Len Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born businessman and philanthropist, has been named as the richest person in the UK, according to the latest version of the annual Sunday Times Rich List. Mr Blavatnik’s fortune has risen such in the past year that he replaced the Hinduja brothers, Sri and Gopi, who topped the list a year ago. Mr Blavatnik’s wealth is estimated by the Sunday Times at £13.17bn. The Hinduja brothers have, nonetheless, increased their fortune from last year, by £1.1bn to £13bn.
According to the List, which includes land, property, assets or significant shares but excludes bank accounts, the collective wealth of Britain’s 1,000 richest individuals has doubled in the last ten years, despite the recession. The combined total wealth is now reckoned to be £547bn, up from £519bn a year ago. And for the first time, even to be featured on the List an individual must have a fortune of at least £100m.
Mr Blavatnik is perhaps best known now as the owner of the Warner Music Group, which includes some of the biggest names in pop music. Born in Odessa in 1957, Mr Blavatnik studied in Moscow but did not complete his degree before his family emigrated to the USA in 1978. By the time he completed his MBA at Harvard University in 1989, he had already founded Access Industries. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991 he bought into the Russian aluminium market, helping to form the company which became Rusal, the world’s largest aluminium producer. He remains a director of the company.
Mr Blavatnik avoided getting involved in Russian politics, preferring to stick to business and, increasingly, philanthropic activities. In 2010 he donated £75m to Oxford University to found the Blavatnik School of Government, and in 2013, he donated $10m to Yale and $50m to Harvard to fund research into diseases. He qualifies as a UK resident as he has a mansion on Kensington Palace Gardens in London, an exclusive address where a number of foreign embassies are housed, including the Embassy of the Russian Federation and the Ambassador’s Residence.
This year there is a record number of billionaires on the list – 117 – an increase of 13 on 2014. Eighty of these are based in London, in itself an increase on last year’s figure of 72. This means that once again London is home to more sterling billionaires than any other city in the world.
Other notable risers on the list are Galen and George Weston and family, whose retail empire includes the up-market department store, Selfridges, and the popular budget clothing chain, Primark. Their wealth has increased by £3.7bn in the past year, to £11bn. Two notable figures in the top 25 have actually seen their fortunes fall. The steel magnate, Lakshmi Mittal, who has headed the list in the past, saw his fortune drop by £1.05bn to £9.2bn; and the wealth of the owner of Chelsea Football Club, Roman Abramovich, fell by £1.23bn to £7.29bn. No doubt Mr Abramovich will feel some consolation in the near future as it is almost certain that his club will win the English Premiership for the first time since 2010.
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