Every spring since 1989, The Sunday Times, Britain’s most respected conservative Sunday newspaper, has compiled its rating, and Rich list On the estimated wealth of the UK’s 1,000 richest businessmen.
According to Robert Watts, who compiled the list, this year’s total shows that the golden age of the rich is slowly fading into the past. He explained, “Two years ago, we expressed concern about the disturbing boom in the fortunes of the rich, which has continued unchecked amid the political instability surrounding Brexit and the pandemic.” “We can’t talk about the crash yet, but there are some well-known names who have lost huge amounts of money in the past year. The bursting of the tech bubble, the end of hard interest rates and the worry that the banking sector is being consumed have all affected them,” Watts said.
For example, the fortune of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murti decreased by 200 million pounds sterling in one year. This year the couple’s fortune is estimated at £529m, which is why they were ranked 275th from 222nd last year in the latest Sunday Times richest people compilation. The couple’s private wealth declined greatly because Morty’s father’s company, in which Morty owned a one percent stake, went under. The company founded by billionaire Baba is the $64 billion Indian IT giant Infosys. The company’s shares have lost about a fifth of their value in 2022 as investors worry about the future of India’s technology sector. By the way, the British Prime Minister and his wife appeared on the Sunday Times Rich List for the first time last year, when Sun was still an adviser in the government of Boris Johnson. Then their fortune was estimated at 730 million pounds sterling.
Indian-born businessman Gopi Hinduja and his family are at the top of the 2023 ‘rich list’ published on Friday again with a fortune of £35 billion.
In second place is billionaire chemist Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe, who recently bid for Manchester United, added more than £23.6 billion to his fortune, taking his total fortune to £29.7 billion. However, the list’s authors stressed that this increase in wealth was largely due to “new information about his finances” rather than a change in his financial situation.
Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson is also among the richest this year. It lost £1.8bn last year, dropping to 44th with £4.2bn.
