Estates Gazette Rich List 2011 – 51- 80
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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51 Caspar MacDonald-Hall
£355m
London & Cambridge Properties
2010: £350m (+£5m)
The Midlands-based London & Cambridge Properties is a leading developer of industrial estates and one of Britain’s largest private property firms. It saw net assets rise from £420m to nearly £499m in 2009-10 when a healthy £37.2m profit was realised on £87.7m sales. MacDonald-Hall has a 40% stake.
He also has half of Proudreed, a Southampton property investor, with nearly £140m net assets in 2010. Then there is a 45.5% stake in Ringmerit, which had over £137.3 net assets in 2010. In all, there are nearly £344m of net assets attributable to him.
MacDonald-Hall, 60, reputedly one of the best game bird shots in the UK, was also a non-executive director at AIM, an aviation group which was recently bought by its management for an undisclosed sum. In all, with past dividends, he should be worth £355m.
52 Sir John & Peter Beckwith
£350m
Pacific Investment
2010: £270m (+£80m)
Sir John Beckwith, 64, made £33m from the sale last year of his hedge fund management company, Thames River Capital, and has lost no time getting back into action with other ventures.
He is backing a new hedge fund management firm, RiverCrest Capital. The veteran financier also teamed up with Gerald Parks, former head of Lehman Brothers’ real estate private equity business, to set up Pacific Real Estate Capital Partners last year. It now manages three funds.
Old Harrovian Beckwith and his brother, Peter, made their first fortune in property, netting around £80m when they sold their London and Edinburgh Trust property group to a Swedish company in 1990 just before the property crash.
Sir John invested £3m in the Thames River Capital hedge fund and his return on the deal would make a private equity financier’s eyes water. His more low-key brother, Peter, 66, the father of socialite Tamara Beckwith, has invested in property and theatres.
The brothers have also invested in sports-related businesses and sold them on at a profit of at least £50m.
We can see around £38m of net assets in various Beckwith companies. Further sales of properties since 2005 have added several millions to the Beckwith coffers.
With the addition of hotels in France, and Sir John’s investment in the Model Frontiers fashion agency, we value the pair at £350m.
53 Charlotte Townshend
£342m
Addison Developments
2010: £320m (+£22m)
Townshend has 20 choice acres around 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 reportedly been sold for £9m.
We can see six farming and estate companies including Cygnet, Addison Developments and Ilchester Estates, which together showed £61m net
assets in 2009-10, up by more than
£22m in a year.
Taking into account other assets such as property, paintings, furniture and bloodstock, we raise our valuation of Townshend by £22m. We believe that
the 56-year-old entrepreneur is worth
at least £342m.
54 Samuel Tak Lee
£335m
Langham Estate
New entry
It was in late 1993 that Hong Kong tycoon Samuel Lee Tak-yee was first really noticed in the British property market. He snapped up the Langham Estate in central London from the receivers of a failed property company for just £51m. For that, he acquired 16 acres of prime central London and 142 buildings between Soho and Mayfair.
In 1989, the estate had been valued right at the peak of the property market at £175m. Lee Tak-yee’s family also has substantial property assets in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Switzerland and more in London. One of his companies, Langham Estate Management, is currently involved in a Sheppard Robson-designed £20m refurbishment of 42 rue du Rhone, an eight-storey building in central Geneva, which will provide 1,940m2 of retail space, 3,083m2 of offices and a 380m2 restaurant. Lee Tak-yee was also once rumoured to be assembling a consortium to break up Great Portland Estates, but nothing came of that.
The 71-year-old tycoon was once described by a judge as “one of the world’s truly rich”, though he did not appear in the recent list of the 40 richest people in Hong Kong produced by Forbes magazine, where the bottom line is £600m.
We assume that Lee Tak-yee will be worth around half of that and settle for a sighting shot of £335m.
55 Harry Hyams
£320m
Walton Investments Co
2010: £320m (No change)
The 83-year-old veteran property man Harry Hyams still has stakes in five small property companies with around £16m of net assets.
The son of an East End bookmaker, he was one of the top developers in London during the 1960s and 70s.
Hyams is perhaps best known for Centre Point, the 35-storey tower in central London, just off Oxford Street. One of his shrewdest moves 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 – not a bad return in less than 30 years.
Hyams made a further £98m when MEPC itself was taken over in 2000. His Ramsbury Estate in Wiltshire, the net assets in the smaller Hyams companies and his valuable art collection should easily take the low-key Harry to around £320m.
55 Laurence Kirschel
£320m
Consolidated Developments
2010: £325m (-£5m)
Laurence Kirschel is involved with various Jewish charities and those working with children and, despite his low profile, he is said to be one of the most powerful landowners in the Soho and Covent Garden property markets.
Kirschel, 48, 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.
Before the recession, he had grand plans for his properties in London’s Soho, but these are yet to come to fruition.
We can see more than £197m of net assets in Consolidated Developments’ 2010 accounts and other smaller Consolidated operations, all owned by Kirschel or where he has a 50% stake. But these asset values do not take in his substantial holdings in Soho, which are accounted for separately. We value Kirschel at £320m.
57 The Duke of Northumberland
£315m
Northumberland Estates and Hotspur Land
New entry
We have been watching Ralph Percy, 12th Duke of Northumberland, for some years as a potential candidate for this list. But with 120,000 acres in his Northumberland estate and elsewhere, we vetoed him on the grounds that he was more a landowner than property player. Not now. The pace of development work being carried out by the duke on his estate and in neighbouring towns is akin to that of even the most frenetic London developer or property investor.
In recent weeks, Northumberland Estates, his business arm, has been given permission to build 76 homes in Alnwick. Naturally, as any developer would know, the duke ran into hurdles over the number of affordable homes in the scheme, but has eventually reached a compromise deal with the local planning authority.
In nearby Prudhoe, Northumberland Estates is planning a £25m town centre development which has run into stiff opposition. And at a local trading estate Northumberland owns in Alnwick, solar panels have been installed recently as
part of Northumberland Estates’ green strategy. Meanwhile in Newcastle, the duke’s Hotspur Land Investments 2000 went to court over a luxury property it owned in Newcastle, where the tenant managed to reduce the charge by £100,000 a year.
Northumberland Estates is driving development plans on the 120,000 acres it controls, with about 4,000 acres commercially farmed by Percy Farms and the rest in the hands of agricultural tenants or in forestry. One of the more pressing needs for Northumberland is to find cash for restoration and repair work at his ancestral seat, Alnwick Castle, which he inherited from his late brother, the 11th duke, in 1995. He raised £22m by selling a Raphael painting in 2004, which went straight to the castle’s maintenance. He put £8.8m into the Alnwick Garden Trust, a charity redeveloping and managing the Alnwick Garden.
His Alnwick acres, the valuable 200 acres at Syon Park on the Thames, the 3,000-acre Albury estate in Surrey , the £2.6m Dryburgh estate in Scotland, and £22m of net assets in companies we can see, including Hotspur Forestry, take Northumberland to £315m with rising land prices.
58 Mark Dixon
£313m
Regus Group
2010: £330m (+£82m)
Mark Dixon’s Regus, the world’s largest serviced office group, swung to a pre-tax profit of £13m in the six months to June, after a loss of £6.1m a year ago. Sales were up 10% to £565.6m.
“We took a long time to restructure, but we are in great shape now,” said Dixon. “We have the financial capacity to see this through.”
The FTSE 250 company said it wants to open 900 new centres in the next three years, taking its total to 2,000.
A former sandwich and later hamburger salesman, Dixon formed Regus in 1989 with the sale proceeds of earlier businesses. It floated on the stock market in 2000, though the shares have not been immune from the recent stock market malaise.
Regus is now worth £680m, while Dixon’s stake is £240m.
With other assets and the proceeds of a £61m share sale before the flotation and another £35m in 2009, Dixon, 52, is easily worth £313m after tax.
59 William Ives & Family
£305m
Rainham Steel Group Ltd
2010: £266m (+£39m)
Ives, a straight-talking Eastender, started Rainham Steel in 1973 as a new and reusable steel supplier.
The Essex-based company had a tough 2009-10, making a £3.9m loss on £63.5m sales, but is recovering sharply in 2010-11 and recruiting staff again.
Ives, 68, and his family trusts own the £150m operation. Hefty investments in property and other assets take Ives to £305m. It is because of the property holdings that Ives graces this list.
60 Fawn & India Rose James
£302m
Soho Estates
2010: £120m (+£182m)
Soho Estates has this year been given the go-ahead to transform a prime site in Leicester Square from office blocks to its original use as a hotel. The 24,000 sq ft building will be turned into an 84-bedroom Premier Inn by spring 2012.
This year, the James sisters have also turned to an old hand – former Tory transport minister Steve Norris – to chair their London property empire.
They have significant plans to refurbish and increase the value of their 71 private Soho apartments.
The sisters, Fawn, 25, and India Rose, 20, are the granddaughters of the late Paul Raymond, the owner of prime London real estate in Soho. Three years after his death, the dynasty has finally divided.
After a lengthy dispute, 80% of his assets have been given to his two granddaughters and the remainder to the family of their uncle, Raymond’s son Howard.
The main business, Soho Estates, with £378m net assets in 2009, has been split between the two branches of the family.
Raymond left £75m in his will to his granddaughters but we suspect that was simply a down payment on the rest. We value the sisters at 80% of the net asset figure, or £302m.
61 Joseph Hackmey
£300m
Israel Phoenix
New entry
A fifth-generation Israeli whose forebears hail from Tbilisi in Georgia, Hackmey took over and expanded his father’s insurance business in Israel, turning it into that country’s third largest insurer.
In 2002, Israel Phoenix Insurance Co was sold, netting the Hackmey family nearly £160m for their 57% stake.
Since then, Hackmey has been involved in property deals and has made a name for himself as one of the world’s top art collectors, especially of 20th century art. He also collects rare stamps.
With his property deals, such as buying a City property in Old Street in early 2007, and the value of his art and stamp collection, we value the Hackmey family
at around £300m. Hackmey, 66, spends much of his time in Britain and that, of course, qualifies him for this list.
61 Kevin and Michael Lagan
£300m
Lagan Holdings
2010: £350m (-£50m)
The Lagan brothers, Michael, 61, and Kevin, 56, rank among the top construction tycoons in Ireland.
They have steadily expanded their Belfast-based establishment, which was created by their father in 1960, into construction-related businesses trading within five groups: Lagan Holdings, Lagan Cement, Kingscourt Bricks, Lagan Homes and Lagan Developments.
The pair are involved in road building, property development, house building and waste management; they also have cement works and prime quarrying and asphalt assets. We can see around £162m of net assets in various Lagan companies, including Lagan Holdings, in 2009-10.
At the height of the boom, the valuable quarrying assets were reckoned to have a potential sale price in excess of £200m, representing around a quarter of the business. But on the current figures, and being very cautious about all things in Ireland (north or south), we reckon the Lagan assets are worth perhaps £300m.
63 Sam Morrison
£295m
Corbo
2010: £296m (-£1m)
Morrison is one of Northern Ireland’s top developers. Starting by selling leather jackets from the boot of his car, he progressed to renting his first retail shop in Ballymena and then quickly expanded to four retail stores. By 1998 he had moved into property full time.
The developer recently applied for planning permission for a £200m development in Co Tyrone. He also sold Newry’s Damolly retail park for an initial payment of £28.4m. Morrison’s property company, Corbo, showed £294.5m of net assets in 2009-10 when it made a £2m loss. Morrison’s speciality through the years has been retail development, with a particular focus on warehouses.
He has been largely responsible for changing the look of the retail centre around Boucher Road in Belfast, where he developed the Boucher retail park. Currently, he is developing another new project in that area.
Morrison, 59, has a number of other shopping centres, including Fairhill in Ballymena and a large retail warehouse development outside Newry. We value him at the net asset value of £295m.
64 David Mabey & Family
£282m
Mabey Holdings
2010: £196m (+£86m)
Reading-based industrial group Mabey Holdings was started by the late Bevil Mabey after the Second World War when he bought up spare Bailey bridges from the army. In 2010, it went from a profit of £33.2m to a £269,000 loss on over £116m sales. It is worth its £205.2m net assets – much of which are tied up in property.
Dividends of nearly £75m since 1996, and the separate Hare Hatch Holdings with almost £23.5m net assets, would normally take the Mabey family to £285m after tax and spending. But its Mabey & Johnson subsidiary was fined £3.5m in 2009 for breaching UN sanctions against Iraq and systematically bribing foreign officials with so-called “white man’s handshakes”.
As a result, we value the Mabey family, led by 50-year-old former chairman David Mabey, at £282m.
65 Stephen Vernon
£280m
Green Property
2010: £350m (-£70m)
Stephen Vernon’s Green Property operation has signed an agreement with Lloyds Banking Group to asset manage around €1bn of distressed Irish property loans. Green’s remit will be to improve the assets’ rental levels and maximise sale proceeds.
Green Property is not, however, immune from the crash itself: its profits fell to just £450,000 in the year to June 2010, while its net assets also fell £18m to £414m.
Vernon, 61, joined Green in 1993. Nine years later, Green was taken private via a £700m deal backed financially by Merrill Lynch and HBOS. Vernon 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 still has a strong portfolio of assets. It owns the Blanchardstown shopping centre, one of Ireland’s biggest retail complexes.
Other assets include a factory outlet centre in Killarney; offices let to eBay in Leopardstown; an industrial site in west Dublin occupied by Irish Express Cargo; and a growing asset base in the UK. Despite the Irish crash, we only clip Vernon back to £280m.
66 Lord Iliffe & Family
£266m
Yattendon Investment Trust
2010: £240m (+£26m)
Yattendon Group had a tough 2010 with a £14m asset writedown which pushed the Birmingham-based property, marina, media and agriculture operation into a £4.5m loss on £108.9m sales.
The business is owned by the Iliffe family, which has solid links to the Midlands.
Lord Iliffe, 66, inherited the title from his late uncle in 1996. After selling its Birmingham papers in 1987 for £60m, Yattendon still has more than 40 local newspaper titles and also owns Channel TV. We value the company on its £259m net assets and the Iliffe family at £266m overall.
67 Bert and Maurice Allen
£260m
Lotan Holdings
2010: £208m (+£52m)
Bert Allen, 72, and his brother Maurice, 69, are prominent Wexford tycoons, who are now backing local wind turbine projects.
Ownership of their Slaney Meats operation was transferred in 2010 to a British Virgin Isles company called Lotan Holdings. The last accounts filed in 2008 showed more than £71m of net assets.
From its profits, the Allen brothers built a property portfolio through which they netted around £190m when they sold their Bewley hotel chain in 2007.
The Allens reinvested some of this in German property. Other assets include hotels, more than 18% of energy firm Gaelectric, and a £10m commercial building in Dusseldorf. They also own land around the seaside resort of Courtown and are moving into bioenergy. They should easily be worth £260m.
67 Marquess of Salisbury
£260m
Gascoyne Cecil Estates
2010: £250m (+£10m)
Hatfield House was a location in the Oscar-winning The King’s Speech film. The Salisbury family seat, completed in 1612, is a regular on the big screen.
Hatfield, the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth I, is a treasure trove of hugely valuable paintings worth £125m. But we cut that value in half to allow for tax demands in any future sales.
In addition, there is Cranborne Manor, the family estate in Dorset. It was originally the site of one of King John’s hunting lodges. Salisbury’s main farming company, Gascoyne Cecil Farms, and three others saw a sharp increase in net assets to nearly £8.4m in 2009-10. Salisbury is also developing the family’s London acreage around Leicester Square. The London estate, American land, the two stately homes with their surrounding 20,000 acres, and the art collection take Salisbury, 65, to £260m.
69 Robert Rayne & Family
£255m
Merchant Securities
2010: £220m (+£35m)
West End specialist Derwent London, chaired by Robert Rayne, saw the value of its portfolio rise 5% to £2.6bn in the first half of the year – outperforming IPD. Net asset value per share jumped 10% to 1,621p. Rayne puts this strong performance down to resilient demand for West End office space.
He says that the company will push ahead with acquisitions and developments, which include the redevelopment of the Saatchi headquarters site at 80 Charlotte Street, W1.
Rayne, 62, is the son of legendary property tycoon Lord Rayne, who died in 2003, leaving £119.6m in his British will, which excluded assets in France.
Derwent London was formed three years later through the merger of the Rayne family’s London Merchant Securities with Derwent Valley. It is one of the top quoted property groups and its shares had been riding high until the recent stock market falls. It is now worth £1.6bn.
The Rayne family has a £227m stake in Derwent London and also a £26m stake in investment company LMS Capital, which is winding itself up after a shareholder clash over strategy. After deducting hefty charitable donations and tax, we value the Raynes at £255m.
70 Gerald Ronson & Family
£250m
Heron Corporation
2010: £145m (+£105m)
Gerald Ronson struck a £350m deal in June to grab hundreds of filling stations from French rival Total.
Ronson’s petrol forecourt business, Snax 24, is part of a consortium that will buy 810 service stations from Total in the UK. However, the consortium has agreed to sell 254 sites to Royal Dutch Shell for £240m. The deal is expected to conclude at the end of the year, leaving Snax 24 running 556 sites across the country.
Meanwhile, Ronson’s £500m Heron Tower in the City is now complete and partially let. Ronson put £44m of his own money into the development, and
the Oman government backed him in late 2006. Yet his Heron operation nearly went bankrupt years ago, a victim of the property downturn in the early 1990s. Ronson bounced back and made hefty gains on buying and selling properties.
In 2009, Heron International, the parent company, made a £2.6m profit and showed £390m of net assets. Ronson Capital Partners, a new investment firm, was established this year and, in its maiden purchase, bought International House in Chiltern Street, London, for £63m. Also this year, Ronson picked up a life-time achievement award at the 20th annual Props lunch.
The Snax 24 business showed nearly £43m of net assets in 2010, but it is worth at least £100m. Ronson, 72, has given away £35m to charities over the past 25 years, yet he is easily worth £250m.
70 Manfred Gorvy & Family
£250m
Hanover Acceptances
2010: £195m (+£55m)
Gorvy, 72, an accountant, runs a highly successful property, food and financial services group – the London-based Hanover Acceptances, which he founded in 1974. The company saw its profits fall from £25.9m to £18.2m on £616.8m of sales in 2010.
The business, with over £239.2m net assets, is owned by a parent called Lombas Holdings. It is worth the net assets.
We assume that the Gorvy family, well represented on the board, is the ultimate owner and, taking into account past dividends and other assets, we value them at £250m.
70 £250m
Alan Lewis
Hartley Investment Trust
2010: £250m (No change)
Alan Lewis came to prominence in the early 1980s through the battle to control Illingworth Morris, the Yorkshire-based textiles group. Since then he has diversified into other areas such as property, forestry and natural resources.
His Hartley Investment Trust showed nearly £34.7m net assets in 2009-10. His British property portfolio is growing and is worth at least £100m. In addition, Lewis has 4,000 acres of prime development land in Florida, where gas has been discovered, and forestry land in Russia equivalent to the size of Wales.
Adding other banking, high-tech and property assets in Britain, America and Spain, Lewis, 73, is still worth £250m.
73 Michael Clare
£237m
Dreams plc
New entry
Mike Clare, the colourful founder of beds retailer Dreams, has invested £85m in property in the past 18 months, which is now worth around £120m – a ripe return.
He has also put £5m into his charity, the Clare Foundation, which aims to help other charities become more efficient and entrepreneurial.
It was in March 2008 that Clare sold his Dreams business for a reported £230m, some 23 years after he started it.
After taking a higher national diploma in business studies, Clare first went into the furniture trade in High Wycombe, working his way up to area manager.
In 1987 he took a lease on a shop in Uxbridge and opened as the Sofa Bed Centre, later renamed Dreams. Clare,
56, and his family owned it all. He reinvested £20m in the firm under its new owner, private equity firm Exponent.
His investments and various other assets take Clare to perhaps £237m after tax.
75 Christopher Moran
£232m
Chesterlodge
2010: £220m (+£12m)
Moran is best known for the restoration of the 15th-century Crosby Hall on the banks of the Thames, which he bought in 1988 for just £100,000. It is now worth £100m. Moran, a 63-year-old insurance and property tycoon, is planning a 57-turbine wind farm on his 48,000 Glenfiddich estate near Aberdeen. His main property firm, Chesterlodge, showed a £2.9m profit on £8m sales in 2009-10. It is worth its £212m net assets. We add £20m for his London home (after deducting restoration costs).
74 Sten Mortstedt & Family
£234m
CLS Holdings
2010: £186m (+£48m)
CLS Holdings announced a 13% hike in net asset value to 869.1p a share in its half-year results to the end of June.
The London-listed property investment company, which has a £942m portfolio in London, France, Germany and Sweden, posted a 32% rise in pretax profit to £37.1m.
Mortstedt, 71, is founder and chairman of CLS and says the company benefits from its “diversity across four European property markets, three currencies, and a broad and growing range of funding structures and lending sources”.
In the UK, the company’s principal focus is on plans for two schemes close to the south London site that will house the new US embassy from 2016. It is also buying income-producing assets, picking up two adjacent office blocks in Hounslow, west London, recently for £5.5m – a 10% yield.
Mortstedt, a low-key Swede, and his family have a £175m stake in the quoted CLS, which has recovered well from the 2009 market crash.
Share sales of more than £95m and other assets take the family to around £234m after tax.
76 Nigel Wray
£230m
Prestbury Investment Holdings
New entry
The share price of Domino’s Pizza, the quoted pizza delivery company, stalled recently after a long rise, and the Milton Keynes-based company is now worth £747m. Wray, 63, is the largest shareholder with a stake worth £85m.
Since 2007 he has also sold around £67m worth of his shares in Domino’s.
Wray has stakes in 14 quoted companies aside from Domino’s, worth around £46m in total. Starting as a banker and later a share tipster, he has made a series of shrewd moves in the worlds of property, media and communications since the early 1980s that have earned him a fortune.
Wray also chairs Saracens, the top-flight rugby club, and has put around £20m into it over the past 14 years.
Working with Nick Leslau, Wray has more than 47% of Prestbury Investment Holdings, an operation dealing mainly in sale and leaseback assets. It invested an initial £20m in Leslau’s quoted Max Property Group and is otherwise focused on delivering profitable exits from its holdings. In 2010, it showed £69m net assets, up from £65m the previous year. Wray’s stakes, share sales and private assets should take him to £230m.
77 Sir Stanley & Peter Thomas
£225m
Atlantic Property Developments plc
2010: £225m (No change)
After building a snack and pie business – Peter’s Savoury Products – in the South Wales valleys, the Thomas brothers sold it in 1988 for £75m. The family then went on to build the TBI group, involved in property and, later, airports.
They made around £106m when
TBI was taken over in 2004.
Stanley, 70, was knighted in the 2006 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to business and charities in Wales.
A Spanish development, in which Stanley’s brother, Peter, 68, 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 £225m easily.
78 Manny Davidson & Family
£220m
BL Davidson
2010: £220m (No change)
The Davidson family’s stake in Asda Property was worth £253m when it was taken over entirely by British Land in 2006. Davidson, 80, started in the London property market in 1964.
His Asda Property – named after his mother Astrid – was floated on the stock market in 1985.
The company, which specialised in retail and central London offices, was taken private in a £232m deal in 2001 by British Land and the Davidson family through the BL Davidson joint venture.
Other assets and share sales take the family to £220m after tax.
78 Gerard O’Hare
£220m
Parker Green International
2010: £220m (No change)
Property entrepreneur Gerard O’Hare owns the Quays shopping centre in Newry, which is popular with shoppers from the Republic of Ireland.
In 1997, he left his family building firm to work on his own property developments. His company Parker Green International is behind some of the North’s most important retail developments and he has further shopping centres in the South. However, he is not reliant on Ireland, so he has not been as badly affected by the downturn as other Irish property developers.
O’Hare boosted his US interests with two investments in the New York commuter belt valued at more than £125m in July 2007.
Parker Green International bought 500 acres of residential building land in New Jersey for £75m, and a shopping mall in Connecticut – the Millford Retail Centre – for £50m.
O’Hare, 53, has also acquired a mixed bag of investment and development assets in Central and Eastern Europe.
With personal property and assets included, he should still be worth around £220m.
80 Alastair & Michael Powell
£214m
Cleveland Cable Co
2010: £209m (+£5m)
Cleveland Cable, Britain’s biggest cable distributor, was started in 1977 by the Powell brothers, Alastair, 59, and Michael, 54, who own all of the Middlesbrough-based company. Profits soared 400% in 2009-10 to £26m, but this was due to rising copper prices rather than trading. Turnover was down 15% at £166m and it had £141m net assets.
A property operation, Cable Properties & Investments, showed nearly £69m net assets in the same period. Between them, the two companies showed £210m net assets. We value the brothers at £214m.
julia.cahill@estatesgazette.com
Rich List 2011: 81-110
