Estates Gazette Rich List 2011 – Top 20
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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1 The Duke of Westminster
£7,000m
Grosvenor Group
2010: £6,500m (+£500m)
Grosvenor Group’s focus this year has been on reinvesting in its core London business, expanding in Asia and growing its fund management operation. It can well afford to after a spectacular turnaround in its last results, moving from a £236m loss in 2009 to a £395m profit for 2010 on the back of surging property values in its prime central London market.
It also raised £125m through a bond issue earlier this year that was heavily oversubscribed by UK and US investors.
The group is working on numerous projects at home: for example, it has teamed up with Derwent London to redevelop a prime site close to Hyde Park, possibly as a luxury hotel. It is also ploughing £10m into making Mayfair’s Mount Street and Carlos Place an exclusive shopping district for the super rich.
The fund management division, now headed by a Goldman Sachs veteran, recently formed a new joint venture with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to invest more than £200m in central London offices.
The history of the business controlled by Westminster dates back to 1677 when Sir Thomas Grosvenor married Mary Davies and what was then 500 acres of swamp, pasture and orchards came into the family. Today, that forms the heart of the 300-acre Mayfair estate, which is the heart of the Grosvenor family fortune.
The Grosvenor Group shares are controlled by the trustees of various trusts set up for the benefit of the Grosvenor family. The family is now headed by the 6th Duke, who stood down as chairman of the board in 2007 after 33 years in the role, although he has remained chairman of the trustees.
Grosvenor Group’s net asset value rose in 2010 to nearly £2.8bn. With the family’s private estate assets outside the group added and taking into account the strong performance of the prime central London residential market – which is expected to see price increases of 30% by 2015 – we raise our overall valuation of Westminster, 59, to £7bn this year.
2 Ernesto and Kirsty Bertarelli
£6,870m
Crosstree Real Estate Partners
New entry
Ernesto Bertarelli, the Swiss-Italian pharmaceutical billionaire, is moving into British property by investing £500m in a private equity firm, Crosstree Real Estate Partners, which is being set up by the former UK heads of Blackstone and Starwood Capital.
With debt, the company is expected to amass a £1bn UK property portfolio. It is led by Nick Lyle, former UK head of Blackstone, and Sean Arnold, former head of European acquisitions at Starwood Capital. They will invest exclusively on behalf of Bertarelli for three years, focusing on prime investments and also looking at riskier debt opportunities.
Twice winner of the prestigious America’s Cup yachting race, Bertarelli, 46, makes it into this list not just for his UK investment but in company with his wife, Kirsty, a keen athlete and former Miss UK in 1988.
They were married in 2000 and Kirsty, 40, from Staffordshire, is heavily involved in the yachting business.
Bertarelli himself is a great Anglophile and prefers to drink beer in a London pub with his wife than quaff champagne.
Yet he spent his life being groomed for business – at the age of six he was reportedly handing out employee-of-the-year gifts at his father’s Serono pharmaceutical company.
By 31, following his father’s death, Bertarelli was running the multi-national group, the biggest biotechnology organisation in Europe.
Founded in Rome in 1906, Serono made its fortune from a single, best-selling fertility drug derived from an unusual source: the urine of post-menopausal women, specifically from Italian nuns. Overhauled by Ernesto’s father Fabio in the 1970s, the Geneva-based company became the world leader in reproductive treatments and also produces drugs for growth deficiency, Aids-related wasting and multiple sclerosis which sell in 45 countries.
Serono was eventually sold to Merck of Germany in September 2006 for $13.3bn. The couple’s fortune now stands at a heady £6.87bn.
3 David and Simon Reuben
£6,180m
Global Switch
2010: £5,432m (+£748m)
The billionaire Reuben brothers bought a prestigious Mayfair estate, which includes the former home of the In and Out Club on London’s Piccadilly, for £130m cash in June this year. The price was seen by many in the market as a steal for the sharp-witted investors after a drawn-out attempt by Lloyds Banking Group to find a buyer. The deal involved six properties that make up the 1.3-acre “Piccadilly Estate”.
The Reubens, owners of Northen Racing, have also been eyeing Arena Leisure, which runs seven courses, including Lingfield Park. They own almost 30% and a takeover depends on 41.5 % shareholder Trevor Hemmings, who is said to want 60p a share. This values Arena at more than £200m.
Elsewhere, they have embarked on a joint venture to build a 140m tower nicknamed “The Cucumber” in the Paddington Basin. The Robin Partington-designed tower will consist of 222 flats and a 90-room hotel, and will be the tallest building in the borough of Westminster. They have also been given initial permission for three more towers.
Meanwhile, Global Switch, their data centre operating business, is investing £1bn ($1.59bn) in the expansion of its network across the world. The Reubens have long-held ambitions to float the business, which owns and operates more than 3m sq ft of data centre space valued at about £3.2bn in seven locations.
The Reubens, who are in their seventies, have been active in the British property market for the past decade after making their fortune in Russia in the 1990s. They were dubbed the “metal tsars” for their role in restructuring the aluminium industry there. Born in Bombay, they 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 brothers have seen an upturn in their property fortunes and have also been able to extract hefty profits from investments sold before the market crash. With other assets rising significantly in value, they are now worth more than £6bn in all.
4 Earl Cadogan
£2,850m
Cadogan Group
2010: £2,500m (+£350m)
The Cadogan Group turned to the bond market to raise £150m debt in January this year. City institutions were scrambling to lend the money and the offer was oversubscribed. No wonder. It was backed by some of the finest real estate assets in the world in the shape of 93 top-notch Chelsea acres.
The group has fully recovered from the financial crisis and its estate is now valued at a record £3bn, above its previous high point reached in 2007. In 2010 it made a £42.3m profit on £93.5m sales and showed £2.57bn of net assets.
The modern history of the Cadogan family can be traced back to William, the first Earl Cadogan, who was an accomplished soldier and diplomat. He fought under the Duke of Marlborough at the Battle of Blenheim (1704) and his military skills were recognised when he was awarded various titles, culminating in him being created Earl Cadogan, Viscount Caversham and Baron Oakley.
The Cadogan Estate has its origins in the historic Manor of Chelsea, which was purchased in 1712 by Sir Hans Sloane, the antiquarian, physician and scientist, whose collection founded the British Museum. Sir Hans Sloane’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Charles, second Baron of Cadogan, and the younger brother of the first Earl Cadogan.
Next year the Cadogan Group will be marking the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the purchase of the estate by Sir Hans Sloane.
The present Earl Cadogan, 74, began his career at merchant bank 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, most notably the Duke of York Square on the King’s Road.
We value the business on its 2010 net assets. Past dividends, quoted investments held by the separate Cadogan Settled Estates, personal property and estates should take Cadogan to £2.85bn.
5 Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay
£2,200m
Ellerman Investments
2010: £1,800m (+£400m)
The Barclay brothers have been investing in hotels since the 1960s and this year saw them make a further play in the luxury end of the London market.
The brothers have been building a 64% stake in the Maybourne Hotel Group in a drive to win control of its three five-star London hotels – Claridge’s, the Connaught and the Berkeley. The group was created by former property magnate Derek Quinlan after he bought the Savoy Group in 2004 and later sold the Savoy itself.
The Barclays bought 25% from the Green mining family, 35% from Quinlan and 4% from stockbroker Kyran McLaughlin. They have further tightened their grip by cleverly buying €800m of debt secured against the company from Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency, in a deal confirmed in September.
But there is a fly in the ointment in the shape of fourth shareholder Paddy McKillen, who owns 36%. McKillen has resisted selling to the Barclays and aims to block the brothers’ attempts to take full control, so this saga looks set to run for a while yet.
The Barclays, who already own the Ritz, made their move on the Maybourne group just a few months after they sold their 10% stake in InterContinental Hotels for £335m. The sale ended speculation that the brothers, who began building their stake in 2006, would attempt a takeover of the company. The City reckoned they may have just broken even or made a small loss.
The Barclays, 77, started on the road to wealth in the 1960s London property market. Their first coup came in 1983 when they bought the Ellerman Lines for £48m. They later sold the assets, making more than £250m.
Adroit deals with Sir Philip Green increased their fortune and in 2002 they bought the valuable Littlewoods mail order business for a total outlay, after selling off surplus assets, of around £340m. The low-key Barclays added the Telegraph Group to their empire for £665m two years later.
Although the Barclays’ main operations in media, hotels, property and retailing have had mixed fortunes in the recession, we can see net assets of over £2.05bn in their four main but separate companies, led by Ellerman Investments. We raise them this year to £2.2bn.
6 John Whittaker
£2,075m
Peel Holdings
2010: £1,060m (+£1,015m)
John Whittaker’s 148-acre Wirral Waters in Liverpool has been awarded enterprise zone status. There are now plans for a 2.5m sq ft international trading centre within the scheme in a joint venture with Chinese firm Sam Wa Minerals. Peel’s aim is that the completed trading centre will enable more than 1,000 companies from emerging economies such as China , South Korea and India to trade exclusively with the wholesale market.
Furthermore, this year Peel has put various offers to Pinewood film studios in the hope of buying out the other shareholders. After Pinewood supported his offer of £96m in April, Whittaker won enough support from shareholders to increase his 30% stake, and two Peel Holdings directors joined the board of Pinewood in July this year. Peel now owns 71% of the company. Peel Holdings has also completed a £205m long-term commercial real estate financing deal with Aviva Commercial Finance.
Whittaker, 69, sold his Trafford Centre shopping mall in Manchester in January to the quoted Capital Shopping Centres in a £1.6bn deal. Under the terms of the deal, his company Peel took shares in CSC worth £596m and joined its board.
Whittaker, who nearly became a Catholic priest, went into the quarrying business before moving into property. In the 1980s, he fought a long and sometimes bitter battle to take over the Manchester Ship Canal Company, from which the Trafford Centre emerged.
Whittaker has branched out into other areas including ports, airports, urban regeneration and alternative energy through his Peel operation. Peel’s net assets now stand at around £2.8bn. Whittaker’s family stake is worth around £2.04bn. Other assets should take the family to £2.075bn.
7 Eddie and Sol Zakay
£2,050m
Topland Group
2010: £1,900m (+£150m)
The Zakays have been eyeing the long-awaited sale of 42 Marriott-operated hotels in the UK by Royal Bank of Scotland.
The brothers are well-placed to capitalise on distressed property sales: earlier this year, they bought the Hilton Brighton Metropole for £39.25m
from RBS.
The ever-active brothers are not just buying hotels – they recently purchased Birmingham office block Cobalt Square for £3.8m and an office in Redruth for £2.7m.
Their cash-rich Topland Group has said that it is actively seeking further deals in the secondary market.
Outside of property, they recently formed a joint venture with Barclays Natural Resource Investments to invest in the natural resources sector. Around £500m will be invested in areas such as metals, mining, oil , gas, power and renewable energy.
The Topland business, built by the two Zakay brothers, Eddie, 61, and Sol, 59, has also spent around £290m buying a chain of supermarkets in Spain, and has become involved in a £1bn house-building fund in India.
The Zakays launched their business during the property boom in the 1980s before expanding into the American and Middle Eastern markets.
With rents up around 7%, their total portfolio worldwide is valued at more than £4bn.
In all, and after stripping out borrowings, the Zakay family should be worth around £2.05bn.
8 Baroness Howard de Walden & Family
£1,820m
Howard De Walden Estates
2010: £1,400m (+£420m)
Last year, Howard de Walden Estates raised £150m through a private placement on the bond markets. It used the cash to pay down more expensive bank debts and press on with investments such as the acquisition of 14 period buildings on Harley Street from the Crown Estate last year for £34m.
The properties, set in the middle of the de Waldens’ 90-acre London estate, had not been traded in more than 470 years since the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII.
The Howard de Walden family can afford it. Led by the 10th Baroness, 76, the eldest of four daughters of the late Lord Howard de Walden, who died in 1999, its acreage round Marylebone is now seen as a trendy area of London.
It is also making serious money for the family. In the past financial year they have seen the value of their property soar by more than 20%.
In 2009-10, Howard de Walden Estates made a near £34m profit on £64.85m sales. Its net assets rose 24% to £1.55bn. In the past 16 years, the family has clocked up over £300m dividends from the company and a separate development firm, Welbeck Land, which made £4.4m profit on £23.1m sales in 2009-10. With £15m net assets, Welbeck Land is highly active in development around the country.
Following an uptick in central London values, we reckon the family’s business assets are now worth £1.6bn, and we add another £220m for past dividends and other property assets after tax.
It will be interesting to see whether the next extended generation of the family will want to continue as one of London’s premier landlords or will in fact, as has been mooted, trigger a sale. It would be some sale if it ever came to market.
9 Mark Pears & Family
£1,600m
William Pears Group
2010: £1,600m (No change)
The Pears paid £47m for the UK’s first combined portfolio of distressed secondary assets earlier this year. The family’s Telereal Trillium operation struck a deal with Lloyds Banking Group to buy 35 of the assets in the Flagstaff portfolio at a large discount. The bank had hoped to sell the entire portfolio of 38 assets, all in receivership, for around £60m.
It has been a busy year for the Pears, who have revealed plans for a new European property fund which will focus primarily on the German residential market. They have also embarked on a joint venture with Telford Homes in a £150m project in London’s Shoreditch to build a 25-storey tower comprising 369 new homes and commercial space. The flats have been selling rapidly off plan, with the developers claiming to have achieved an average price of £675 per sq ft.
The Pears group is also diversifying away from property. The low-key London-based brothers are backing a new Home and Savings Bank to the tune of £50m. The Pears also have a family office called Talisman Global Asset Management, which is looking to manage the wealth of other rich families.
The Pears’ Hampstead-based property empire was started in 1952. It now embraces thousands of London homes, flats, and office blocks, and manages buildings for clients such as BT.
The three young Pears were propelled to run the family empire when their father and ace dealmaker, Clive Pears, died in 1984. Mark, 48, is managing director of William Pears Family Holdings but there are at least 25 separate firms which made £26m profit on £189m sales and showed £866m of net assets in 2009-10.
The value of the total Pears portfolio has been put at £6bn. Past dividends and other assets keep the Pears at £1.6bn.
10 John Caudwell
£1,500m
Caudwell Properties
2010: £1,400m (+£100m)
John Caudwell’s move into property is bearing fruit. In October he paid £150m for a Mayfair car park, which will be redeveloped as upmarket residential. His six small property companies showed nearly £6.7m profit on nearly £11m sales in 2009-10. Before the Mayfair deal, he had spent £80m on properties in London and elsewhere. He can easily afford to take such a gamble, having sold most of his Caudwell Group in 2006 for £1.46bn. His remaining stake netted him another £100m when the company, trading as Phones4U, was sold again in March.
It was in 1970 that Caudwell took his first job as an engineering apprentice at the Michelin Tyre Company. Later, he became a successful car dealer, but his path to serious money came through an early move into the fledgling mobile phone industry in 1987. When he sold up, Caudwell was the biggest independent European player. His 85% stake in the business was worth around £1.24bn at the sale price. Two years previously, he had sold off his Singlepoint customer billing operation to Vodafone for £405m.
With his proceeds and other assets, including the final share sale of Phones 4U, we value Caudwell, 59, at £1.5bn this year. He does hefty charitable work for Caudwell Children, which grants holidays, and provides equipment and support to youngsters with life-limiting illnesses.
11 Eddie and Malcolm Healey
£1,500m
Stadium Holdings
2010: £750m (+£750m)
In February, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board bought a 50% stake in Europe’s largest shopping centre, Centro, for around £593m. Canada’s second-largest public pension manager signed the contract with UK entrepreneur Eddie Healey, who developed the 780,000 sq ft shopping centre near Dusseldorf, Germany. He is one of two brothers who started out in their father’s Hull-based DIY operation.
Eddie, 73, made his fortune from property deals, particularly in Yorkshire. With fellow developer, Paul Sykes, he turned a derelict site outside Sheffield on the M1 into the leading out-of-town shopping centre in the north of England. The £1.17bn sale of the Meadowhall shopping centre in 1999 netted Eddie around £420m for his 60% stake, after debt.
Having reinvested some of the Meadowhall proceeds, we can see £576m net assets in the latest accounts of three Healey family companies, including Stadium Holdings, up sharply on the previous year.
Brother Malcolm, 67, built up and later sold the Hygena Kitchens business, netting £200m in 1987. He went to America and repeated the operation there, selling up for £800m. Now back in Yorkshire, Malcolm has invested in fast-growing Ebuyer, an internet retailer with sales of around £250m.
Between them, the brothers should easily be worth £1.5bn, allowing for tax and reinvestment of sale proceeds.
12 Poju Zabludowicz
£1,500m
Tamares Real Estate investments (UK)
2010: £1,500m (No change)
Property magnate Poju Zabludowicz and his wife have converted a chapel in north west London to show their 2,000 art works, many of which had previously been in storage. Zabludowicz holds a Finnish passport, but has lived and worked in London for most of his life. His father Shlomo, a holocaust survivor, built the family business around Soltam, an Israeli defence contractor.
After offloading most of the defence interests, the family diversified into property and hotels in Israel and Las Vegas. Zabludowicz, 58, recently sold a property called the Princess Arcade on Piccadilly for around £120m.
He has a number of companies, including Tamares Real Estate Investments and Ivory Gate. Zabludowicz has also moved into private equity with the launch of Synova Capital, an £80m fund which will invest in small UK companies.
Equity investments in areas such as card payment technology have also proved lucrative for Zabludowicz, who is on the board of several Israeli charities.
His Tamares Fund recently sold Storewize, a software storage operation, to IBM for $140m.
Zabludowicz has also given some hefty charitable donations. He is a big donor to the Tory party and was a backer of Pargav, the mystery company linked to former defence minister Liam Fox. We keep Zabludowicz at £1.5bn this year.
13 Dermot Desmond
£1,300m
City Aviation Holdings
New entry
A former stockbroker turned shrewd investor, Dermot Desmond has turned his sights recently on the Irish media group, Independent News & Media. Desmond, best known as the leading shareholder in Celtic, the Glasgow football club, recently upped his IN&M stake to 3.2%. It is the subject of intense takeover speculation, so Desmond should make a handsome return on his investment.
Desmond’s other investments have been shrewdly timed. He owns a string of assets in Britain and Ireland outside Celtic. His London City airport operation and a stake in Greencore, an Irish foods company, were sold before prices slumped, netting Desmond £848m. Earlier, he made £240m from selling stakes in Esat Digifone, Baltimore Technology, Manchester United FC and Golden Vale.
Desmond is continually on the hunt for similar projects via his Dublin-based International Investment & Underwriting Company, which studies around 40 projects a year. It has found profitable ventures worldwide, for example, making £18m on his stake in Utah-based offender tracking firm Remote MDX, where shares increased fourfold last year before he sold them.
Desmond also has around £20m of stakes in UK-quoted companies, including a small £2.2m stake in Great Portland Estates. In all, the 61-year-old Desmond is easily worth £1.3bn, in spite of the sharp downturn in his native Ireland.
14 Ian and Richard Livingstone
£1,288m
London & Regional Group Holdings
2010: £1,650m (-£362m)
The Livingstone brothers are among the landlords who have been caught up this year in the Southern Cross care home saga, forcing them to find new operators.
Their London & Regional Nursing Homes owns the freeholds of 91 homes, which were operated by Southern Cross before
its collapse.
Nevertheless, their deal appetite has not been diminished. They have been among those looking at the collapsed Von Essen Hotels chain, and recently put in a £57.5m offer to buy two of its hotels – Cliveden in Buckinghamshire and Bath Royal Crescent Hotel.
They are active in the development world too, and have recently put forward proposals for a scheme to expand their Elizabeth House site near Waterloo station, acquired last year with Saudi group Olayan and Chelsfield Partners. They are planning a 1.25m sq ft twin tower development to replace the outdated 240,000 sq ft office block.
There will also be a 345,000 sq ft
glass-fronted block bridge building, held up with pillars creating a public space beneath, that has been earmarked for
cafes and restaurants.
The Livingstones have taken a whopping £619m in dividends in the three years from 2007 to 2009 from their Loopsign company. Ian, 49, who began life as an optician, purchased and built up the David Clulow chain.
Ian and younger brother Richard, 46, formerly a chartered surveyor, formed London & Regional in the early 1990s, buying distressed assets in the midst of the commercial property crash.
They own more than 60 hotels with around 10,000 bedrooms, more than half of Cape Town’s Victoria & Alfred Waterfront shopping development, and a string of health clubs, including David Lloyd Leisure.
Loopsign made a £92.1m loss on £386m sales in 2010, but we value it on its £787m net assets. We add £500m for past dividends and other assets to the Livingstones, after allowing for tax.
15 Viscount Portman & Family
£1,200m
Portman Estate
2010: £1,000m (+£200m)
The Portman Estate’s new chief executive Bill Moore, who joins next month, has a distinguished army career behind him. His appointment follows the sad loss of the much respected Gareth Clutton, who died in May after a short illness.
Clutton had been implementing the firm’s strategy of improving and investing in its 110-acre central London estate north of Oxford Circus.
Owned by a series of complex family trusts, the Portman Estate was slower than other big private London landowners to start improvements as 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. This includes Portman Village, the name for two shopping streets in the heart of the estate.
As well as the London estate, the Portman estate owns a rag-tag 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.
The family trusts of the present Viscount Portman, 53, have a 45% stake in Portland Investments (Baker Street) which had £18m net assets in 2009.
In all, the property assets should be up slightly this year in line with the other quality London landlords, and the Portman assets are now worth around £1,200m.
16 Bernard Lewis & Family
£1,150m
Bernard Lewis & Family
Lewis Trust Group
2010: £920m (+£230m)
The Lewis Trust Group, owner of fashion chain River Island, bought X-Leisure’s Fiveways leisure scheme in Birmingham for £27m at the end of 2010, showing
that the Lewis family has not lost its appetite for property deals. Lewis Trust saw its 2010 profits come in at £170m, while the Lewis family also took a £160m dividend.
The Lewis family, which owns the retail, property and hotels group, is headed by 85-year-old Bernard Lewis, who started work in his parents’ fruit shop. He moved into fashion in 1948 and the Lewis Separates chain was born.
In the mid-1960s the chain was renamed Chelsea Girl and in the late 1980s it became River Island.
The Lewis Trust should be worth at least £600m on its 2010 figures, and we add £550m for past dividends after tax.
Bernard’s brother David died in August, aged 87. He was credited with transforming Eilat in Israel into a
popular tourist resort through his hotel chain, Isrotel.
17 Jon Hunt
£875m
Jon Hunt
Foxtons
2010: £660m (+£215m)
Foxtons founder Jon Hunt has hired architect Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners to design a luxury residential and mixed-use tower on the Albert Embankment in south London. The architect is to carry out a feasibility study ahead of any planning application for the Texaco garage site, which lies near the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area.
Previous owners of the site, which Hunt bought with other investors for £7m, have failed to get their tower proposals past Lambeth council. But Britain’s top estate agent is sure to find a way.
Having sold the London-based
Foxtons estate agency at the height of the boom in early 2007 for £375m, Hunt, 58, has proved himself an expert in timing again and again.
Following the sale, he made substantial property investments in central London at the bottom of the market in 2008. That portfolio has increased in value by £100m to £315m in the past year.
He turned down an unsolicited offer of £200m for his seven-storey townhouse in Kensington Palace Gardens in 2008. He also owns the Heveningham Hall estate near Walpole and the nearby Halesworth Golf Club.
In September 2010, Hunt launched Bacchus Partners, hoping to snap up derelict properties across the South East and East of England, then turn them into housing. His other assets, including a car collection and 4,000 valuable farming acres, have all appreciated sharply in value, taking Hunt to £875m.
18 Gerald Hines
£800m
Gerald Hines
Hines Europe
2010: £800m (No change)
Gerald Hines, backed by the Qatari Investment Authority, has started work on the landmark $700m City Center DC development at a site in downtown Washington, DC, the largest downtown development currently under way in
any US city.
Hines, 85, is always taking on new projects. This year his firm was asked by Union Investment Real Estate GmbH to manage four office buildings in Santiago, Chile. The buildings are almost fully leased to multinational companies and Chilean firms.
For the past 50 years Hines has been running one of the largest property operations in the world. Based for much of this time in Mayfair, he is active in Britain, recently launching a £400m office scheme above London’s Cannon Street railway station.
As the son of an Indiana steelworker and schoolteacher, Hines’ start in life was far from easy. He grew up during the Depression, and had an ambition to make money from an early age. His first proper job was selling fans and blowers for office buildings in Houston.
But in 1952, Hines started out in property. He has become one of the world’s best-known property entrepreneurs, bringing fine architecture to the commercial market.
From London, Hines spearheads expansion across Europe and the world. The Hines group manages a total of 120m sq ft, around half of which is Hines-owned. In 2000, a Forbes analysis suggested
that Hines was worth around £1bn,
and possibly a lot more.
But we are going to be a little more conservative and plump for £800m.
19 Benzion Freshwater & Family
£785m
Daejan Holdings
2010: £732m (+£163m)
Daejan Holdings was among the landlords exposed to the troubles of care home operator Southern Cross.
The low-key London property group had to negotiate alternative operating arrangements for its nine facilities, which comprises seven care homes and two day centres. This is but a small part of the Daejan business controlled by the Freshwater family.
The quoted company is valued at around £433m. It reported full-year pretax profits of £84.3m for 2011, up from £61.1m in 2010. In October the share price was hovering around the £26 mark, but with net assets of £838m, this may be one the market has got wrong. Freshwater, 63, and his family have a near £345m stake.
Benzion Freshwater’s father, Osias, arrived in London three days before the Second World War as a penniless refugee. In 1957 he took over Daejan and, when he died in 1976, he was London’s biggest private landlord with 20,000 tenants.
The Freshwaters also have three other main firms – Highdorn, Metropolitan Properties and Centremanor, which had £721m net assets between them in 2009.
But we cut the net assets attributable to the family to £400m to allow for double counting and any charitable stakes.
To the £745m business wealth, we add £40m for past dividends.
20 Lord Sugar
£770m
Amshold
2010: £730m (+£40m)
Master of The Apprentice, Lord Sugar laid into property agents at a recent breakfast. He said he had started building his portfolio of property after amassing a fortune from his electronics business Amstrad and discovering first that “investment managers know nothing”.
His strategy was simple: “Find a street that will last forever and a building on it that will last forever, and if the tenant goes, you will easily re-let it. So I bought half of Bond Street.”
Sugar added that there was “nothing exciting” about property. He said there would be no more sales from his portfolio at present unless he could find another “lunatic” to make him an offer he could not refuse.
Amsprop Estates, one of his property companies, sold Albermarle House in London’s Mayfair for £19m to a Dubai-based consortium, for an £11m profit. His Amshold property group saw its profits rise sharply in 2009-10
from £4.3m to £8.3m. The value of
its net assets also rose nearly £37m to £240m.
Sugar, 64, was created a life peer by Gordon Brown in 2009. A Hackney tailor’s son, he was the chairman of Premiership football club Tottenham Hotspur from 1991 to 2001. Before that, he made headlines with his Amstrad operation, started in 1968, which became a leading consumer electronics group selling phones and computers in the 1980s and 1990s.
But following the £125m sale of Amstrad in 2007, his business activity is largely concentrated in the property field.
Sugar should have received around £36m for his Amstrad stake and £25m for his Spurs shares. But he has at least £500m worth of property held either via Amshold, Amsprop or overseas. He certainly has not lost his eye for a bargain, snapping up a Spanish hotel in 2009 once valued at £35m for just £2.5m.
In addition, he has £150m of cash, and personal assets including property in London, Florida and Spain. We value Sugar at £770m this year.
julia.cahill@estatesgazette.com
