Estates Gazette Rich List 2011: 201-230
When Estates Gazette published its annual Rich List last year, property’s surviving super rich were under starter’s orders, raring to go. So this year they should have been off. But in the current gloom, the so-called recovery is looking more like a false start as runners and riders face increasingly soft ground.
The good news is that the top 250 thoroughbreds in the Estates Gazette Rich List are now worth a total of £87bn, up a cool £15bn on last year.
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201 Owen O’Callaghan
£71m
Elendale Investments
New entry
Veteran Irish developer Owen O’Callaghan is pressing ahead with plans for an €80m private hospital on Lancaster Quay, Western Road in Cork city.
O’Callaghan, 71, seems to have escaped the worst of the Irish recession. He recently signed a deal with computer giant Apple, which plans to lease the top two floors of a €75m building in a mixed-use development.
He is also planning a €50m 5,000-seat event centre in Cork city centre.
Largely avoiding the economic meltdown through diversification and the development of property in Prague, O’Callaghan also made £21m from the sale of an office block in Grafton Street, London, and £5m from a site at Mahon Point, Cork, where planning was granted for more than 240 residential units.
But the overturning of permission to extend his part-owned Liffey Valley, West Dublin shopping centre by 700,000 sq ft cost him £13m.
Even so, the land is worth nearly £9m and he has another £13m site at Clonburris, Dublin, also designated for housing.
His retail, office and residential projects in Cork, at Opera Lane and Half Moon Street, add £13m to assets that include 40% of the developer Moyglen Holdings and a large Blackwater Property stake, both held offshore, plus an interest in a trust holding London property.
Given concerns over Ireland’s shaky economy, we value O’Callaghan conservatively at £71m.
202 Demi Chervak & Family
£70m
High Point Estates
2010: £70m (No change)
Demi Chervak is managing director of the Harrogate-based High Point Estates property group. Founded in 1985, High Point saw its net assets rise from £41.3m to £43.5m in 2009-10. Chervak, 57, and his family own it all.
We value the business on the net assets, and add £25.5m for the net assets of another five separate Chervak companies such as High Point (Bury).
With other assets, the Chervaks should easily be worth £70m in the current climate.
202 Philip Davies & Family
£70m
Philip J Davies (Holdings)
2010: £65m (+£5m)
Despite leaving the navy to follow the family footsteps in the rag trade, Philip Davies decided that investment in real estate would get him further in life
and so he built up a property portfolio, mainly in the north. His company, Philip J Davies (Holdings), had nearly £22m net assets in 2009-10.
Private property partnerships take the 90-year-old entrepreneur’s total assets to £68m.
202 Nicholas Porter
£70m
Capital Values Group
2010: £70m (No change)
Nick Porter, the 42-year-old entrepreneur who founded student accommodation group Unite in 1991, stepped down as chief executive to become non-executive deputy chairman at the end of 2006.
He finally left the board in May 2010 and is now building his Capital Values Group. It is working on developments at the huge King’s Cross regeneration project in central London. Share sales and other assets take Porter to £70m.
205 Andrew & Sharon Turner
£69m
Central Trust
2010: £65m (+£4m)
The lending shortage took its toll on Central Trust, the Norwich-based financial broker, which axed up to 180 jobs in March 2009.
Andrew Turner, 53, the chairman of Central Trust, is an accountant by trade. He set up the company in 1987 in a small London office as a broker and lender of secured loans in the consumer finance sector.
Central Trust’s principal subsidiary is one of the largest independent finance brokers offering loans to UK homeowners, whilst other subsidiaries operate in loan packaging, mortgage packaging and telemarketing.
In 2010 it moved back into profit, making £1.8m on £47m sales.
In the current climate we value Central Trust, which has £88.5m net assets, at around £67m. Other assets should take Turner and his wife Sharon, 52, also a director, to around £69m.
206 Cavan Pickering & Family
£68m
Pickering Properties
2010: £62m (+£6m)
Cavan Pickering is a long-time Nottingham property and hotel developer through his company, Pickering Properties. The family-owned operation made £2.5m profit on £9m sales in 2009-10, but it has nearly £27m of net assets. Pickering, 75, built and ran three hotels in Nottingham, including the Welbeck, which was sold in 2002 for £6.5m. He has been active in the regeneration of Nottingham’s famous Lace Market area, and has also built property in America.
Other family assets, such as Pickering Developments, with £61m of net assets in 2010-11, should take the wider Pickering family to £68m easily, allowing for any double counting.
207 Bruce Jarvis & Family
£67m
Ravensale
2010: £80m (-£13m)
A low-key London property developer, Bruce Jarvis is active in the Paddington area on prestige developments with the Reuben brothers. We can see £18.6m of net assets in their European Land & Property joint venture company.
Jarvis’s main company, Ravensale, saw its net assets drop sharply in 2009-10 from £26.6m to £14m. With this fall, we clip Jarvis, 63, back to £67m.
208 Patrick Doherty & Family
£66m
Harcourt Developments
2010: £93m (-£27m)
Donegal developer Patrick Doherty’s most high-profile work is the £700m redevelopment of Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard, where the Titanic was built.
Doherty has given most of Harcourt to his children. In 2009, the company lost £21.2m but it has £94.4m net assets.
Doherty, 69, also has substantial hotel, transport and property assets in the Caribbean. But in the current climate he is worth £66m.
208 James Egan
£66m
Broomford Holdings
2010: £65m (+£1m)
London-based Broomford Holdings showed £48.6m net assets in its 2009-10 accounts. We can see another £11.2m of net assets in the 2009-10 accounts of three further but separate Egan companies.
James Egan bought Noel Edmonds’ west country home after the TV star’s marriage broke up in 2005. It was reported to have been sold for around £10m.
We value Egan, 70, at £66m.
208 Paul Leach & Family
£66m
Hubert C Leach
New entry
Buntingford-based Leach Homes was founded by Hubert Leach, a man of high principles, who laid down strict guidelines of quality and craftsmanship. It was in 1931 whilst working as a builders merchant, that he built his own home and moved into housebuilding. Today, Paul Leach, 83, his son, leads the business in house building and commercial development. It is currently working on nine sites and work is set to start soon on another three. Most of its sites are in the Hertfordshire area; the others are in Cambridge and Milton Keynes.
Hubert C Leach, the parent company, is a pretty solid operation and made £3.1m profit on £17.2m sales in 2010. It has a very strong balance sheet, with nearly £53m of net assets and low borrowings. Other Leach family businesses we can see, including Swanfield (Hamels), together had around £10m net assets in 2010.
The Leach family take little out of the businesses and we value them at around £64m, adding £2m for other assets.
211 Gavin Howard & Family
£65m
Howard Investment Co
New entry
Gavin Howard, 42, has taken over from his late father in this list. The two main family property companies, Cambridge-based Howard Investment Co and Howard Ventures, together had more than £65m net assets in 2010. We value the family on that figure.
211 Mark & Kathleen Kavanagh
£65m
Hardwicke
2010: £69m (-£4m)
Dublin property developer Mark Kavanagh has been involved in prestige projects such as Dublin’s International Financial Services Centre.
A prominent backer of Fianna Fail, Kavanagh, 66, and his wife Kathleen, 50, show two main companies, Hardwicke and Kopian, with £53.5m of net assets between them in their 2005-06 accounts, the last published.
The former Wicklow-based couple now live in Switzerland. Taking into account their other assets, we value the Kavanaghs at £65m.
211 Raymond Mould
£65m
London & Stamford
2010: £60m (+£5m)
Raymond Mould is looking to make his third fortune with his latest property company, London & Stamford Property. It floated on the stock market in late 2007, valued at £248m. It is now worth £654m as investors back Mould’s ability to find property bargains at rock bottom prices.
Until May 2010, Mould also chaired Arena Leisure, the quoted horseracing group, which is entirely appropriate for such an enthusiastic follower of the turf and owner of a string of horses.
Mould qualified as a solicitor in 1964 and became a tax specialist. But he switched to property and formed the Arlington Group in 1976. It was sold to British Aerospace for £279m in 1989.
Mould, who collected £19m from the sale of his Arlington stake, started again with Pillar Property, which floated on the stock market in 1994. His stake in Pillar was worth £34m when an £811m takeover by British Land was agreed in May 2005.
He also has a £22m stake in London & Stamford. With earlier share sale proceeds and his extensive racing interests, we reckon 70-year-old Mould is worth £65m after tax.
211 David Metter
£65m
Innisfree Group
2010: £56m (+£9m)
South African-born David Metter set up Innisfree in the mid-1990s after a career in the construction and property investment business.
While the Private Finance Initiative was still in its infancy, he sold the idea of a specialist PFI investment vehicle to Hermes, the giant BT pension fund that took a near 36% shareholding in Innisfree, though it sold it back to Metter in 2006 for £13m.
Metter, 59, now has a 72% stake held via a Jersey trust. Innisfree, based in the City, employs just 14 people, but owns or co-owns 28 NHS hospitals, 269 schools, the Whitehall HQ of the Ministry of Defence, a Scottish motorway and a Welsh jail.
It made a £9.6m profit on £18.1m of sales in 2009-10 and should be worth £80m on these figures, valuing Metter’s stake at around £58m.
He has had £17m in past salaries and dividends since 2002. After tax, he should be worth £65m.
211 Jim Leavesley & Family
£65m
Evans Property Holdings
2010: £65m (No change)
Leavesley deals in surplus military equipment and also breaks up ships. But the Leavesley family wealth now comes mainly from property, particularly the Midlands group St Modwen.
It was in the mid-1960s, when the big brewers started upgrading their sites, that Leavesley bought some redundant Bass and Worthington buildings with his brother-in-law, the late Sir Stan Clarke, to set up St Modwen Properties. He has a £33.5m stake there.
But Leavesley, 81, has also been involved in another large business – Evans Property Holdings, the Leeds property group dominated by the Evans family. Its parent company, Brightsea EPH, showed an £8.4m profit and £440m net assets in 2009-10.
The family company, JD Leavesley, was founded after the First World War when James Leavesley Snr bought a few items of equipment from the British army and sold them from his home in Staffordshire.
Today, JT Leavesley is easily worth its £12m of net assets. With other assets, such as a pig rearing operation and a smaller property company, the Leavesley family should be worth £65m.
216 David Dangoor & Family
£64m
Monopro
2010: £50m (+£14m)
David Dangoor, 62, runs Monopro, a family-dominated property company based in London. In 2009-10, Monopro made a £1.2m profit on £4.1m sales. With more than £61.3m of net assets, it is worth that sum.
But a number of other small companies such as Discdale Limited, add perhaps another £3m in asset value, taking the Dangoor family to £64m.
216 Douglas Woolf & Family
£64m
Romulus Holdings
2010: £55m (+£9m)
Romulus Holdings, the Leicester-based property group owned by 74-year-old Douglas Woolf and his family trusts, should easily be worth £59m in the current climate.
The company showed £59.3m net assets in 2009-10 when it made £1m profit on £12.4m sales. We add £5m after tax for past salaries and other assets, taking the Woolf family to £64m.
218 Glyn Watkin Jones & Family
£62m
Watkin Jones
2010: £54m (+£8m)
Property-to-construction group Watkin Jones saw sales rise sharply in 2010 from £95.9m to £142m. The group, which has projects all over the UK, also reported profits down from £12.2m to £10.6m. It should be worth its £60m net assets.
The company recently unveiled a £50m proposal to transform Birmingham’s former central fire station and West Midlands fire service headquarters into a student accommodation block.
Glyn Watkin Jones, 66, is the eighth generation to run the Bangor-based firm, which was founded in 1791, and his son, Mark, is now taking over more responsibility on the board as a ninth-generation family member.
The company has done well from doing general construction work and building student accommodation, helping to shield it from the credit crunch and housebuilding collapse.
In 2007 it successfully completed developments in Salford, Brighton and Birmingham.
The Watkin Jones family also has a small company called Heritage Holdings (North Wales) and, taking into account other assets, we value them at £62m.
219 Solomon Potel & Family
£61m
Fairholme Estates (Holdings)
2010: £57m (+£4m)
In the year to August 2010, Fairholme Estates made £3.1m profit on £4.6m sales. It has more than £60.4m in net assets and we value the business on this figure.
Fairholme Estates, a London-based property developer and building contractor, is owned by chartered accountant Solomon Potel, 78, and his family trusts. Other assets take the Potel family to £61m.
220 Mo Chaudry & Family
£60m
MIC Properties
New entry
Born and raised in a remote village in Pakistan, Mo Chaudry moved to Britain in 1969 with his parents and settled in Luton. His family later moved to Telford.
Chaudry attended Staffordshire University where his natural sporting talent was tested. He won a silver medal for weightlifting at the 1982 Student Olympics, and also several caps as a Warwickshire under-19 cricketer.
After university, he worked in financial services before moving into property. He has also entered the leisure industry, buying the then loss-making Waterworld theme park from Rank in 1999 for a knockdown price.
Chaudry, 51, has turned it into Stoke’s most popular tourist attraction.
Plans for a £3m expansion this year include a 20,000 sq ft extension to the venue, encompassing two new diners, a rapids feature and an extension to the family zone. It is anticipated that visitor numbers will rise from just under 400,000 to 750,000, injecting a further £20m into the region’s economy.
Chaudry’s property and Waterworld operations are progressing from strength to strength. His MIC Properties operation had net assets of around £15.4m at the
end of 2010.
With the Waterworks development and other assets, Chaudry is worth around £60m.
220 Melvyn Cooper & Family
£60m
Mountcharm
2010: £53m (+£7m)
Mel Cooper and his family own and run Barnet-based Mountcharm. Cooper shrewdly sold 90% of its portfolio in 2005 and 2006 at the top of the market and concentrated on development.
But the company has returned to the market, buying properties quickly. In May 2009, for example, Mountcharm completed two deals totalling almost £20m, one of which was agreed in just 24 hours. Mountcharm’s net assets were nearly £50m at the end of 2010. Other smaller company assets add another £4m.
In May 2006, through a company called Pixie, Cooper, 70, bought a prestige building in Tel Aviv. He sold it two years later for around double the price. Taking other assets into account, we value the Cooper family at perhaps £60m.
220 Michael Slade
£60m
Helical Bar
2010: £73m (-£13m)
Michael Slade, a 65-year-old veteran property developer, is the chief executive of London-based Helical Bar, which sold £42m worth of assets and bought £17m worth of properties in a three-month period until the end of June. The company is now embarking on a joint venture to build 63 homes in Exeter.
Slade is working through his fourth property downturn. Recently, he warned that recovery might take until 2012. But, reckoning the market boom was ending, Slade was shrewd enough to sell investments in 2005 and 2006.
He may have been a year early but Helical Bar ended up as one of the best-placed of quoted property companies.
Slade, regarded as one of the most astute developers in the quoted property sector, hails from Port Isaac in Cornwall. Working hard at school and the College of Estate Management to please his parents, he qualified as a chartered surveyor and later dabbled in property overseas.
Slade’s stake in Helical Bar has not been immune from the market crash and it is now worth £27m.
But his past salaries, share options and dividend gains, stakes in other ventures such as Interactive Digital Broadcasting and Europa Property Investments, plus his own property assets, should easily take him to £60m after tax.
220 David Gradel & Family
£60m
UK Estates
2010: £60m (No change)
David Gradel’s family were involved in property development in the north in the 1960s. Gradel, 62, came into the business in the late 1980s and ran UK Estates, a quoted property operation, where the family had a large stake. The Gradels eventually took UK Estates private and now, through various trusts, own most of the shares.
The company had £47.3m net assets in its 2009-10 accounts. However, the family has significant wealth outside UK Estates, including large property portfolios in Glasgow, Leeds and Birmingham.
Gradel’s background was in property, banking and finance. He was a vice-president of US bank Security and Pacific National Bank before taking up his present role at UK Estates in 1987.
The previous generation of the family shrewdly cut borrowings and sold a lot of property before the early 1990s’ crash. We stick at a £60m valuation.
220 Paul Rooney
£60m
Arun Estate Agencies
New entry
Profits rose at Horsham-based Arun Estate Agencies in 2010 from £2.8m to £5.6m on sales up a sprightly £10m at £51.4m.
While the business looks in good shape with a strong balance sheet and minimal borrowings, it has not been immune from the difficult economic climate for estate agency chains. But its financial strength looks like prudent management by owner Paul Rooney, one of Britain’s top estate agents.
His move to the sector’s premier league came in 1991 when he bought 98 estate agency branches from the Pru for £2m to add to his then 10-strong chain.
He changed the name of the business from Rooney & Co to Arun Estate Agencies and never looked back. With branches across London and south east England, Arun is now the largest independent chain of estate agents in the South East. It has added financial services and chartered surveying to its offering. We value the business at around £35m. Past salaries and dividends should take Rooney, 64, to £60m.
225 Rupert Mucklow & Family
£59m
A & J Mucklow
2010: £66m (-£7m)
Birmingham property group A&J Mucklow is looking to start prelet development again, if tenant demand holds up for the rest of the year.
Chairman Rupert Mucklow, 48, says there is only a small supply of quality industrial space currently available in the Midlands, so any increase in demand is likely to cause rental values to harden and incentives to reduce, which will benefit the value of the company’s investment portfolio.
He took over the running of the business, which has a large family shareholding, when his father, Albert, retired as chairman in 2004. The company floated on the stock market in 1962 and ceased house building in the 1990s to concentrate on property. It reported an interim pretax profit of £4.8m in February.
The Mucklow family has a 31.7% stake now worth £57m. Past salaries and dividends add £2m.
226 John Nike & Family
£58m
Nike Land Securities
2010: £58m (No change)
John Nike, the Bracknell-based leisure and property entrepreneur, has patented a new kind of artificial ski slope surface that he hopes will avoid common friction injuries. As he has a large ski slope in Bracknell, his new invention will come in very handy.
With interests in property, car dealing and leisure, Nike is best known locally for the John Nike Stadium, though it is affectionately known as the Beehive. The stadium is owned by Nike Land Securities, a company run and owned by Nike.
Though Nike Land made a £1.8m loss on £72m sales in 2009-10, it still has nearly £22m of net assets.
Nike, 76, owns all the business with his family and trusts. But he also has 50 acres of land in Bracknell. It was bought in the 1960s and carries no debt.
In addition, Nike has already sold tracts of land to large computer companies such as Dell and Hewlett Packard, raising more than £40m.
After tax, Nike should be worth at least £58m in today’s market.
226 Richard Ross & Family
£58m
Regentsmead
2010: £48m (+£10m)
Richard Ross, 69, is chair of development finance firm Regentsmead, which was created in 1934 by his immigrant father. Its net assets came in at more than £58m in 2009-10, and we value it on that amount.
Ross’s parents established the charity Rosetrees on their golden anniversary. It funds cutting-edge medical research by way of grants. In all, it has funded over £35m of research, and the family hope to raise more than £100m. The charity had a 2010-11 income of £2.5m.
226 Amanda Yates & Family
£58m
Yates Property Holdings
2010: £58m (No change)
The London-based company, Yates Property Holdings, showed assets of nearly £58m in the 2009-10 accounts. Amanda Yates, 62, is a director of the firm, which is owned by the Yates family and trusts, and is here representing the wider family. In the current climate, we value the business and family on the net assets.
229 James Watts & Family
£57m
CA TP 3
New entry
The net assets at CA TP 3 Ltd, an oddly-named Essex property operation, came in at £35.3m in 2009-10. The business is owned by James Watts, 73, and his family. Among its schemes is the Tollgate Retail Park near Colchester. The Watts family also has other smaller but separate property groups with another £22.3m of net assets in 2009-10. Property Associates is the largest, with £14.2m net assets. We reckon the Watts family should be worth £57m.
230 Robin Tomkins & Family
£56m
Frincon Securities
2010: £56m (No change)
Robin Tomkins, 85, started as an estate agent in Essex but built up a profitable property business which was taken over by Grainger Trust, the quoted property company, for £61m in October 1994. After the takeover, he sat on the Grainger board and had a sizeable stake.
But he is no longer a director or listed as a major shareholder. Our sources in Essex report that he has handed the bulk of the sale proceeds to his family, but we cannot confirm this.
In 2006, Tomkins sold off the Triangle shopping complex he created in Frinton-on-Sea for an undisclosed price, described locally as “many millions”.
It was sold by the Tomkins family property operation, Frincon Securities, which in 2010 showed £1.2m net assets.
With the recent sale and the net assets in Frincon, we value the Tomkins family at £56m after tax.
julia.cahill@estatesgazette.com
Rich List 2011: 231-250
