of the business was abandoned in May 2008.
Croudace Homes is but one part of the property-to-housebuilding operation run by the Brotherton-Ratcliffe family. The family also own Croudace Properties Group and Maybrook Properties, which are faring better. Between them the two made around £8.3m profit in 2008 when they showed more than £89m of net assets. In the light of the failed sale and the current depressed market, we value the three businesses at around £110m. Other assets, including £35m of dividends from 1993-05, take the family to £125m after tax.
132) Robert Rayne & Family
£125m
London Merchant Securities
2008: £230m (-£105m)
Quoted property group Derwent London has seen its share price rise smartly in 2009 and it is now worth £1.3bn. The business is chaired by Robert Rayne, son of legendary property tycoon Lord Rayne, who died in 2003.
His death robbed London of one of its shrewdest property developers. After war service with the RAF, Lord Rayne turned his family’s tailoring operation into a property business and pioneered development on the fringe of the City. The Rayne company, London Merchant Securities, merged with Derwent Valley, another property group, in February 2007 to create Derwent London. Lord Rayne left £119.6m in his British will, which excluded assets in France.
The Rayne family has a stake in Derwent London, which has recovered in value this year to £114m. In 2006 the family demerged its investment division into a new company called LMS Capital, and the Rayne family has a stake there now worth £21m.
Taking into account some hefty charitable donations, we keep the family at £125m.
135) Nick Capstick-Dale
£122m
UK Real Estate
2008: £122m (No change)
Property investor Nick Capstick-Dale made a smart move by investing early in the area surrounding London’s King’s Cross.
He spent nearly £4m in June 2006 buying The Lighthouse building in Gray’s Inn Road, London.
Work is scheduled to start on the site in January 2010 with a completely new building behind the old facade due for completion in early 2012.
It follows on from the new Covent Garden-style leisure-to-retail complex complete with a theatre and theatre school that has been built by Capstick-Dale in the heart of the area.
Through his main company, UK Real Estate, Capstick-Dale, 47, has been assembling an impressive portfolio now with around £140m net assets.
He has very low borrowings and is able to buy sites in the current downturn at discounts. Conservatively, we value him at last year’s £122m.
136) William Ainscough & Family
£120m
Langtree Group
2008: £166m (-£46m)
In 1973 Ainscough 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. 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, 61, has several other irons in the fire. His family owned most of Langtree Group with nearly £109m of net assets in 2007-08.
And his housing ambitions have not ended. Ainscough bought the old Wainhomes south-western operation, while the renamed Wain Group, which operates in the South West, made a £5.8m profit on £82.4m sales in 2007-08. But in the current climate we value it at £25m. It is difficult to determine exactly how much of both companies Ainscough and his family still have. But any sale proceeds and remaining stake should be worth perhaps £120m.
136) Simon Clarke & Family
£120m
St Modwen
2008: £167m (-£47m)
St Modwen found itself in the media spotlight in September, when a government report claimed that chairman Anthony Glossop had approved a £100,000 “bribe” relating to the former MG Rover site at Longbridge, near Birmingham.
St Modwen denies the claim and is not expecting any further action to be taken against it.
The Birmingham-based regeneration company was co-founded by Sir Stan Clarke, who died in 2004. He left £138.9m in his will. Simon Clarke, his 44-year-old son, sits on the St Modwen board looking after the Clarke family interests.
The family stake is now worth £75m, having recovered from the lows of early 2009. By August it had secured lettings and sales of 160,000 sq ft of industrial space in Telford, Shropshire; sold two units totalling 12,250 sq ft for £810,000 at industrial warehouse scheme Queensway Business Park; and secured a letting at Audley Avenue Enterprise Park in Newport to Classic Furniture Group for its new headquarters.
Sir Stan Clarke was a racing man through and through. As such, the Clarke family also owned a stake in Northern Racing operation, the biggest racecourse owner after the Jockey Club. It was sold in May 2007 to the Reuben brothers for £65.9m. Past sale proceeds and other assets add £20m, taking the family to £120m after tax.
136) John Guthrie & Family
£120m
Broadland Properties
2008: £140m (-£20m)
John Guthrie chairs Broadland Properties, the Scarborough property operation. The business saw its profits rise from £7.3m to just over £12m on sales up £12m at £41.5m in the year to September 2008. But we value Broadland at £110m, slightly below its £131.2m net assets.
Guthrie, 73, was the biggest winner from the May 2005 sale of the Merchant Retail business to Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing for £222m cash. Guthrie picked up 10% of the company “many years ago” when the shares were trading at 9p. The takeover price valued each share at 197p, so Guthrie made a profit of around £22.3m on the deal. Other assets such as White Rose Finance (£5m net assets) should take the family to £120m.
136) Fawn James & Family
£120m
Soho Estates
2008: £150m (-£30m)
Fawn James is now a regular on the London party circuit. As the granddaughter of the late Paul Raymond, owner of large swathes of Soho, she can afford it.
Fawn, 23, who has been dubbed Soho’s queen-in-waiting, will one day inherit control of the family empire. In August, Soho Estates, founded by Paul Raymond, who died in early 2008, received planning consent for a 27,000 sq ft, 40-bedroom hotel and restaurant at 69-71 Dean Street, London W1.
Paul Raymond was able to buy up land in Soho in the 1960s, which was cheap at the time, on the back of his pornography empire. Tragedy struck in 1992 when his daughter, Debbie, died of a drugs overdose. He had been grooming her to take over the business.
Raymond became a recluse and the porn element of his business diminished in importance. But his property side grew as he moved into upmarket Kensington and Notting Hill. Soho Estates Holdings, the main company, made £18m profit on £24.3m sales in 2007. It has more than £312m net assets. In addition, there are £28.2m net assets in the magazine business, Paul Raymond Publications. But with asset values falling, we cut the family empire’s value to £500m.
Raymond’s recent will left £75m to his granddaughters, Fawn and India Rose James. But with the huge asset base in Soho, most commentators think there is a lot more tucked away for the family. Cautiously, we value the granddaughters and family at £120m. Fawn became a director of the Raymond companies 18 months ago, though India Rose is too young yet to join the business.
136) Guy Johnson
£120m
The Carphone Warehouse Group
2008: £147m (-£27m)
Mobile phone tycoon Guy Johnson left his directorship in the industry in early 2006 when he resigned from the Fone Logistics operation.
It was early in 2004 that Johnson sold most of his stake in Carphone Warehouse, the quoted mobile phone retailer, netting £56m.
A co-founder of the London-based operation in 1989 with Charles Dunstone and David Ross, Johnson, 45, left the business in 2001 to “take life easier”.
Initially, he moved to Portugal but recently returned to Britain to become involved in new business ventures such as property, private equity and Fone Logistics.
His remaining stake in Carphone Warehouse of around 15m shares is worth around £27m. But his other investments take him easily to £120m.
136) Joe Moran
£120m
IWP
2008: £150m (-£30m)
“Things are very bad, very poor,” Joe Moran, 73, admitted in July 2009 when talking about the Irish housing market.
He should know. Just before Christmas 2007, Moran bought full control of Manor Park Homes, one of Ireland’s biggest developers. The price paid was around £140m, much less than expected, proving that Moran is a wily negotiator.
In the 1970s he moved to Dublin and built up various business interests, including a stake in Manor Park. He built that to 51% before the full takeover in December 2007. But with the difficulties in the housing market, we reckon Moran and his family should be worth £120m.
136) Gerard Versteegh & Family
£120m
Gerard Versteegh Holdings
2008: £200m (-£80m)
Since his mid-20s, Gerard Versteegh has been involved in the London property market. The low-key Swede started managing properties for Scandinavian companies in the UK through his London-based property firm, Commercial Estates Management.
In March, Versteegh resubmitted plans for Canary Wharf’s tallest skyscraper – the 63-storey Columbus Tower, ahead of the expiration of its planning permission for the development later in the year.
If the scheme goes ahead (Commercial Estates has been told that it must pay £5m towards Crossrail to keep the consent), the 790ft tower, which will include 320,000 sq ft of office space, will be the UK’s tallest building behind Irvine Sellar’s 1,020ft Shard of Glass.
Today, we can see some asset-rich companies where Versteegh, 49, is a director, including Gestrix, which showed £191m net assets in 2006. Modified accounts in 2007 showed a £12.7m profit.
Another dissolved Versteegh company – Anglo Scandanavian Estates – showed more than £95m of net assets in 2006. In the current climate, we cut the Versteegh family back to £120m.
143) David Kirch
£118m
Channel Hotels & Properties
2008: £178m (-£60m)
Jersey-based property investor David Kirch’s sense of timing has not let him down. Early in 2008 he sold a portfolio of properties to Irish investors for £48m.
Since then the property slump has worsened and cash is king. We did see £16.5m worth of stakes in quoted firms held by his company, Channel Hotels & Properties, but these are no longer recorded, which may mean a sale. But that is but the tip of the Kirch fortune.
In 2004 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. Kirch, 73, made his fortune in London residential property in the 1960s, selling his last properties in 1988 for £30m. We have not seen any recent accounts 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 healthcare. But even with recent deal-making and asset sales, Kirch cannot be immune from the steep fall in asset values. We cut him back to £120m as a result.
Kirch, though, has another side. He is rapidly becoming the Father Christmas of Jersey. When he turned 70 in July 2006 he decided to celebrate – not with a party – but by giving every pensioner on the island aged over 70 a £100 gift. It cost him £1m and was repeated in 2007. But he can afford it: in 2006 he was reputed to have made £2m in two months dealing in the shares of UK Coal. It shows that as a pensioner himself, Kirch has not retired from what he likes best, investing in companies.
144) Graham Harris
£117m
Sunlight Projects
2008: £92m (£25m)
Graham Harris owns Sunlight Projects, a London-based property operation, where he is also a director. The company specialises in the fast-moving London lettings market and the super-prime market in Paris.
In February, the firm secured consent for a 137-bedroom hotel on Tower Bridge Road. The hotel, which will be built on the site of a former antiques warehouse, also includes ground-level commercial space. It will be adjacent to the Premier Inn Tower Bridge.
In the year to April 2008, Sunlight Projects Group Holdings, the parent company, made £541,000 profit on £24.2m sales but its net assets jumped sharply from nearly £98m to £138.8m.
The company reports strong demand for its French assets and its London commercial properties are 100% let. It has no funding problems despite the banking crisis, but in today’s difficult market, we value the business just below the net assets at £115m. With other assets, Harris, 62, should easily be worth £117m.
145) Frank Boyd & Family
£115m
Killultagh Estates
2008: £135m (-£20m)
Brunswick (No 1) is one of the largest property companies in Northern Ireland. Its net assets hit £238.1m in 2008, against £236.9m in 2007. But losses jumped from £3.8m to £21.6m on £38.9m turnover.
The company is the parent of the William Ewart property operation, which was formed in 2002 when Boyd paid £90m for the Northern Ireland and British properties of a southern property group called Dunloe Ewart.
Boyd, 55, started out as an electrician and owned an electrical contracting business in Belfast. He began his career as a property developer and investor in student housing before moving on to acquiring nursing home sites and office market opportunities.
His other company, Killultagh Estates, is owned by his trusts, and has developed into one of the leading property firms in Northern Ireland. It showed its financial muscle in September 2005 when it snapped up the Fareham Shopping Centre in Hampshire for £110m.
Killultagh Estates had £67.6m of net assets in its 2007-08 accounts. Boyd is a keen follower of the turf and sponsors races. In all, Boyd and his family should be worth £110m.
145) John, Clinton & Spencer McCarthy
£115m
Churchill Retirement Living
2008: £180m (-£65m)
Spencer and Clinton McCarthy would very much like to buy their father’s old business.
The brothers tried to buy the McCarthy & Stone retirement home operation in 2003 and they were recently one of three bidders that failed in bids worth £350m to £400m for the troubled group. A third tilt is on the cards.
The McCarthy brothers now run Hampshire-based Churchill Retirement Living, which is in the same field. Its latest accounts show a £2.3m loss on £42.3m sales in 2007-08. But it is not immune to the downturn. In July 2008, it had to shed jobs and Clinton McCarthy, 43, as chairman admitted that it would not make a profit for two years.
The McCarthy brothers learnt all about the retirement home market from their father, John, 69.
A successful property developer, McCarthy senior spotted way back in 1976 a couple of lines in a green paper suggesting that developers should be encouraged to provide sheltered accommodation for the elderly. So he set up McCarthy & Stone, which was floated on the stock market in 1982. He grew the business but left in 2004 after backing the first rebuffed bid for the operation by his sons.
McCarthy stood down as chairman and sold his stake for £74.4m. His sons are very much in the driving seat at Churchill Retirement, which has nearly £44m net assets. We value the business at around £30m. With the earlier sale proceeds and other assets, the McCarthy family is worth perhaps £115m.
145) Sir Robert Ogden
£115m
Ogden Group
2008: £135m (-£20m)
Sir Robert Ogden has a number of property businesses and assets that underwrite his twin passions – horseflesh and charitable work.
Ogden, 73, has more than 30 National Hunt horses in training. He also gives university scholarships to disadvantaged youngsters from Yorkshire’s pit villages.
Ogden was sent to work on a farm at 15. After national service, he used his army gratuity to set up a company supplying quarrying material. Later, he went into property. An early investor in London’s Docklands, he 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, including Ogden Properties and Nevison Properties, which had £40m net assets in 2007. With other private interests, Ogden is easily worth £115m.
145) Sir Richard Sutton & Family
£115m
Sir Richard Sutton’s Settled Estates
2008: £118m (-£3m)
Profits at Sir Richard Sutton’s Settled Estates fell in 2007-08 from £3.4m to £2.8m, although sales were up slightly at £11.7m.
Sutton, 72, inherited the title from his father in 1981 and runs the property-to-farming group.
The Suttons have valuable acreage in Lincolnshire, London, the West Country and the United States. Sutton will also play a crucial role in Grimsby Town Football Club’s plans for a new £15m stadium, as it will be built on land he currently owns.
We value the estate at £110m, below its £123m net assets, and add £5m for past dividends and other assets.
149) Eric Gadsden
£113m
WE Black
2008: £130m (-£17m)
Eric Gadsden’s Chesham-based company, WE Black, went from a £16m profit to a £4.5m loss on £15.9m sales in 2008. The developer still has a rock-solid balance sheet, although its net assets fell £5m to £90.5m. It should be worth £68m.
Gadsden, as owner, has taken little out of the company. He also has past or current stakes in quoted companies worth around £4m, including a £3.5m holding in Michelmersh Brick. There are another £41m of net assets in Three Rivers Property Investments and Church Cottage Investments. Gadsden, 64, is worth £113m.
150) Robert Bourne & Sally Green
£110m
Happybadge Projects
2008: £120m (-£10m)
Property entrepreneur Robert Bourne, 59, made his first fortune with the Local London property group, which was floated on the stock market in 1986 worth £6m.
Three years later, it was sold for £110m. The Bourne family made over £16m. Since then Bourne has built up and then sold stakes in companies such as Ex-Lands and Clubhaus. Assets at Happybadge came in at £63m in 2008.
Bourne has a £10m flat in Mayfair, which he bought as an investment in 2002. His Bourne Capital investment operation also sold a luxury Park Lane block for £100m in 2006. We value Happybadge at £53m in today’s climate, and add £47m for other Bourne and Green assets. We stick at £110m.
150) Sir Tom Farmer
£110m
Morston Assets
2008: £120m (-£10m)
Sir Tom Farmer, 69-year-old founder of the Kwik Fit chain of garages, is best known in Scotland for owning 90% of Hibs, the leading Edinburgh football team.
He netted £78m when he sold Kwik Fit to Ford in 1999 and has been an active property investor ever since. Canny enough to hang onto some valuable freeholds from the sale, his development activities continue apace.
In February 2009 he bought a Newcastle business park. We can see half-a-dozen small property companies controlled by Farmer or his trusts with around £17.5m of net assets.
In the current climate, he should be worth £110m after tax.
152) Martin Birrane
£109m
Peer Group
2008: £130m (-£21m)
Birrane’s Peer Group is being hit by the Lola racing car operation losses and the property downturn.
In 2007-08, the Peer net assets fell sharply from £116.5m to £97.9m. We value Peer at £90m in this climate. Birrane, 74, also owns the Mondello Park racing track in Co Kildare which, after significant investment, hosts international race meetings. With other interests and assets, he is worth £109m.
153) Eric Grove
£108m
Catesby
2008: £130m (-£22m)
Eric Grove’s Catesby Property Group turned in a useful £9m profit on £40.4m sales in 2007.
Grove started Canberra, a Midlands housebuilder, in 1968. He sold the business to Alfred McAlpine in 1988, mainly for 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.
Recently, he has sold well over 1.2m sq ft of warehousing and distribution centres. With other stakes, cash and assets, the 79-year-old Grove should be worth £108m today.
154) Simon Karimzadeh & Family
£107m
Eskar International
2008: £180m (-£73m)
Eskar International, a London-based property trading group, is owned by the Karimzadeh family, headed by Simon, 47. Eskar showed £186m net assets in 2007-08. But in these turbulent times we value the company at £100m, adding £7m for other assets to the Karimzadeh family.
155) Frank Burke & Family
£105m
The BDL Group
2008: £125m (-£20m)
Cabretta Holdings, a London-based construction company, made £2m profit on £54m sales in 2008. It has £9m of net assets and is the parent for the BDL Group, run by 61-year-old Irishman Frank Burke.
Burke’s family also owns Farmglade, a property firm with around £21.2m net assets in 2008. In this climate, we stick at £105m.
155) Heinrich Feldman & Family
£105m
Inremco 26
2008: £125m (-£20m)
Heinrich Feldman, 73, is a very low-key London property owner and trader with over 50 directorships to his name.
Feldman’s main holding company is Inremco 26, which was incorporated in 1983. It made £3.8m profit on £17.7m sales in 2007-08, when its net assets were £104.5m.
We can also see Feldman stakes in a host of smaller property companies worth over £9m. We reckon that Feldman is now worth at least £105m.
155) Everard Goodman
£105m
Trust of Property
2008: £130m (-£25m)
In 1983, Goodman floated Tops Estates on the then Unlisted Securities Market.
It prospered quietly over the years until May 2005, when Goodman sold up to Land Securities for £517m, walking away with over £130m.
He also had a £8.2m stake in Trust of Property, a quoted investment trust which was wound up voluntarily in early 2006.
Honoured with a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Props lunch, which raises money for children’s charity the Variety Club, Goodman now has a mission to use his fortune for charitable purposes. In 2005 he gave away £5m to educational and medical charities.
Other assets (£2.5m of net assets in small companies) and dividends should normally keep Goodman, 73, at £135m, but we lop off a hefty £30m because of the decline in asset values.
155) Anthony Khalastchi & Family
£105m
Flodrive Holdings
2008: £120m (-£15m)
Property investor Tony Khalastchi made auction history in May 2003 when he bid £8.55m for an industrial ground rent in Bristol, setting a record at the time.
Khalastchi can afford it. His family’s two property groups, Flodrive and Strandpark Properties, showed a slight drop in net assets, down to £104m in their 2007-08 accounts. We value the businesses slightly below the net asset total at £90m.
In August, Aviva sold 82-84 St Ann’s Road in Harrow, north-west London, to Flodrive for £4.6m – an 8.4% yield. Khalastchi, 48, also held the freeholds to several branches of the failed Woolworths stores chain. We add another £15m for other Khalastchi family assets.
155) David Roberts
£105m
Edinburgh House Estates
2008: £110m (-£5m)
David Roberts is one of the few winners emerging from the current property carnage.
His company, Edinburgh House, sold the majority of its UK portfolio in 2004 and headed to Germany. But with prices so low in Britain, he is planning to buy again here.
Roberts, 53, now runs Edinburgh House Estates, which despite its name is a London-based property operation.
Its parent, Edinburgh House Estates (Holdings), made a £1.1m profit on £36.8m sales in 2007, when its net assets rose to £165m. Roberts has a near 78% stake worth £95m.
Roberts’ art collection and other assets, such as a stake in Bawtry Properties, should take him to £105m easily.
160) Mathias Kraus & Family
£100m
Pall Mall Investments
2008: £165m (-£65m)
Mathias Kraus, 67, and his family own Pall Mall Investments (London), a north London-based property group, which made a £908,000 profit in 2007-08, and has net assets which fell £185m to £155.4m.
We value the business and the low-key Kraus family below the net asset figure at £100m.
160) Andrew Rosenfeld
£100m
Minerva
2008: £100m (No change)
Andrew Rosenfeld, the former chief executive of the quoted property group Minerva, is now based in Geneva, where he runs Air Capital. The company has invested in the sliding property market.
Rosenfeld, 47, sold a large shareholding in Minerva along with his north London home. The two netted him £100m, and we value him at that.
160) Stephen Spouge & Family
£100m
Swayfields
2008: £100m (No change)
Stephen Spouge’s Petrol Service Station Swayfields group showed a £18m loss on £48.5m sales in 2007-08. But its net assets came in at £104.7m. It has 11 sites with the latest opening in March 2009 on the M40 after a £60m investment.
There has been a mooted £400m sale of the group but, cautiously, we value Spouge, 65, and his family at £100m in this climate.
163) Stuart Monk & Family
£99m
Jomast Property & Finance Co
2008: £97m (£2m)
Stockton-based Jomast saw its profits come in at £5.9m on £14.7m sales in 2007-08, when its net assets rose from £104m to £116.5m.
The company, run by Stuart Monk, a leading local developer, is looking to transform the waterfront at Hartlepool Marina after a £100m development was given the green light in June 2008.
We value Jomast slightly below the net assets at £96m. Monk, 60, and his family trusts own it all. We add another £3m for other assets and stakes in separate companies, including Bandoffice.
164) Gerry Conlan
£98m
Quando
New entry
Gerry Conlan made about £107m with the sale of Millennium Park in Co Kildare in 2006, right at the peak of the market. At the time it was the largest transaction involving development land in the history of the state.
Conlan, 44, has since moved into healthcare and bought properties in Wicklow and Dublin. But in a falling market we shave him back to £98m.
164) Dermot O’ Rourke
£98m
Millennium Park
New entry
Property developers Dermot O’Rourke and Gerry Conlan sold about 400 acres in Co Kildare for ¤320m in 2006.
The sale of Millennium Park was at the height of the property boom and, at the time, it was the largest transaction involving development land in the history of Ireland.
After disposing of the land, O’Rourke’s family trust agreed to forward-fund a ¤60m landmark office building at Heuston South Quarter, while the trust also acquired the headquarters of luxury retailer Hermès in Paris. It is worth £79m.
He made £107m from the sale of Millennium Park. In the current climate, O’Rourke, 64, should be worth £98m.
166) William Rankin & Family
£96m
Hanro
2008: £106m (-£10m)
Newcastle developer Hanro Group has been lauded for its sensitive £2.5m redevelopment of the grade II-listed Cooper’s Auction Yard building in Newcastle city centre.
The 1897 building close to Newcastle Central Station is a rare surviving example of a purpose-built, multi-storey horse, carriage and motor car repository.
Hanro has invested heavily in Newcastle’s city centre. William Rankin, 78, chairs the company and, while he only has a small stake, many of the shares are held in family trusts.
In 2007 Hanro made £3.8m profit on £6.9m sales. We value the business at £90m, less than its net assets of £103m.
We add another £6m after tax and spending to the wider Rankin family for other assets and past dividends from 2003-07.
167)Sir David Garrard
£95m
Minerva
2008: £105m (-£10m)
In March 2005, Garrard, 70, stood down as Minerva chairman and left the business.
His family trusts sold £37m worth of shares at the time. Other assets and early sale proceeds from Land Investors should take the Garrard family to £95m in the current climate.
167) Bill Gredley & Family
£95m
Unex Corporation
2008: £115m (-£20m)
Gredley is a shrewd property developer. In 2004-05, he reorganised his interests with a new parent company, Unex Group Holdings, which showed a £1m profit on £9.2m sales in 2007-08 when its net assets fell from £130.4m to £116.9m. Unex is gearing up to speculatively develop office space in central Cambridge, with its 30,000 sq ft, £13.5m Academy House project.
The business is owned by Gredley, 76, and his family. But in the current climate, we value the company at around £80m. Dividends of £13m and a £2m stake in smaller companies take Gredley and his family to £95m after tax.
167) Jack Morris & Family
£95m
Business Design Centre
2008: £105m (-£10m)
The Business Design Centre in London’s fashionable Islington has become a smart venue for exhibitions and the like. This will please the Morris family led by Jack Morris, 53, chairman of its parent company.
In 2007-08, the Business Design Centre Group made a record £5.2m profit on £17.9m sales. Its net assets hit £105.4m but we value it at £80m in today’s climate. We add £15m, after allowing for tax, on previous deals.
167) Michael & Robert Slowe
£95m
J Leon & Co
2008: £125m (-£30m)
The Slowe cousins Michael, 74, and Robert, 72, are directors of J Leon, a family-owned property investment and holding company.
Based in London, the low-key family’s company made a record £4.3m profit on £6.9m sales in 2008-09, and showed record net assets of £164m. With low borrowings and a strong balance sheet, the company is easily worth £95m in today’s market. We add £5m for dividends and other assets to the wider Slowe family.
171) Tony Bramall & Family
£92m
Bramall Properties
New entry
Yorkshire entrepreneur Tony Bramall, 73, spent £18.5m in February 2009 acquiring a Leeds office block using his own money and no debt. Bramall’s money comes from the car trade. In 1963 he joined his father’s Sheffield-based car dealership, later taking over the reins. The company was floated in 1978, and nine years later Bramall agreed to a takeover by Avis, collecting £45m.
Then in 1990 Bramall put £1.5m into his second car venture, called CD Bramall. In January 2004 he sold this to Pendragon in a £230m takeover, netting £76m for his stake. He raised eyebrows in April 2006 with his third foray by paying £56m to acquire a stake in Lookers, Britain’s second biggest quoted car dealership. However, the collapse in values for car dealers later cut his stake to £8.7m.
Bramall also has another car dealership, he set up with a former chief executive who worked for him. Bramall & Jones made £2.4m profit on nearly £98.9m sales in 2008. Even in today’s difficult climate this fourth venture should be worth £10m, and Bramall has a 89% stake. We can see another £27.8m of net assets in the 2007-08 accounts of Bramall Properties and Winterquay, two property and farming ventures.
In all, the Bramall family is easily worth £92m after tax.
171) Albert Hay & Family
£92m
Capital & City
2008: £106m (-£14m)
Chartered surveyor Albert Hay, 62, and his family own Mayfair property group Capital & City plus 57.5% of its sister group Capital & City Properties. The firms had £78m net assets in 2008.
The Hay family stake is worth £56m. Other assets and property investments add £36m, taking the Hay family to £92m.
173) Paul Caddick & Family
£90m
Caddick Group
2008: £180m (-£90m)
In the year to August 2008, Yorkshire-based Caddick Group went from a £3.2m profit into a £4.2m loss on £72.8m of sales, while net assets came in at £45.1m.
The Caddick family – led by Paul Caddick, 59 – and trusts own more than 90% of the shares. But in the difficult property market we cut the family value to around £90m.
173) Andrew Creighton
£90m
Brunswick (No 1)
2008: £115m (-£25m)
Brunswick (No 1) is one of the largest property companies in Northern Ireland. Its net assets hit £238.1m in 2008, against £236.9m in 2007. Losses leapt from £3.8m to £21.6m on a £38.9m turnover. Creighton, 48, owns half. Other companies owned by Creighton include Hazelhaw Properties, with £28.8m net assets in 2006-07. We value him at £90m.
173) John Hindle & Family
£90m
Brookhouse Properties
2008: £120m (-£30m)
There are 16 separate Brookhouse companies, with a complex share structure leading back to the same parent, the Luxembourg-based Aggregate Company. Total net assets in 2007 was around £164m but, assuming there may be some double counting, we apply an £80m value. We assume that the Hindle family is the ultimate beneficiary of Aggregate and should be worth £90m with other assets.
173) Anton Bilton & Family
£90m
Raven Property Group
2008: £120m (-£30m)
“If I were an alien developer from outer space, I’d land my ship right by the Kremlin now,” says Anton Bilton. His love affair with Russia is about to be tested to the full.
His quoted Raven Russia property operation is swallowing up its former parent company, Raven Mount, in order to further its huge ambitions in Russia. It has built 13m sq ft of warehouses across Russia since 2005. Bilton, 45, wants to build even more and the takeover will give him the resources to do that.
He had an £11m stake in Raven Mount, best known for converting listed hospitals, mansions and schools. His stake in Raven Russia is worth around £2m but that company will grow in size following the takeover.
With the wider family wealth added to Bilton’s own assets, which include a country mansion, a 50% stake in Santos Capital (over £10.6m net assets), and big stakes in the Flowers Gallery and KX Gym in Chelsea, we revise the family valuation at £90m.
173) Sir John Ritblat & Family
£90m
British Land
2008: £110m (-£20m)
Since Sir John Ritblat exited the chairmanship of British Land at the end of 2006, BL’s shares have fallen from £17.14 to £5.23p in September 2009.
Ritblat – who has been appointed honorary president of the London Festival of Architecture 2010 – left just as the property market peaked, but he has not turned his back on the industry, even at the age of 74.
Indeed, Ritblat’s retirement lasted just two weeks and he resurfaced in early January 2007 when he joined forces with his younger son, Jamie, to spearhead a £2.6bn property investment fund. The new venture reunited father and son, who are regarded as two of the brightest entrepreneurs in the property industry.
When he left BL, Ritblat sold most of his stake, netting £57m, but he retained an interest worth around £13m.
Jamie runs Delancey Estates, taken private in 2001 when the Ritblats had 7%.
Options and other business assets, including Chardwick Investments, take the Ritblat family to a conservative £90m in the current asset downturn.
173) Jonathan Hitchins & Family
£90m
Robert Hitchins Group
2008: £110m (-£20m)
Cheltenham-based Hitchins Group recently sold two of its buildings for £21.3m, and is busy building business parks and new villages in Wales and the South West. But in 2007-08 profits fell from £18m to £8.2m on sales down £11m.
The developer does have £91.2m net assets and a strong balance sheet, but in the current climate we value it at £65m.
The holding company is Bay Holdings, based in Bermuda, but we assume that it is ultimately controlled by the Hitchins family. We add £25m for other assets.
179) Roger Wickens & Family
£89m
Store Property Holdings
2008: £129m (-£40m)
Industrial and retail developer Store saw its 2007-08 profits rise from £3.6m to £4.2m on sales of £9.7m, but its net assets fell sharply in value from £129m to £100.3m. With a solid balance sheet it should be worth £80m even today. We add £9m to the Wickens family for past dividends and the £2.8m net assets of the separate Kingmere.
180) Owen O’Callaghan
£88m
Elendale Investments
2008: £114m (-£26m)
Earlier this year Owen O’Callaghan said: “We haven’t been spending silly money and charging silly prices for projects.” And it is sentiment like this that has made O’Callaghan one of Ireland’s most successful property developers.
He has a share of a £106m trust, property in London and a 40% stake in builder Moyglen. In all, O’Callaghan, 69, is worth £88m.
181) Bill McCabe
£87m
LNC Property Group
2008: £100m (-£13m)
Glasgow-based LNC Properties, which is controlled by an Isle of Man company reckoned to be linked to McCabe, owns properties worth £445m in the UK, Ireland, US, South Africa and mainland Europe. The company grew out of McCabe’s €117m purchase of a mixed property portfolio from Scottish Life in 1999. After allowing for borrowings and the sharp fall in asset values, we cut our valuation of McCabe, 52, to £87m this year.
182) Robin Clark & Family
£86m
Taylor Clark
2008: £106m (-£20m)
Taylor Clark, the London-based property, farming, hotels and investment group, saw its profits fall in 2007-08 from £17.7m to £4.6m on a £22.5m turnover. It predicted a “bumpy ride” in 2008-09. But it does have low borrowings and hefty cash reserves. We value the business, largely owned by the Clark family, at £130m, slightly below its £181m net assets. The Underwood Trust, a charity, has a 34% stake, which leaves the Clark family’s stake worth nearly £86m.
183) Con Folkes & Family
£85m
Folkes Group
2008: £106m (-£21m)
A revaluation of its properties in 2008 hit the bottom line of Folkes Holdings as the credit crunch bit. But the group still managed to make operating profits of £9.2m. Folkes, now in property and engineering, was taken private in 2002 through a £38.5m deal, leaving Folkes, 56, and his family with all the shares. It has over £52m net assets. In the current climate, it should be worth £55m. We add £30m for other assets.
183) John Morphet
£85m
Pure Leisure
2008: £98m (-£13m)
Morphet is investing £243m in his Caribbean golf resort by building 250 new properties. He is also moving to Cyprus but has not forgotten his roots with leisure park purchases in the Peak District and Lancashire.
Pure Leisure showed a £2.2m profit on £35m sales in 2007-08. Net assets rose to £72.2m. We value the firm at £65m and Morphet, 54, with other assets, at £85m.
183) John Seddon & Family
£85m
Seddon Group
2008: £65m (£20m)
In 2008, the Seddon Group saw its profits fall from £11.5m to £1.2m on sales down £25m at £246.4m. Cautiously in today’s economic climate, we value the company at £50m, well below its £80m net asset figure.
The Seddon family also owns the separate Seddon Properties, which turned in £2.5m profit on £2.8m sales in 2008. We value this operation at £30m, again well below its £41.4m of net assets. To the total of £80m Seddon company net assets we add another £5m for other assets, past salaries and dividends. In all, the Seddon family should easily be worth £85m.
183) Dick Watson & Family
£85m
Keepmoat
2008: £115m (-£30m)
Regeneration specialist Keepmoat is involved in many large schemes in the North. Partners include local authorities, registered social landlords and housing companies.
Keepmoat was sold in August 2007 to a management team backed by the Bank of Scotland in a £783m deal. Scots-born Dick Watson, 67, who heads the group, had an 18.26% stake. Allowing for any tax on the sale proceeds, we value Watson’s stake at £80m. Past dividends take the Watson family to around £85m.
187) Michael Shanly
£82m
Michael Shanly Group
2008: £110m (-£28m)
Shanly, 63, founded the upmarket Michael Shanly housebuilding operation in 1970. He chairs and owns at least 13 significant but separate building or development companies. His main operation is Sorbon Homes, which made a £7.6m profit on £53.5m sales in 2007. It has £53.5m net assets. But other Shanly firms, including Sorbon Investments, take the figure to £70m. We add £12m for Shanly’s past salaries and other assets.
188) Bakir Cola & Family
£80m
Cola Holdings
2008: £148m (-£68m)
In January 2009, Iraqi-born Bakir Cola, 67, spent £30m buying a building adjacent to his Westbury Hotel in London’s Mayfair. Cola bought the 246-room hotel in 1999 for around £90m. He also has the 550-room Kensington Close Hotel.
Cola runs and owns Cola Holdings, which made £4.9m profit on £46m sales in the year to September 2008. It has £26.6m net assets. With proceeds from the £50m sale of Harrington Hall hotel to Spanish hotel giant NH Hotels, Cola is valued at around £80m.
188) The Duke of Roxburghe
£80m
Sunlaws Development Co
2008: £100m (-£20m)
The Duke of Roxburghe was among a group of investors who stumped up £1m to back a new Scottish call centre operation called BeCogent, which immediately started winning substantial contracts. But efforts to expand housing development have suffered a blow.
Roxburghe, 54, had built 40 luxury homes in the £10m Sunlaws Village, but the second stage – another 40 homes – has been put on ice, much to the delight of locals. All this activity is designed to raise income to invest in protecting the fabric of his ancestral home, Floors Castle, and its 65,500 acres.
The duke’s Sunlaws Development Company and Floors Stud have £3m net assets between them. He has other stakes with £2.7m net assets in total. But with lower asset values, we cut our valuation of Roxburghe to £80m this year.
188) Melvyn & Delia Grodner
£80m
Atmore Properties
2008: £100m (-£20m)
Melvyn, 65, and Delia Grodner, 56, own some asset-rich property companies in Liverpool. Their principal operation, Atmore Properties, saw its profits fall sharply in 2007-08 from £6.1m to just £438,000 on £12.6m sales.
More importantly, its net assets also fell from £78.5m to £67.6m. We value the business at £60m in today’s market. Three small but separate businesses have a further £18.5m of net assets. We cut these to a £12m valuation. With other property and past salaries, the Grodners are easily worth £80m.
188) Ray Horney
£80m
Real Estate Opportunities
2008: £100m (-£20m)
After selling his white goods retailing business for £21m in 1985, Horney took a stake in St James Beach Hotels, a West Indies chain floated in 1994. Three years later he made £27m when it was sold.
He has a near £1.7m stake in Real Estate Opportunities and another £9m in four other quoted property companies, including China Real Estate and Nordic Land.
With his quoted stakes down sharply by around £20m, we cut Horney, 73, back to £80m.
192) John Chamberlain & Family
£78m
Chamberlain Holdings
2008: £74m (£4m)
Luton-based Chamberlain Group expanded from a small joinery manufacturing firm into a general building and maintenance company. In the early 1970s the group diversified into commercial letting, retaining an in-house small works division dedicated to the construction and conversion of new and refurbished commercial and industrial properties.
Today, the group is headed by John Chamberlain, 65, and its portfolio comprises more than 150 self-contained office suites, 140 self-contained industrial and warehousing units, plus a number of retail outlets. The Chamberlain family owns 99% of the shares in the business, which had £68.8m net assets at the end of 2008.
With £1.3m for the separate Home Counties Investments operation and £8m of personal assets, the family is worth £78m.
192) Peter Dawson & Family
£78m
Consolidated Property Wilmslow
2008: £102m (-£24m)
Property developer Peter Dawson runs Consolidated Property, which saw its net assets rise from £48m to nearly £50m in 2007-08. We value the family-owned business at £35m. Dawson is also a director of the separate Gemsupa, which showed £60m net assets in the same period. It is worth £40m today and is owned by the Jensal Settlement. Dawson, 56, was the settler and trustee of this trust.
As a result, we assume that the Dawson family is the ultimate beneficiary. In all, we value the family at £78m with other assets.
192) Danny Desmond
£78m
Bride Hall
2008: £90m (-£12m)
Danny Desmond, 68, started the Bride Hall property group in 1984, and sold 50% of the company to Great Portland Estates for £10m in 1987. He bought that 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.
We cut Bride Hall companies and other property investments by Desmond in the UK and abroad to £70m in the current climate, and add £8m for other assets.
195) Duncan Sinclair & Family
£76m
Mountview Estates
2008: £83m (-£7m)
Mountview shares were hit badly in the 2008-09 property slump. The London-based operation, which specialises in residential property, has, however, seen its shares recover slightly in recent months.
The firm is chaired by Duncan Sinclair, 62, and the Sinclair family’s stake is now worth around £73m. We add £3m for assets in smaller private firms such as Ossian Investors and Sinclair Estates.
196) John Marston & Family
£75m
Marston Properties
2008: £90m (-£15m)
Marston Properties Holdings made £2.9 profit on £7.7m sales in 2007-08. It has £65m net assets but we value it at £50m in today’s climate, putting the family stake at around £37m. We value the Marston family at £76m.
196) David Russell
£75m
Property Alliance
2008: £90m (-£15m)
The Russell empire, apart from city-centre sites in Manchester, also includes offices and leisure developments in Oxford, Chorley and Blackburn. His Property Alliance operation now has a development and investment portfolio valued at £240m and substantial development programmes throughout the North West. It showed £77.7m net assets in its 2007-08 accounts. With other assets, Russell, 53, is worth £75m in the current climate.
198) Michael Slade
£72
Helical Bar
2008: £75m (-£3m)
Veteran property developer Michael Slade, chief executive of London-based Helical Bar, is working through his fourth property downturn.
He warned recently that recovery might take until 2011-12, but he sees plenty of opportunities in the interim. Helical has raised about £500m for investments. It has also amended its banking covenants to give it breathing space.
Slade’s stake in Helical Bar has not been immune from the market crash, though it has recovered and is worth £54m.
By exercising share options, Slade made a £1.3m gain in 2004, £4m in 2005 and £4.4m in 2006. A special dividend for Helical Bar shareholders totalling £107m in 2004 resulted in a further £12m for Slade, 61.
Stakes in ventures such as Interactive Digital Broadcasting and Europa Property Investments, plus his own property assets, should easily take Slade to £72m after tax.
198) Jack Brignall & Family
£72m
Wykeland Group
2008: £77m (-£5m)
Jack Brignall, 82, is a leading local property developer who started the Wykeland Group in 1970. He sold his original company, truck distributor Tillotson, in the early 1960s before starting up again with Wykeland. The Hull-based business had £83.3m of net assets in 2007-08 when it made £4.8m profit. We value the business below its net assets in today’s climate at £65m. Other assets take the Brignall family to at least £72m.
198) John Brooksbank
£72m
Blackshaw Holdings
2008: £82m (-£10m)
John Brooksbank’s property portfolio consists of residential houses, retail commercial and industrial property, hotels, pubs, caravan parks, marinas, farms and a golf course. We can see £22.3m of net assets in the 2008 accounts of Brooksbank’s main company, Blackshaw Holdings, and a further £9.5m of net assets in others.
In all, his business assets are worth £66m. We add £6m for other assets to Brooksbank, 53.
198) Brian Howard & Family
£72m
CAEC Howard (Holdings)
2008: £72m (No change)
The Howard Investment Co made £2.7m profit on £7.2m sales in the year to September 2008. Its net assets came in at £69m. In 2006, the Howard Ventures property trading operation was demerged from the main group. In 2008 it showed £12.6m net assets.
The Howard family, led by Brian Howard, 74, owns all the business. We value the two companies together at around £70m. Other assets should take the Howard family to £72m easily.
198) Panico Panayi
£72m
Cambos Enterprises
2008: £80m (-£8m)
Panayi sold the Buckingham bingo chain to venture capitalists in late 2005 for £90m, 35 years after opening the first in Preston.
He later moved into property and became involved in a joint venture in Romania which, in early 2007, sealed a £296m deal with leading European retailer Carrefour as anchor tenant at the £296m Colosseum shopping centre, Bucharest. This was just three weeks after Romania joined the European Union.
With other assets, Panayi, 67, should be worth around £72m.
198) Woon Wing Yip & Family
£72m
W Wing Yip & Brothers (Holdings)
2008: £60m (£12m)
Wing Yip has used his sharp business acumen and a focus on cash rather than credit to see him through the recession. Wing Yip is still enjoying almost double-digit growth in his oriental and Chinese grocery operation, with a £13m expansion under way.
In the year to September 2008, W Wing Yip Brothers Trading made a record £6.7m profit on £91.5m sales, but it has £29.7m net assets. The family also has a property portfolio held in the separate W Wing Yip & Brothers Property & Investments, with nearly £26.3m net assets in 2008.
The two companies should be worth £60m. Other minority stakes in smaller operations and past salaries add £12m to the Yip family.
204) Kip Bertram & Family
£70m
Rysa Lodge Residential Properties
2008: £78m (-£8m)
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, 65, is no longer in the book trade, having moved into property development, particularly in London. As a result, the family’s asset wealth is now around £70m.
204) David Daly
£70m
Albany Homes
2008: £70m (No change)
David Daly owns the Grafton Street building in Dublin, which has the Wallis fashion outlet as its tenant, and was awarded a 48.5% rent increase in April 2009 after arbitration. It increased the rent on that building to €787,000 pa.
In 2006 Daly paid £17m for Franklin House, an office block on one-fifth of an acre in Dublin. He also owns Albany Homes, a Dublin housebuilder which saw its profits plunge from £11.1m to £2.3m on £102.6m sales in 2007, when it had £40m net assets. In the current climate, we cut our valuation of Daly, 59, to £70m.
204) Bruce Jarvis & Family
£70m
Ravensale
2008: £100m (-£30m)
Jarvis’s Ravensale showed £26.2m of net assets in 2007-08. His Pearcroft operation is also a shareholder in European Land & Property, which is the company behind Paddington Basin. It showed £15.1m net assets in its 2008 accounts. In all, 61-year-old Jarvis should easily be worth £70m.
204) Sir John Mactaggart & Family
£70m
Mactaggart Heritable Holdings
2008: £80m (-£10m)
Mactaggart Heritable, the Glasgow-based property group, saw its net assets fall slightly in 2008 to £82.3m. But it went from a £2.2m profit to a £6.3m loss on £8.5m sales. The firm owns a string of high-priced commercial properties, mostly in London and Manhattan, where prices are under pressure. We value the business at £60m, adding £10m for past dividends to the MacTaggart family.
204) Peter Martin & Family
£70m
Radnor Walk Investments
2008: £80m (-£10m)
Radnor Walk showed nearly £58m of net assets in 2007-08. It is owned and run by Peter Martin, 80, a low-key property man, who has a 99% stake. The Martin family also own Martin’s Properties (Chelsea). In all, the net assets of the two companies come to over £85m, but in the current climate we value them at £67m. We add £3m for other assets.
204) Charles Yeates
£70m
WS Yeates
2008: £90m (-£20m)
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.
Yeates, 73, has no borrowings and his properties in Britain and Spain produce good yields.
Yeates’s Loughborough-based company is involved in property and fine art. In 2008, the company made a £414,000 loss but has nearly £27m of net assets. In the current climate, we trim him back to £70m.
210) Mark & Kathleen Kavanagh
£69m
Hardwicke
2008: £80m (-£11m)
Dublin property developer Mark Kavanagh, 64, has been involved in such prestigious projects as Dublin’s International Financial Services Centre. Kavanagh and his wife Kathleen, 48, have two main companies, Hardwicke and Kopian, with £53.5m of net assets between them in 2005-06. We value the former Wicklow-based couple, who now live in Switzerland, at £69m.
211) Michael Heller & Family
£67m
London & Associated Properties
2008: £60m (£7m)
Michael Heller, chairman of London & Associated, told his shareholders in May 2009 that he expected no “meaningful recovery” in the market over the next year and planned to ride it out by concentrating on cash collection and close portfolio management.
However, the UK shopping centre and London retail specialist said its low rate of tenant default and recent significant lettings in London and Sheffield showed there was a market for quality shops in good locations.
Highlights included its largest single letting to US fashion and homeware brand Anthropologie, which has taken a 15-year lease at an annual rent of £1.1m at the site of the former Antiquarius antiques market on the King’s Road.
Heller, 73, built up and sold KP Nuts to United Biscuits in 1968. He invested his wealth in property, with the family controlling London & Associated Properties since the early 1970s. The family has a £26m stake in the firm, plus an £8m stake in Bisichi Mining. Other assets take the Heller family to £67m.
212) Jim Leavesley & Family
£66m
Evans Property Holdings
2008: £95m (-£29m)
The Leavesley family wealth comes from St Modwen. The shares have recovered from the 2008-09 stock market turmoil and the family stake is now worth £42m. Leavesley, 79, has also been involved in another large property group – Evans Property Holdings.
The firm had £320.3m net assets in 2005-06, valuing the family stake at £10m in the current market. Today, JD Leavesley is a huge dealer in surplus military supplies. It showed £16.2m net assets in 2007-08. With other assets, such as a pig operation and a small property company, the family should be worth £66m.
212) Patrick McKillen
£66m
Jayfield Investments
2008: £66m (No change)
McKillen, 54, has built a £43m international property portfolio through Pacific Land and other firms such as Jayfield Investments. Two years ago he invested in the London Savoy hotel chain.
More recently he was part of a consortium that made a £48m profit on the sale of a portfolio of shops in London’s Covent Garden three years after their purchase. We can see £106m net assets in Clarendon Properties (Holdings), one of McKillen’s main companies. He has a 50% stake but, allowing for debt and the downturn, we value McKillen at £66m.
214) John De Stefano
£65m
De Stefano Investment Corporation
2008: £80m (-£15m)
John De Stefano’s development firm London & Henley is battling the council in Winchester over its plans for a rival £150m development to his own in the historic city.
Although De Stefano has 84 directorships, his parent operation, De Stefano Investment Corporation, is his main asset. In 2007-08, it made just £128,000 profit on £9.9m sales. But it had nearly £79m net assets. It is owned entirely by De Stefano, 64, and we value him at around £65m.
214) Peter Gadsby
£65m
Ark Capital
2008: £75m (-£10m)
Peter Gadsby has traded very successfully in the property boom years. But he stepped away from a number of new projects in 2008, unwilling to pay the asking prices for land at that time. His commercial interests are centred on NG2 in Nottingham and Pride Park in Derby.
Gadsby, 61, also owns Ark Capital, which made £2.9m profit on £31.9m sales in 2006-07. It has net assets of £10.3m. These various property interests are worth at least £35m. His cash balances exceed £20m. Other investments and private property easily take Gadsby to £65m, even in this climate.
214)Sir John Hall & Family
£65m
Cameron Hall Developments
2008: £75m (-£10m)
Hall started out by buying supermarkets and renovating old houses, moving up steadily to develop the UK’s first out-of-town shopping centre, the MetroCentre, in 1979. Hall, 76, pocketed around £70m when it was sold. The family property company, Cameron Hall, made a £1.8m loss in 2007 when its net assets hit £24.5m. He bought, floated and sold Newcastle FC and there are other developments in the pipeline. We cautiously value the Hall family at £65m, after tax.
214) Edward Lonergan
£65m
Deramore Holdings
2008: £75m (-£10m)
Edward Lonergan, 58, owns and runs Deramore Holdings, a highly profitable property developer and construction company.
In May, Edinburgh city council approved Deramore’s plans for a £40m mixed-use scheme at 121-123 Princes Street and – after some wrangling – withdrew its demand for a £500,000 contribution towards construction of the Scottish capital’s tram line in recognition of the tough conditions facing developers. The scheme includes a 96-room hotel.
Deramore saw its profits fall from £26.4m to £20.7m in 2007-08, but with assets of more than £94m, Deramore would easily be worth £60m in today’s market.
Lonergan also has £3.5m of assets in two other property firms, Lochinver and Deramore (L). We value him at £65m in all.
214) Bill Morris & Family
£65m
Morris & Co (Shrewsbury)
2008: £75m (-£10m)
Five generations of Morris family members have developed a business with interests in property, supermarkets and care homes. Bill Morris, 71, is the current boss.
The business made a healthy £3.4m profit on £24.4m sales in 2007-08. It has £84.5m of net assets and a solid balance sheet. We value the business – and the family – at £65m in this climate.
214) Johnny Ronan
£65m
Treasury Holdings Group
2008: £207m (-£142m)
Johnny Ronan, 55, and Richard Barrett, two of Ireland’s top property developers, co-own Dublin-based Treasury Holdings, which ran designs for its planned redevelopment of Battersea Power Station past Prince Charles for approval before applying for planning permission.
A £4bn masterplan to save Battersea was unveiled in June 2008. But a year later Treasury Holdings has made significant changes to its plans, scaling back the amount of office space from an initial plan for 2.5m sq feet to 1.5m sq ft and dropping proposals for a 250-metre eco chimney.
Ronan and Barrett took over the Battersea development in 2006 in a £400m deal. Treasury Holdings holds a controlling stake in Real Estate Opportunities, a property investment trust. That stake is now worth £51m. Ronan’s share and other assets take him to £65m.
214) Andrew & Sharon Turner
£65m
Central Trust
2008: £132m (-£67m)
The lending shortage has taken its toll on Norwich-based financial broker Central Trust, which axed 180 jobs in March 2009. Chairman Andrew Turner, 51, said: “There is much reduced funding for lending. We have to consider matching the size of our business to the market.”
In 2008, profits fell from £15.6m to £2.5m on sales down £28m at £85.4m. Turner recently launched a new state-of-the-art computer system, which he reckons will give Central Trust a competitive advantage. We value Central Trust, which has £103.6m of net assets, at around £65m. Other assets should take Turner and his wife Sharon, 52, also a director, to £65m.
214) Jeff Smith
£65m
AIM Group
2008: £85m (-£20m)
Smith’s main wealth is in a property company, Proudreed, which he owns jointly with Caspar Macdonald-Hall. It made £16.9m profit on £35.3m sales in 2008 and has more than £183m of net assets. Smith’s stake should be worth around £60m. We add £5m to Smith, 63, for other assets.
222) Richard Barrett
£60m
Treasury Holdings Group
2008: £207m (-£147m)
Richard Barrett, 55, is co-owner – with Johnny Ronan – of Dublin-based Treasury Holdings, which holds a controlling stake in Real Estate Opportunities, a property investment trust quoted on the London stock market. That stake is now worth £51m. Barrett’s share and other assets take him to £60m.
222) Raymond Mould
£60m
Aldenhold
2008: £60m (No change)
Old-fashioned property guys Raymond Mould and Patrick Vaughan have begun buying assets for their third venture in as many decades – London & Stamford. Theflurry of deals began earlier this year and, so far, includes a £600m half-share in the Meadowhall centre, bought with Cavendish, the Gulf investment fund.
Mould’s London & Stamford stake is now worth nearly £10m after a recent sharp rise in values. After a capital raising announced in July, the serial entrepreneurs have £1bn to spend and they want to spend it by next spring, then convert the purchases into a real estate investment trust.
Mould, 68, started working with Vaughan in 1969, shortly after they met. They sold their first property venture, Arlington Securities, to British Aerospace in 1989 for £227m. But they did retain a 15% stake in the business park specialist. Mould’s stake in their second venture, Pillar, was worth £34m when an £811m takeover by British Land was agreed in 2005. With earlier share sale proceeds, and his extensive racing interests, we reckon Mould is worth £60m, with Vaughan at £40m .
222) Rupert Mucklow & Family
£60m
A&J Mucklow
2008: £65m (-£5m)
Birmingham property group A&J Mucklow posted a pretax loss of £38.8m in the second half of 2008.
The firm, run by Rupert Mucklow, 46, said the loss was due to a £44.5m fall in the value of its development land and investment properties. The shares fell sharply in 2008-09 but have recovered recently and the Mucklow family stake is now worth £58m. Past salaries and dividends add £2m.
222) John & Stephen Rosefield
£60m
The Endeavour Co Holdings
2008: £54m (£6m)
John, 65, and Stephen Rosefield, 56, are directors of Endeavour, a London property group. The family was in the news in 2004 when its Endeavour Trust took over the quoted Estates & Agency property operation in a £52.3m agreed deal.
The Rosefield family and family trusts own Endeavour, which made £3.3m profit on £6.4m sales in 2007-08. Its net assets fell to £44.5m. But its subsidiary Estates & Agency Holdings shows £81.6m net assets in the same period.
As a result, we value the wider Rosefield family at around £60m.
222) Douglas Woolf & Family
£60m
Romulus Holdings
2008: £64m (-£4m)
Romulus Holdings, a Leicester-based property group, is owned by Douglas Woolf, 72, and his family trusts. It showed £60.8m net assets in 2007-08 when it made £259,000 profit on £9.2m sales. It should easily be worth £55m in this climate. We add £5m after tax for past salaries and other assets to take the Woolf family to £60m.
227) Michael Pass
£58m
Granwood Holdings
2008: £60m (-£2m)
Granwood flooring started in the early 1900s and has been developing ever since. More than 5m m2 of British-made Granwood floors have been laid in more than 50 countries. The business is owned by Michael Pass through Granwood Holdings. The company made £2.5m profit on £6.1m sales in 2007 when it had £8m net assets. Pass, 72, also owns smaller companies with assets of £65m, but we trim him to £58m.
228) Simon & Paul Upward
£57m
Ocobase
2008: £64m (-£7m)
Brothers Simon, 48, and Paul Upward, 46, run and own Ocobase, a Croydon-based property company. In 2007-08, its profits fell from £7m to £5m. Its net assets, though, rose sharply to nearly £68m. It is worth £50m in the current climate. We add another £7m for other assets, including property firms Bayside Investments and Sima Investments.
229) Alan Cherry & Family
£54m
Countryside Properties
New entry
Essex-based Countryside Properties saw its net assets jump from £174m to £234m in 2008. The Cherry family has 50% of the shares in the firm, which should easily be worth £120m. But we cut the family’s £60m worth to £54m to allow for any borrowings.
230) Demi Chervak & Family
£52m
High Point Estates
2008: £58m (-£6m)
Demi Chervak, 55, is managing director of the Harrogate-based High Point Estates, which saw its net assets rise from £34.5m to £35.2m in the year to July 2008. Chervak and his family own it all. We value the business at £30m, and add £22m for five separate Chervak companies such as High Point (Bury) with £27.5m net assets.
230) Solomon Potel & Family
£52m
Fairholme Estates (Holdings)
2008: £57m (-£5m)
Fairholme Estates (Holdings), a London-based property developer and building contractor, is owned by chartered accountant Solomon Potel, 76, and his family trusts. In the year to August 2008, it made £2.6m profit on £4.2m sales. It has nearly £58m net assets but we value the business at £50m. Other assets take the family to £52m.
230) Edward Speed & Family
£52m
Speeds
2008: £55m (-£3m)
Ted Speed, 84, sold out of the car trade in 2006 but he retained the properties to form the nucleus of a property and investment company. In 2007, as a property firm, Speeds showed £1.7m profit and had £36.6m net assets. The Speed family is now worth at least £52m.
233) Richard Harris & Family
£51m
Cardinal Group
2008: £65m (-£14m)
Cardinal Lysander, a London-based property group run by chartered surveyor Richard Harris, operates in the UK and America. Harris, 64, has more than 188 directorships. Cardinal Group is his most significant company, though its net assets fell sharply from £74.6m to £51.5m in 2007-08. Harris also has stakes in at least nine companies with another £17m net assets attributable to him. In all, there are at least £51m of net assets owned by the Harris family and trusts.
234) Jerry & Janet Knight
£50m
Lexadon
2008: £66m (-£16m)
London-based property operation Lexadon is owned by its directors, husband-and-wife team Jerry, 53, and Janet Knight, 52. Its net asset figures fell £5m to £27.1m in 2007-08. Other assets and property take the Knights to around £50m.
234) John Muir & Family
£50m
Muir Group
2008: £50m (No change)
The 2007-08 accounts for Muir Group, the Inverkeithing-based property-to-housebuilding group, warned of weakening demand in the housing market. Yet the group, run and owned by John Muir, 73, produced sparkling results for that period. Profits hit a record £10.3m on £92.4m sales. Net assets also reached a record of nearly £64m.
But with the appalling downturn facing builders, we value Muir Group at £40m, adding £10m to the Muir family for past salaries and dividends.
234) Cavan Pickering & Family
£50m
Pickering Properties
New entry
Cavan Pickering, 73, is a veteran Nottingham property and hotel developer through his company Pickering Properties. The family-owned operation made £3.3m profit on £8.8m sales in 2007-08, but it has £24.5m of net assets. Other assets, such as Neverstop and Pickering Developments, take the wider family to £50m easily.
234) Roger Raymond & Family
£50m
NEEB Holdings
2008: £60m (-£10m)
Family-owned Essex property operation NEEB Holdings showed more than £26.6 net assets in its 2007-08 accounts, but its assets are worth around £30m as they are in the accounts at cost. Other assets, including a family property partnership, take Raymond, 55, and his family to perhaps £50m.
234) David Stevenson & Family
£50m
Ashleybank Investments
2008: £50m (No change)
Ashleybank, a property investment company, had around £43m of net assets in 2007-08. A couple of smaller companies take the net asset figure to £45m. With other assets, the Stevenson family should be worth around £50m.
234) Amanda Yates & Family
£50m
Yates Property Holdings
2008: £60m (-£10m)
Amanda Yates, 60, is a director of London-based Yates Property Holdings, which showed net assets of £63.5m in 2007-08. It is owned by the Yates family. We value the business and family at £50m.
240) Carl Brian & Family
£48m
Headcrown
2008: £58m (-£10m)
Carl Brian, 44, is a director of property company Headcrown, which saw its profits fall from £11.8m to £4.8m on £162.3m sales in the year to September 2008, when it showed over £44m net assets. While Headcrown is owned by two Channel Isles companies, we reckon the Brian family is the ultimate owner. We value the business at £30m, but past dividends (£32m in the past 10 years) and other assets add £18m to the Brian family after tax.
240) Mark Kay
£48m
ROK
2008: £50m (-£2m)
Mark Kay, 59, founded the Rockeagle operation in Exeter in 1984. In 2001, he sold the business to the local EBC construction firm in a £14.7m deal and it was renamed ROK Property Solutions. Kay joined the board of the quoted group as property director.
But he left the board and in 2005 sold his stake for £14.3m. It was reported then that he was suing the company over what he claimed were unpaid bonuses of £5m. In July 2006, Rok agreed to pay £1.25m in an out-of-court settlement and we add that figure to our calculations. Kay, now based in Belgium, also has around £27.5m of net assets in other firms and we value him at £48m.
240) James Egan
£48m
Broomford Holdings
2008: £45m (£3m)
Irishman James Egan owns and runs Broomford Holdings, a London-based property operation, which shows £49.5 net assets in its 2007-08 accounts. We can see another £15.7m net assets in the 2007-08 accounts of three separate Broomford firms. We value Egan, 68, at £48m in today’s climate.
240) John Elkington
£48m
Penhurst Properties
2008: £45m (£3m)
John Elkington owns Penhurst Properties. Its portfolio of more than 300 properties has assets of around £57m. In addition, we can see numerous trusts and firms with at least £10m of net assets. Adding £9m for past dividends takes Elkington, 46, to around £48m.
240) Fred Pritchard & Family
£48m
Pritchard Holdings
2008: £55m (-£7m)
Pritchard, 66, owns Pritchard Holdings, a property group with £51.8m of net assets in 2008, when it made a £991,000 loss on £6.9m sales. In the current climate, the Pritchard family is worth £48m.
240) Richard Ross & Family
£48m
Regentsmead
2008: £40m (£8m)
Ross, 67, runs Regentsmead, a north London-based property group. He owns 47% directly. We presume his family also owns the rest held in trust. Regentsmead made £1.7m profit on £31m sales in 2007-08. Net assets exceed £53.7m. In addition, we can see £1m of net assets in other Ross companies such as Waygrove Properties. In all, the Ross family is worth £48m.
246) David & Karen Gladman
£47m
Gladman Developments
2008: £50m (-£3m)
The Gladmans own 67.7% of Gladman, which made £7.7m profit on £112.7 sales in 2007-08; net assets of £64.5m value the family stake at £34m. The Gladmans, who also own 62.5% of Gladman Care Homes, are worth £47m.
246) Christopher Ure & Family
£45m
Associated Tower Cinemas
2008: £48m (-£3m)
ATC Properties is owned by Ure, 46, and his family trusts. The firm had £40.5m net assets in its 2008-09 accounts when it made £2m profit on £4.8m sales, and we value it at £40m. Past dividends and other assets take the Ures to £45m.
248) Robert Jolly & Family
£46m
Limes Developments
2008: £50m (-£4m)
Lincoln firm Limes Developments is owned by Robert Jolly, 72, and his family. In 2008 it made £3.3m profit on £4.2m sales but its net assets rose from £42.8m to £43.6m. With the separate Limes Estates (£4.2m net assets), we value the Jolly family at £46m.
249) Elizabeth Abbot & Family
£45m
Abbot Bros Holdings
2008: £45m (No change)
Abbot Bros Holdings, a family-owned property investment firm, made a £6.4m profit and had nearly £43m net assets in 2007-08. It is easily worth £40m. With other assets, the Abbots are worth £45m.
249) Ben Brodie
£45m
Carrick
2008: £45m (No change)
Ben Brodie, 57, founded Carrick Care Homes in 1986 and sold it to Bupa in 2004 for over £40m. Brodie has since had success with property investments in China and India, and we value him at £45m.
Rich in East of England
51 Ardeshir Naghshineh 320 & Family
167 Bill Gredley & Family 95
204 Kip Bertram & Family 70
214 Andrew & Sharon Turner 65
Richest in Yorkshire & the Humber
15 Eddie Healey & Family 750
20 Paul Sykes 550
41 Terry Bramall & Family 400
46 Michael Evans & Family 350
97 Kevin McCabe & Family 175
126 Chris Marshall & Family 130
136 John Guthrie & Family 120
145 Sir Robert Ogden 115
171 Tony Bramall 92
173 Paul Caddick & Family 90
198 Jack Brignall & Family 72
198 John Brooksbank 72
230 Demi Chervak & Family 52
246 Christopher Ure & Family 47
Richest in South East
1 The Duke of Westminster 6,500
2 David & Simon Reuben 3,300
4 Earl Cadogan 2,000
5 Mark Pears 1,500
5 Eddie & Sol Zakay 1,500
7 Ian & Richard Livingstone 1,400
9 Baroness Howard de 1,070 Walden & Family
11 Viscount Portman & Family 950
12 Bernard Lewis & Family 920
13 Roger & Peter De Haan 840
14 Gerald Hines 800
16 Sir Alan Sugar 730
17 Jon Hunt 660
21 Leo Noé & Family 530
23 Sir Anwar Pervez & Family 500
27 Benzion Freshwater & 495 Family
28 The Duke of Bedford 490
30 Ronald Hobson 470
31 Sir Donald Gordon & Family 465
32 Richard Caring 450
Rich in the North East
83 Alastair & Michael Powell 205
163 Stuart Monk & Family 99
166 William Rankin & Family 96
214 Sir John Hall & Family 65
Rich in Channel Islands
10 Sir David & Sir Frederick Barclay 1,000
41 The Clarke Family 400
143 David Kirch 118
Rich in West Midlands
23 Tony Gallagher 500
46 Roy Richardson & Family 350
52 Bob Edmiston 300
77 Paul Newey 220
108 Sir Euan Anstruther- 160 Gough-Calthorpe & Family
108 Peter Horton & Family 160
136 Simon Clarke & Family 120
153 Eric Grove 108
183 Con Folkes & Family 85
198 Woon Wing Yip & Family 72
212 Jim Leavesley & Family 66
214 Bill Morris & Family 65
222 Rupert Mucklow & Family 60
240 Fred Pritchard & Family 48
Rich in the North West
8 John Whittaker 1,360
19 Peter Jones & Family 556
52 Trevor Hemmings 300
59 Michael Oglesby & Family 295
92 Stuart Wall 180
104 Henry Moser & Family 165
108 Brian Scowcroft & Family 160
114 Aneel Mussarat 150
123 Susan Prescott & the 140 Austin Family
136 William Ainscough & Family 120
Rich in the South West
22 Prince Charles 520
52 Harry Hyams 300
52 Charlotte Townshend 300
114 John Berkley & Family 150
132 The Baylis Family 125
145 John, Clinton & Spencer 115 McCarthy
145 Sir Richard Sutton & Family 115
173 Jonathan Hitchins & Family 90
240 Mark Kay 48
Rich in East Midlands
37 Freddie Linnett & the 445 Murphy Family 66 David Wilson & Family 275
126 Charles Clowes 130
160 Stephen Spouge & Family 100
204 Charles Yeates 70
214 Peter Gadsby 65
222 Douglas Woolf & Family 60
227 Michael Pass 58
230 Edward Speed 52
234 Cavan Pickering & Family 50
248 Robert Jolly & Family 46
Richest from Wales
29 Albert Gubay 480
41 David Sullivan 400
46 Steve Morgan 350
75 Sir Stanley & Peter Thomas 225
Richest in Scotland
32 Sir David Murray 450
52 Brian Kennedy 300
62 Keith Miller & Family 280
77 Robert Adair 220
90 Richard Emanuel 190
92 The Duke of Buccleuch & 180 Family
92 Harry Dobson 180
113 John Lynch & Family 152
114 Graham Wylie 150
150 Sir Tom Farmer 110
Richest in Ireland
3 Sean Quinn & Family 2,295
18 John Magnier 560
38 Lord Ballyedmond 440
39 JP McManus 430
60 Sir Michael Smurfit & Family 294
62 Sean Mulryan 280
62 Stephen Vernon 280
67 Kevin & Michael Lagan 250
67 Sam Morrison 250
77 Gerard O’Hare 220
82 Peter & Alicia White 210
84 Patrick Doherty & Family 200
84 Charles Kenny & Family 200
89 Jim McGettigan 195
101 Joseph Brennan & Family 170
Richest overseas
23 Peter Green 500
23 Jim Mellon 500
49 Nicholas & Christian Candy 330
92 Alan Murphy 180
160 Andrew Rosenfeld 100
Richest women
9 Baroness Howard de 1,070 Walden*
37 Freddie Linnett* 445
52 Charlotte Townshend 300
82 Alicia White* 210
123 Susan Prescott* 140
125 Julia Davey 131
136 Fawn James* 120
150 Sally Green* 110
188 Delia Grodner* 80
214 Sharon Turner* 65
234 Janet Knight* 50
234 Amanda Yates* 50
246 Karen Gladman* 47
249 Elizabeth Abbot* 45
*Family stakes
Number residing in each region
Where the money is
South East 112
Ireland 34
North West 18
Scotland 16
Yorkshire & the Humber 14
West Midlands 14
East Midlands 12
South West 9
Overseas 6
Wales 4
North East 4
East of England 4
Channel Isles 3
Rich by star sign
Note: this list exceeds 250 because some entries have two or even three people from the same family
Aries 21
Taurus 25
Gemini 30
Cancer 24
Leo25
Virgo 17
Libra19
Scorpio 20
Sagittarius 22
Capricorn 31
Aquarius 15
Pisces 20
Five oldest
Age Name Wealth (£m)
88 Ronald Hobson 470
86 Jack Dellal 450
84 Edward Speed 52
84 Jack Petchey 450
83 Bernard Lewis 920
Rich by decade born
Note: there are more than 250 in total as some entries have two or even three people from the same family
1920s 10
1930s 65
1940s 80
1950s 77
1960s 37
1970s 3
1980s 1
Five youngest
Age Name Wealth (£m)
18 India-Rose James 120
23 Fawn James 120
35 Christian Candy 330
36 James Sellar 165
36 Nicholas Candy 330
Rules of engagement
1. Valuations for quoted property companies are usually based on their share price as at early September 2009. For private companies we have based valuations largely on their latest net asset figure. After the credit crunch and property crash, we have been cautious in our private company valuations. Where accounts are not up-to-date, we have discounted their net asset figure by 10% or more (depending on the strength of their balance sheet) in arriving at our valuation.
2. We have also been influenced by levels of borrowings, the strength of the balance sheet and credit ratings in arriving at our figures. Where private companies pay large salaries to their owner-directors, we have added a proportion of the salary to our profit and wealth calculation.
3. Though there may be some concern that we have not cut our valuations deeply enough to reflect the economic crisis of late 2008 and early 2009, we take comfort from the fact that private companies are much more conservative in their balance sheets and that the net asset figure may not reflect the true position. Second, many of the property tycoons who have private property companies also have large assets elsewhere that we do not know about. Finally, the rate of decline in values and economic activity may have now stabilised, which helps to underpin our values.
4. We have counted family trusts as part of family shareholdings in making our assessments of company ownerships.
5. Only those who have made all or a significant part of their fortunes in property investment, trading or related areas, such as estate agency, qualify for this list. Where construction magnates have a significant property element, we have included or excluded them on a case-by-case basis.
Where retail tycoons such as Sir Philip Green of Bhs have used property trades to help them on their way to fortunes, we have not included them.
The Queen is not included as she does not have full control of the Crown Estate in the normal meaning of the word. Most landowners are also excluded, unless – like the Duke of Westminster – their wealth derives from urban property holdings.
Inevitably, we will have missed people who feel they should have been included. We ask them to send in their details for next year to Philipberesford@aol.com. Any other comments also gratefully received here. All our calculations for valuations are ballpark figures, which may be challenged by those listed. We will adjust valuations next year for any who feel that we have been too wide of the mark.
Dr Philip Beresford and Dominic Prince
