The combined wealth of the 1,000 richest men and women in Britain has risen to record levels in the past year. Their total fortune has risen by just under five per cent since 2011, to £414 billion, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List. That exceeds the previous record of £412.8 billion set in 2008, which came just a few months before the financial crash. The wealth of individuals with between £330m and £750m has gone up 7.8 per cent this year with those worth £151 to £328m seeing their fortunes grow by 9 per cent.
Efforts by hard-pressed families to make their wages go further during the economic downturn have boosted the fortunes of the owners of cut-price retail outlets. Tom Morris and family, who own the Home Bargains stores, have seen their fortune leap from £160m to £620m. The B&M Retail discount chain, also based in the north west, has contributed to a £144m increase in the wealth of its owners, Simon, Robin and Bobby Arora, taking them to £487m
Heading the list for the seventh year running is the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, his wealth at £12,700m, placing him just £385m ahead of Alisher Usmanov, whose Metalloinvest is Russia’s biggest iron ore producer. In third place Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea FC with £9,500m.
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Efforts by hard-pressed families to make their wages go further during the economic downturn have boosted the fortunes of the owners of cut-price retail outlets. Tom Morris and family, who own the Home Bargains stores, have seen their fortune leap from £160m to £620m. The B&M Retail discount chain, also based in the north west, has contributed to a £144m increase in the wealth of its owners, Simon, Robin and Bobby Arora, taking them to £487m
Heading the list for the seventh year running is the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, his wealth at £12,700m, placing him just £385m ahead of Alisher Usmanov, whose Metalloinvest is Russia’s biggest iron ore producer. In third place Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea FC with £9,500m.
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"Of course, it remains a very serious crisis for the real wealth-creators: and by that, I don't mean those who shuffle money around for a living, but the workers who keep our country ticking on a daily basis. Thousands of predominantly low-paid workers are being thrown out of their homes because of housing benefit cuts; nurses, teachers and bin-collectors face an average real-terms pay cut of 16 per cent by the time of the next election; and our poorest sixth-form students have had their educational maintenance allowance confiscated. JCB's owner Sir Anthony Bamford may have enjoyed a leap in wealth from £1,500m to £3,150m, but the average Briton faces the biggest slide in living standards since the early 1920s."
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