According to the Sunday Time Rich List, Britain is now the home of nearly 10 times as many billionaires, but how many of the countries richest are manufacturers? The Manufacturer takes a look at the top 10 richest manufacturers.
While the rest of the country has struggled under a double dip recession in the past year, the richest 1,000 have added £35.4bn to their wealth, but how many of the 1000 richest people in the Britain and Ireland made their money in manufacturing?
We take a look at the top 10 industrialists from the Sunday Times Rich List. The top 10 manufacturers listed below scraped into the overall top 50 of the Rich List but not many of them are home-grown success stories.
Top 10 richest British manufacturers
1. Lakshmi Mittal – £10bn
At the top of the manufacturer rich list and in fourth place overall is Lakshmi Mittal and the Mittal family. He sponsored the Orbit tower in London’s Olympic Park, having donated £16m of steel to the high-profile project, and carried the Olympic flame with his son Aditya through Kensington, where he has a £57m mansion. But that was about it in terms of Olympics largesse. The 40% stake he and his wife Usha hold in the steelmaking giant ArcelorMittal plummeted from £28bn at its peak in the middle of 2008 to £5.95bn. So, after eight years on top of The Sunday Times Rich List, the steel maharajah is no longer No 1.
2. Ernesto Bertarelli – £7.4bn
Ernesto Bertarelli‘s family money comes from the Serono pharmaceutical group which Ernesto was running at the age of 31. But the Geneva-based company was sold to Merck in 2006 for $13.3bn.
3. Hans Rausing – £4.72bn
Hans Rausing, 87, helped to develop the Tetra Pak (later Tetra Laval) business founded by his late father in 1944. Operating in more than 170 countries, it is the world’s largest food packaging business. Rausing moved to Britain from his native Sweden in the early 1980s, selling his 50% stake in the company to his late brother, Gad, for about £4.4bn in 1995. Gad’s children, Kirsten and Jorn Rausing, sit on the Tetra Laval board and are known for making large donations to charity, as are Rausing’s daughters, Sigrid and Lisbet.
4. Sir Anthony Bamford – £3.15bn
Staffordshire-based JCB, founded by Sir Anthony Bamford’s late father in 1945, passed a milestone in December, selling its 500,000th machine 60-years after its first. It is expanding too, building a fourth Indian factory having opened a new one in Brazil last year. Sir Anthony’s career began with a two-year apprenticeship at Massey Ferguson in France. He stepped down as managing director in 2004 but remains chairman of the world’s third largest supplier of earth-moving equipment. He and his wife, Lady Bamford, co-founded Daylesford Organic, which sells cheese and other produce from the couple’s Cotswolds farm. JCB is currently valued at £3bn.
5. Sir James Dyson – £3bn
Profits at Dyson rose by 30% to £306m in 2011 on £1bn sales and expansion plans are under way. Last year the Malmesbury-based company sacked an engineer it believed was working for one of its rivals. Sir James Dyson is also frustrated by the shortage of engineering graduates in Britain. Nevertheless The Sunday Times Rich List values Dyson’s business at £2.5bn.
6. Ravi Ruia – £2.55bn
London-based Ravi Ruia, 64 tomorrow, is one of India’s leading industrialists. With his India-based brother Shashi, he runs the Essar group that has sales of £17bn in 25 countries. Its operations include marine construction, oil and steel. Two years ago they sold their one-third stake in the mobile phone company Vodafone Essar to Vodafone for £3.1bn.
7. Lord Paul – £2bn
Lord Paul‘s Caparo group, based on steel and engineering, made more than £50m profit on £921m sales in 2011. Its American and Indian businesses are worth £1.6bn. Paul, 82, came to Britain from India to get treatment for his daughter’s leukaemia in 1966. She died two years later. The Ambika Paul Foundation, set up in her memory, promotes children’s wellbeing.
8. Sri Prakash Lohia – £1.89bn
Sri Prakash Lohia, 60, was born in India but has Indonesian citizenship. He helped his father run the family’s polyester operation. Founded in 1976, Indorama became one of the world’s largest textile and plastics companies. Lohia is likely to spend more time in London as he expands his business empire in the West.
9. Mahdi al-Tajir – £1.66bn
Highland Spring, the Perthshire-based bottled water operation, is owned by Mahdi Al-Tajir, a former UAE ambassador to Britain. He has metal trading, oil and gas interests, and a large property portfolio.
10. Alki David – £1.49bn
Based in London, the 44-year-old Alki David heads the Greek Leventis family, which owned bottling plants for Coca-Cola worldwide. In 2000 it merged its interests with the drinks company to create the quoted Coca-Cola Hellenic. Its shares have soared recently and it is valued at about £6.5bn, with the family stake worth £1.48bn. David is putting £30m into the expansion of his free internet-based television company, FilmOn and owns 11 properties worldwide.
