Britain's Richest People A Bit Poorer This Year

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Apr 26th 2009 at 7:02PM

The Sunday Times Rich List cataloging Britain's richest people, reveals what we've seen on many other lists: people losing money. The Times says that the recession has carved £155 billion from the fortunes of Britain's richest 1,000 people, fully a third of their total wealth. In fact it's the biggest drop since they started putting the list together 21 years ago. And it now only takes a fortune of £55 million to hit the top 1,000 compared to £80 million list year.

Steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal has the dubious honor of being both the richest person in Britain and the person who lost the most (an astonishing £16.9 billion). He is currently worth £10.8 billion easily beating out Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich who owns the second slot with £7 billion. The Duke of Westminster is in third place with £6.5 billion.

Richard Branson isn't worth as much as you might think, the Times has him at just £1.2billion. Last year's rising art markets boosted Damien Hirst's value to £235million and Lucien Freud is worth £120million. And proving that divorcing well can be as much a moneymaker as marrying well, former model Slavica Ecclestone enters the list with a fortune of £734 million after her divorce from Formula One tycoon Bernie Ecclestone.

This year's list is also short one celebrity chef. Gordon Ramsay is off the list after a year that has seen him selling restaurants and watching his flagship London restaurant tumble out of the list of the world's 100 best restaurants.

Tags: lakshmi mittal, LakshmiMittal, richest, roman abramovich, RomanAbramovich