Today’s annual Sunday Times Rich List gives an eye-opening insight into the fortunes of Britain’s super-elite.
The list is topped by Alisher Usmanov, 59, who was born in Uzbekistan and owns iron ore producer Metalloinvest. He is worth an estimated £13.3bn.
He is replaces steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal (£10bn), who has dropped to fourth place behind media mogul Len Blavatnik, who sold his £2bn stake in Russian oil and gas company TNK-BP in March, (£11bn) and Sri and Gopi Hinduja (£10.6bn). Two more oil tycoons – Roman Abramovich (£9.3bn) and John Frediksen (£8.8bn) – are fifth and sixth.
The list shows how international Britain’s elite are – the highest ranked billionaire born in Britain is the Duke of Westminster in eighth place, who has amassed £7.8bn from the London property market. And as the BBC’s business reporter Anthony Reuben notes: “New money has replaced old, but not much of it has been earned in Britain.”
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Beyond the individual entries, though, the real story is the growing wealth of the super-rich has outpaced economic growth for everyone else.
In 1989, when the list began, the Queen’s £5.2bn assets were enough to clinch her the top shot. The combined wealth of the top 200 people in the 2013 list is £318.2bn – eight times what it was a quarter of a century ago.
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The average salary of a full-time worker in the UK is currently £26,500.