David Kirch
Channel Hotels & Properties
The pharmaceuticals industry seems to be the focus of attention for Jersey investor David Kirch these days. His main investment was in ML Laboratories, which in July 2005 snapped up Quadrant Technologies. The enlarged group, called Innovata, is worth around £142m. After some share sales, 70-year-old Kirch has a £6m stake.
He has stakes in 19 quoted companies worth around £15.2m. In July 2004, he took over Property Acquisition & Management, an investment trust with a £200m property portfolio, in a £69.5m deal. Such moves are typical for Kirch. He made his fortune in London residential property in the 1960s, selling his last properties in 1988 for £30m. He now runs Channel Hotels & Properties from Jersey. We have not seen any accounts recently but, from his recent deal-making, it is safe to value Kirch at £170m.
Anthony Brotherton-Ratcliffe & Family
Croudace Group
Surrey housebuilder Croudace is permanently under siege by merchant bankers keen to take over the business — but it is not for sale. Founded by Oliver Croudace, it was initially involved in minor contracting works. Jack Brotherton Ratcliffe arrived as a partner and bought out the business entirely in 1950. It is still in family hands and now run by his son Anthony, 56. It remains one of the most profitable privately owned groups in Britain.
A new holding company, Croudace Group, was set up in 2002. Its profits came in at £10.7m on £126.3m sales in the 15 months to the end of December 2004, and it has £75.9m net assets. It is worth perhaps £90m. The separate Croudace Properties is easily worth its £40.4m net asset figure.
Other assets, including over £30m of dividends since 1993, take the family to £167m.
Michael Horton & Family
Hortons’ Estate
A busy time for Hortons’ Estate, the Birmingham developer. Its acclaimed Innovation Square development in the city centre is now fully let to blue-chip clients. The last remaining suite went in May 2005 to Hay, the recruitment company. Hortons’ Estate has also diversified into industrial estates near Midlands motorway junctions.
The business dates back to the 19th century when a butcher, Isaac Horton, moved into property development in Birmingham.
The family, led by Michael Horton, 67, still owns the business, which made £7.7m profit on sales of £13.1m in the year to September 2005, when its net assets rose to a record £149.8m. In the 10 years from 1996 to 2005, the family had £17.8m of dividends before tax. We value the company at that asset figure, adding more than £12m for past dividends and other assets after tax to the Horton family.
Sir Jack Hayward
Grand Bahama Port Authority Group of Companies
Sir Jack Hayward, 83, may have called it a day at Wolves, the Championship football club, but he still underwrote the building of a new £3.3m training facility for the club. In 13 years, he effectively spent £100m on players and facilities.
Though Wolves has been his first love, his money came from development work abroad.
Hayward settled in the Bahamas in 1956 and used the £26m proceeds from the 1972 sale of the family business to develop Grand Bahama, taking over the Grand Bahama Port Authority Group of Companies.
Hayward lives in the Bahamas most of the time, but also owns homes in Sussex, London, New York and the Scottish Highlands, where he wants to build 36 wind turbines on the ridge near Carn Na Saobhaidhe, in a deal that will net the estate millions of pounds over the next 25 years.
Even after the Wolves spending, he should comfortably be worth £160m.
Michael Herbert & Family
Donegal Place Investments
Herbel Restaurants, based in Belfast, holds the largest Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in Europe and also acts as a franchise for Häagen-Dazs ice-cream.
Founded in 1981 by Michael Herbert, 49, it prospered through the Troubles because few rival fast-food chains dared to venture into Belfast and other Northern Ireland towns. Herbel’s profits soared from £3.8m to £6.6m on £48.3m sales in 2005. But it does have net assets of £63.5m and we value the business on that figure.
Herbert has also branched out into property development in Belfast and Scotland in a big way. His Lebreh operation had £96.5m net assets in its 2005 accounts. In all, he is easily worth £160m.
Ephraim Shahmoon & Family
O&H Capital
With O&H Capital planning a £250m buying spree in 2006, Ephraim Shahmoon, 69, is going to be busy. He is the partner of David Gabbay in the London-based property to construction group, which turned in £19.5m profit on £55.4m sales in 2004-05. It has nearly £294m net assets and is easily worth £300m, of which the Shahmoon family owns half. Past salaries, dividends and other assets should take them to £160m.
Eliasz Englander & Family
Citywise
Property developer Eliasz Englander is close to starting his first major office development. His family group has won consent for a flagship scheme on a quarter of its trophy asset Holborn Links in central London, six years after buying it for £118m.
Indeed, it was a busy 2005 for the normally low-key Englander, 74. He sold a London office block, which is the HQ of music giant EMI, for £40m and bought a Bristol shopping centre for £98m. He also emerged in early 2006 as buyer for 180 petrol stations put up for sale by the Tchenguiz and Livingstone brothers. Englander has 118 directorships and a complex web of companies.
Through Citywise, the Englander family owns Holborn Links, with £124.6m of net assets in 2004 (down £20m). The family also have several other smaller companies with net assets totalling at least £30m. In all, the Englander family is easily worth £155m.
Susan Prescott &the Austin Family
Ethel Austin Properties Holdings
A £5m cash injection by Dutch finance group ABN AMRO secured the future of the beleaguered Ethel Austin discount fashion chain in February 2006. But, by then, the Austin family had severed its links with the chain, having netted £9m from selling its last 7.5% stake to ABN AMRO in June 2005.
The family, represented on this list by Prescott, 54, initially sold the operation for £55m in 2002 to a management team, but kept that 7.5% stake and its extensive property assets.
In all, we can see two Ethel Austin property companies with over £135.5m of net assets between them in 2004. Adding the proceeds from the buyout and the recent stake sale should take the Austin family to around £200m. But, allowing for any double-counting, we value the family at £155m.
Paul Thwaites
Ashwell Property Group
Paul Thwaites (right) is powering ahead in the East Anglian property market with his Ashwell Property Group. Thwaites, 52, started the business in 1981 as a quantity surveying operation but, 17 years later, Ashwell moved into property and building in its own right. Since then, it has built up a strong reputation for its development and private finance initiative work. In 2003-04, Ashwell Property showed £32.1m net assets in its accounts. But with its share of joint venture work and a future £3bn development programme, including the £820m Cambridge cb1 project and a £400m housebuilding operation across East Anglia, we value Ashwell at £150m. We add £5m for other assets, taking Thwaites to £155m.
|
|
||
|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
96 |
Paul Thwaites |
155 |
|
99 |
Ardeshir Naghshineh & Family |
154 |
|
107 |
Bill Gredley & Family |
142 |
|
220 |
Kip Bertram & Family |
66 |
|
258 |
Robin Tomkins & Family |
55 |
|
269 |
James Watts & Family |
52 |
|
275 |
Paul Rackham & Family |
51 |
|
277 |
Richard Cattermole & Family |
50 |
|
299 |
Ann Serruys & Family |
45 |
|
362 |
David Gibbons |
32 |
|
379 |
Sir Timothy Gooch |
30 |
Ardeshir Naghshineh& Family
Targetfollow
In July 2006, Targetfollow bought the 300,000 sq ft Tolworth Tower office complex in south-west London for £63m. The company, owned by organic farmer Ardeshir Naghshineh, has been breaking up a major slice of its £700m UK portfolio to go into Europe. However, it also bought Centre Point, the famous London tower block, in October 2005 for £85m.
Iranian-born Naghshineh, 54, founded Norwich-based Targetfollow in 1992 as a property group. Today, it has a substantial portfolio of office, industrial and retail buildings in more than 20 towns and cities. In November, Targetfollow put around £200m-worth of properties up for sale.
Though it made a £2.4m loss in 2004-05, Targetfollow saw its net assets rise from £103m to nearly £131m. It is owned by Naghshineh and a series of trust companies. We can see another half-dozen smaller and separate property groups, which together had over £23m of net assets in 2004-05.
Christopher Moran
Chesterlodge
The 2005 grouse season began badly, with few birds shot — for Christopher Moran, 58, shooting was restricted to a small area on his 46,000-acre grouse moor in the Scottish Highlands. But disappointment north of the border will have been balanced by Moran’s ability to attract the great and good to Crosby Hall in Chelsea, London.
The high point for Moran came in June 2005 when the Queen attended a champagne reception at his reconstructed Tudor mansion in Cheyne Walk. The house is said to be worth £100m and Moran has expended millions of pounds and spent years painstakingly restoring the facade and interior.
Chesterlodge, his main holding company, saw its net assets rise to £103.6m in 2004-05, when it made a £2.2m profit on £6.7m sales. We value it on the net asset figure, adding £48m for his London home and his Scottish estate.
Sir Martin Laing & Family
John Laing
Gordon Brown’s public spending commitments will be well received at John Laing. The London-based construction group has a portfolio of 48 infrastructure projects, 27 fully operational. The moves into infrastructure services came as the company, founded in 1848, made hefty losses in straightforward contracting in the late 1990s.
Sir Martin, 64, is the grandson of the founder. The Laing family has a small stake left in the firm, worth around £24m. It also largely owns Eskmuir Properties, with £110m net assets in the year to September 2004. Some £17.5m of recent share sales and other assets take the wider Laing family to £150m.
Irvine Sellar & Family
Sellar Property Group
The “Shard of Glass”, as it has been nicknamed, is set to rise above London Bridge Station, and it has signed its first tenant. Asian hotel group Shangri-La will take 20%.
The tower, which is likely to be worth £1bn on completion in 2010, will be visible proof of the remarkable recovery of Sellar — 14 years ago, his property group went bust and he lost £28m.
The 66-storey London Bridge Tower (its official name) will rise 1,016 ft above the station and cost £300m to build. Sellar, 68, has financial partners, including Simon Halabi and the Mortstedt family of CLS Holdings, each taking a one-third stake. Not bad for a former market trader who turned into the king of Carnaby Street fashion before selling up in 1980 and moving into property. But Sellar has come a long way from his 1991 collapse.
Through his Sellar Property Group, he has acquired hotels, offices and a Manchester shopping centre, taking his investment portfolio valueto £450m.
With his development portfolio, his joint venture portfolio with the Civil Service Sports Council to develop a chain of health and fitness clubs, plus his homes in London and Surrey, the Sellar family is easily worth £150m, allowing for borrowings.
Nick Leslau
Prestbury Investment Holdings
Shrewd investor Nick Leslau, 47, reckons that the property market is now greatly overvalued. As a result, he has sold off much of his investment portfolio. Among his sales were a City office block for £60m. Much of Leslau’s energy is now directed at a joint venture with Sir Tom Hunter’s West Coast Capital and the Bank of Scotland, in which £1.4bn of property was acquired for sale-and-leasebacks to blue-chip clients in areas such as hotels and pubs.
Trained as a chartered surveyor, Leslau teamed up with financier Nigel Wray to build up Burford, the quoted property group. He left Burford in 1997 and started Prestbury. Renamed Prestbury Investment Holdings, it shuns the stock market and, at the end of 2004, had £81.1m net assets when it made £16.5m profit. Leslau has a 51.4% stake in the £100m business.
But the profits from recent deals should take Leslau way beyond the direct value of his Prestbury stake.
Leslau also has substantial private property assets, having recently put his London home on the market for nearly £8m. In all, he should easily be worth £150m.
Pervaiz Naviede
Legendary Property Co
Starting on a stall 20 years ago selling “fancy goods” in Gretna Green market, Pervaiz Naviede, with his partner Warren Smith, traded in investment properties through the mid to late 1980s. The pair diversified into acquiring and refurbishing properties for retailers, and old council blocks to turn into desirable accommodation in northern cities. More recently, they have been buying up sites in the City and north London for long-term development.
There are two main companies we can see, Legendary Property Co and Legendary Property Co (Aberdeen), which together showed around £4m net assets in 2003-04. Both are owned by Naviede. But he also has the Pervaiz Naviede Family Trust (worth around £100m), based in Guernsey and managed by full-time trustees, which buys property.
One recent investment was the 42-acre Ilford Imaging site in Mobberley, Cheshire.
LPC Living, the side of the business that deals with residential development, is the final part of the jigsaw and has really taken off in the past four years. Naviede, 45, took a £14.4m dividend in 2002-03. In all, we value him at £150m.
Nigel Wray
Prestbury Investment Holdings
Nigel Wray is turning green. The London-based financier has just floated The Greenhouse Fund on the stock market, with the aim of investing in new environmental technology. Property has also been an area where Wray, 58, has worked profitably, along with partner Nick Leslau, but the pair have been selling off the assets at their Prestbury property business.
We can see 15 stakes in quoted companies held by Wray, or that have recently been taken over, worth in total nearly £51m. The largest is Domino’s Pizza UK & Ireland plc, where his stake is worth £26m. Wray also chairs Saracens, the top-flight rugby club, reflecting his passion for sport.
He has over 47% of Prestbury Investment Holdings, which had £81m net assets in 2004. It has also paid out more than £70m in dividends since 2000, with nearly half of that going to Wray.
We can see a rather obscure subsidiary of a subsidiary company called Prestbury Wentworth Holdings showing £433m net assets, for example.
With the profits accruing from property sales and the like, Wray should easily be worth £150m.
The Ziff Family
Stylo and Town Centre Securities
A disappointing 2005-06 saw Stylo, the Bradford-based shoe group, move from a £5.2m profit to a £1.1m loss. Stylo, which owns the high-fashion Shellys brand, the mid-priced Barratts chain and discount group PriceLess, has found that its women customers may no longer have the cash to spend a lot of money on shoes, but they still want the latest fashions and will pay only a lower price.
The question for the Ziff family and the City is whether Stylo will now be a takeover target. Virtually every tycoon in the property world sought to take over the late Arnold Ziff’s company, Stylo, over the past 44 years. Bidders came and went, seen off by the redoubtable Ziff, who died in 2004 shortly after retiring as chairman. Its independence was helped by a complex share structure, which was devised by Stylo’s merchant banker of the day when the company went public in 1935.
Stylo’s prime assets include freehold premises in most of the best high streets in Britain, which is why so many property companies have tried to muscle in.
In the 1960s, the Ziff family moved into property with the separate Town Centre Securities, where the family stake has soared and is worth around £130m. With their £12m Stylo holding and other assets, the low-key family is worth at least £150m.
Bill Gredley & Family
Unex Group Holdings
Bill Gredley, 73, has been to New Zealand looking for new horses for his stud operation, and paid £138,000 for one filly in February. He will be hoping to breed a winner like User Friendly, which won the 1992 Oaks at Epsom.
Aside from racehorses, Gredley is a shrewd property developer. In 2004-05, he reorganised his interests with a new parent company, Unex Group Holdings, which showed £83.6m net assets for the eight months to the end of March 2005. Unex Group Holdings should also have received a £45m dividend in June 2005 from one of its subsidiaries, which should appear in the 2005-06 accounts.
The business is owned by Gredley and his family. His racing interests, a £13m dividend in 2002-03 and smaller companies with net assets of £2m keep Gredley and his family at £142m after tax.
Andrew Cohen & Family
Betterware Investment
A poster for Fritz Lang’s movie Metropolis was sold for £394,000 at a private sale in London last November, making it the most expensive vintage poster ever bought. The seller was Andrew Cohen, an avid collector of movie posters, who paid a lot less for it.
Cohen, 53, made his money in retailing when he left school at 17 to work for his father, selling women’s dresses in Scotland. In 1983, the family acquired the Betterware mail order homewear business for a knockdown price and transformed its operations. Yet its 1986 stock market flotation was a disaster.
Cohen was not put off and turned Betterware into one of the top retailers in Britain. Shares soared, and in 1993 the Cohen family realised £30m in a share sale. In 1997, Cohen sold the firm to a management team, netting £42.7m but keeping a £12m stake.
Cohen was brought back to the Birmingham-based company to be non-executive chairman in 2002. The result? In 2004, the parent company, Betterware Investment, saw profits soar to £7.5m on sales of £47.2m.
The Cohen family stake is now worth £35m. Cohen has other property interests, including Wood Hall Securities and Glenmore Group (with £33m net assets between them in 2004-05). In all, the Cohen family should now be worth around £140m after tax.
Jim McGettigan
McGettigan Group
Jim McGettigan, 69, the veteran Donegal hotelier, started his career as a first-class waiter on the first Queen Elizabeth. Since purchasing his first pub, in Dublin in 1964, he has built up the McGettigan Group, which includes Olten Investments and Regan Developments, and the Regency Hotel Group of five Dublin hotels and two in England, including the Bonnington in London.
Dublin-based McGettigan also has an extensive property portfolio taking in the Bonnington Tower in Dubai — a 40-storey apartment complex — and a five-star hotel at the exclusive Jumeirah Lakes.
The Bonnington Group made £698,000 profit on £8.6m sales in 2004-05 and showed £15.9m net assets. Regan Developments showed £15.8m net assets in 2003‑04. In all, McGettigan is easily worth £138m.
Michael Shanly
Sorbon Homes
Early this year, 60-year-old Michael Shanly found himself on the wrong side of deputy prime minister John Prescott. The DPM refused an appeal by Shanly against High Wycombe council’s refusal to allow development on an old newspaper site in the town. Still, the Thames Valley and Buckinghamshire is proving fertile territory for Shanly. He chairs and owns at least 13 significant but separate building or development companies.
His main operation is Sorbon Homes, which made a £270,000 profit on £26.4m sales in 2004. In all, the 13 companies made £13.2m profit and had nearly £121m net assets. They are collectively worth £130m. We add £7m for Shanly’s past salaries and other assets.
Everard Goodman
Tops Estates
The son of a Leeds surveyor, Everard Goodman, 74, floated a jewellery business in 1959 and sold it in 1972. He later moved into property before setting up Tops Estates.
In 1983, he floated Tops Estates on the then Unlisted Securities Market. It quietly prospered until May 2005, when Goodman sold to Land Securities for £517m, walking away with more than £130m. He also had an £8.2m stake in Trust of Property, a quoted investment trust which was wound up voluntarily in early 2006. He now uses his fortune for charitable purposes, and in 2005 gave away £5m to educational and medical charities.
Judith & Fergus Wilson
Burwood Properties
Former maths teacher Judith Wilson, 58, gave up her job in 1992 to concentrate on property. Working with her husband, Fergus, 56, also a former maths teacher, she bought houses which they rent out in the Ashford area of Kent.
Their empire has expanded from around 465 properties to 675, which she rents out via agents. There is little evidence of asset wealth in 36 companies owned by the Wilsons, including Burwood Properties. But we raise our valuation to £130m this year in line with the increase in properties and because the Ashford area is still booming on the back of Eurotunnel.
The Astor Family
Sableknight
The Astor family company, Sableknight, made a healthy £5.5m profit in 2004, when its net assets rose sharply from £62.3m to £116m. Michael Astor, 60, used to be a director of Sableknight and held a stake in trust for the family. With other assets in the family, we value the Astors at £130m to reflect the rise in net assets.
Eric Gadsden
WE Black
Profits rose at WE Black in 2005 to £8.7m on £21.8m sales. The Hertfordshire developer looks to be in fine fettle, with a near 40% profit margin and £75.2m net assets.
Gadsden, as owner, took little out of the company (£1m dividends in 1997), but he had a £1m stake in Newport Holdings, a quoted property company recently taken over, a £23m stake in Michelmersh Brick Holdings, a quoted brick maker he chairs, and another £30m of net assets in Three Rivers Property Investments. With his racing interests added, Gadsden, 61, should be worth at least £130m.
John Dunsdon & Family
Coldunell
Surrey-based property company Coldunell produced a £2.6m profit in 2004-05, a sharp fall on the previous year. But its net assets continued to grow, hitting £98.4m.
We add around £27.6m for other assets, including an estate and £8.6m of dividends in recent years to John Dunsdon, 54, and his family trusts, which own the business.
Chris Marshall & Family
Marshall Holdings
Credited with being the most successful speculative developer in the Yorkshire region, Chris Marshall is also the most low-key and shuns all publicity. Not that he needs it, for when he does a deal the rest of the market takes notice.
Marshall, 67, heads the Leeds-based, family-owned building firm that has made great inroads into city shopping centre development in Glasgow and Newcastle. The firm, started by Marshall’s great grandfather, is one of the largest players in the Leeds property market, and for that reason alone he needs to be in our list.
A rival property man describes Marshall as a canny businessman. In 2004, profits at his Marshall Holdings fell slightly to £15.5m on £137m sales. It has £110m of net assets and is easily worth £120m. We add £5m for past dividends.
Kevin McCabe & Family
Scarborough Property Holdings
Kevin McCabe, 58, will be delighted with the way Sheffield United stormed to promotion into the Premiership in the 2005-06 season. The lure of the “Blades” has been enduring through McCabe’s life. Born close to the Bramall Lane stadium, he now chairs the club.
McCabe, a quantity surveyor by trade, started working for Bovis in 1964, aged 16. He joined Teesland property group in 1971 and, nine years later, formed Scarborough Property Co. His family still own all Scarborough Property Group, which saw its 2004-05 profit soar from £11m to £36.6m, with net assets up £10m at nearly £42m.
McCabe has been reshuffling his assets of late, selling an industrial portfolio for £80m and buying more than £300m-worth of property and business park assets.
In July 2006, Scarborough Continental Partners, the £400m joint venture between McCabe’s Scarborough Property Holdings and Bank of Scotland Corporate Europe, bought a portfolio of German properties for more than £208m, followed by a further £45m German property purchase.
Scarborough is also set to make a £25m profit from the sale of its Euston station office campus in London, according to a report in Estates Gazette. Scarborough also has stakes in quoted companies worth around £25m. We reckon the McCabe family should easily be worth £125m now.
|
|
||
|
No |
Name |
Wealth (£m) |
|
45 |
Bob Edmiston |
410 |
|
49 |
Tony Gallagher |
350 |
|
49 |
Don & Roy Richardson |
350 |
|
56 |
Grahame Whateley |
300 |
|
80 |
Simon Clarke & Family |
203 |
|
85 |
Sir Euan Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe & Family |
184 |
|
92 |
Michael Horton & Family |
161 |
|
93 |
Sir Jack Hayward |
160 |
|
118 |
Rupert Mucklow & Family |
123 |
|
123 |
Eric Grove |
120 |
|
135 |
Jim Leavesley & Family |
115 |
|
162 |
Robert Morton |
96 |
|
193 |
Con Folkes & Family |
80 |
|
193 |
Woon Wing Yip & Family |
80 |
|
209 |
The Marquess of Northampton |
70 |
|
225 |
John Cutts |
65 |
|
240 |
Fred Pritchard & Family |
60 |
|
253 |
Ian Scarr-Hall |
57 |
|
268 |
Jean Aucott & Family |
54 |
|
277 |
Paul Bassi |
50 |
|
277 |
Andrew Ruhan & Family |
50 |
|
299 |
Michael & Chris Miller |
45 |
|
324 |
Ronald Barrott |
40 |
|
340 |
Roy Williams |
38 |
|
350 |
Mo Chaudry |
35 |
|
362 |
Janet Stallard & Ann Richardson |
32 |
Rupert Mucklow & Family
A&J Mucklow
Albert Mucklow retired as chairman of A&J Mucklow, the quoted Midlands property group,in June 2004. His 43-year-old son Rupert then took over the reins of the firm, which was started in 1933 when Albert’s father and uncle launched a housebuilding operation.
During the second world war, they carried out earth-moving contracts to build airfields.
The company floated in 1962 and ceased housebuilding in the 1990s to concentrate on property development.
It has had some notable successes recently, including letting a speculative development six months before its completion date.
The Mucklow family has a 44% stake, now worth £115m. Past salaries and dividends add £8m.
John Robinson
Investor
It has been a good year in international property for John Robinson, 46, and with hedge fund investments his fortune has been boosted further. He was John Duffield’s right-hand man at Jupiter Asset Management until he left the group in 2000 with a £50m payoff, which represented his earn-out from the £505m purchase of the business by the German Commerzbank. After allowing for his property assets and investments, Robinson is now worth £122m. He is now concentrating on property, particularly high-end residential.
Sir Tom Farmer
Morston Assets
Aside from his charitable work — for which he was awarded the Andrew Carnegie medal in October 2005 — Sir Tom Farmer has also been busy on the business front, selling choice Edinburgh properties for £2.4m.
But it was tyres that made him his first fortune. He started the Kwik-Fit chain in 1971, later selling it to Ford in 1999 for £1bn. Farmer netted £78m for his stake and retained the freeholds on many Kwik-Fit properties, earning him £1m a year in rents.
In all, Farmer, 66, is reckoned to have £850m-worth of developments in the pipeline. We can see half a dozen small property companies controlled by Farmer or his trusts, with around £15m of net assets. He also made around £8.5m by selling a stake in KBC Holdings.
But it is Edinburgh football club Hibernian that has proved a drain on his finances. As chief benefactor, Farmer wrote off £6m of the club’s debt. Still, the sale of businesses and his development programme should keep Farmer at £122m this year.
Michael & Robert Slowe
J Leon
The Slowe cousins, aged 71 and 69, are directors of J Leon, a family-owned property investment and holding company. Based in London, both company and family are very low-key. In the year to March 2005, it made £5.1m profit on £9.7m sales, but its net assets rose to £116.1m. The company is easily worth its net assets. We add £5m for dividends and other assets.
Sir Henry Warner & Family
Warner Estate Holdings
Warner Estate Holdings, the quoted property group, is in fine fettle. Profits in 2005-06 came in at £99.1m,up from £58.6m a year earlier. The Warner family, led by Sir Henry Warner, 84, run the London-based operation. After distinguished wartime service with the Scots Guards after D-Day, Warner inherited a baronetcy from his father in 1955.
Warner is no longer on the board of the company, now chaired by his son, Philip (pictured), who has completely transformed the group in the past five years. With the April 2005 £170m acquisition of property fund manager Ashtenne, Warner Estate has turned from being a landlord focused on London’s East End into a broad-based fund manager.
Warner now boasts £2.5bn of property under management. The Warner family retains a stake worth around £111m with the recent rise in the shares. We add another £10m for estates and other assets such as the Brettenham Trust.
Martin Birrane
Peer Group
Martin Birrane will be hoping that A1 Grand Prix takes off. The rival series to the FIA’s official Formula 1 had its first race at Brands Hatch in September, and others followed in Germany and Portugal. It has been described as the World Cup of motor racing and the most important development in motorsport in the past half-century. Birrane’s Lola Cars operation has provided around 60 identical cars for the A1 series so he has a lot riding on its success.
Knowing a thing or two about racing cars has helped Birrane, 71, who has 47 wins under his belt as a racing driver. In 1977, he was able to buy Lola Cars, the hugely successful racing car manufacturer, from the receiver, and turn it round.
An Irish property magnate from Co Mayo, where his father ran a tailoring business, Birrane travelled the world after leaving school, before marrying at 22 and emigrating to Canada. His wife did not like the country, though he developed a taste for real estate there. He returned to Britain and started racing as well as dealing in property.
The 1970s were a difficult time but he survived, and his Peer Group is doing well in the booming property market, showing around £91m of net assets in its latest 2005 accounts. He has pumped around £20m into Lola and diversified into new areas. Lola made a £5.9m loss in 2003-04 on £5.2m sales. It still should be worth at least the £20m Birrane has put into it and the sales are rising sharply. He also owns the Mondello Park racing track in Co Kildare, on which he has spent around £5m, turning it into a modestly profitable venture.
With other interests and assets, Birrane is worth £120m, as Peer’s net assets have edged ahead.
Frank Burke & Family
Farmglade
BDL, a profitable construction and civil engineering group, made £3.9m profit on £49.4m of sales in 2004. Its subsidiary, BB Interiors, had £43.7m net assets in the same period. The Uxbridge-based operation is run and owned by Frank Burke, 58, who also owns Farmglade, a property company with around £22.6m net assets in 2004. Other assets and property revaluations take Burke to £120m.
Eric Grove
Catesby Property
Eric Grove’s Catesby Property Group has teamed up with another developer to handle the £100m redevelopment of a former Inland Revenue office site in Coventry.
The son of a West Midlands blacksmith, in 1968 Grove, 71, started Midlands housebuilder Canberra, specialising in high-quality houses. He sold it to Alfred McAlpine in 1988, mainly for McAlpine shares.
While he sold most of these shares, netting around £40m, he has become a serious property developer, with retail parks in the Midlands, residential developments in Jersey and a stake in a property investment operation. With his cash and other assets, he is easily worth £120m.
John McCarthy & Family
Churchill Retirement Living
John McCarthy is not happy with his old business, McCarthy & Stone. In June 2005 he started legal proceedings over share options worth £190,000, complaining that the board refused to allow him to exercise almost 25% of an £800,000 share option.
But had he stayed with his old business, he would have been in the happy position of seeing rival takeover bids push its value past the £1bn mark by August 2006.
McCarthy, 66, was already a successful property developer when, in 1976, he spotted a couple of lines in a green paper suggesting that developers should be encouraged to provide sheltered accommodation for the elderly. So he set up McCarthy & Stone, which was floated on the stock market in 1982. It was revealed in 2004 that he backed a plan by his sons, Spencer and Clinton McCarthy, to bid for the operation. The bid was rebuffed by the directors and McCarthy stood down as chairman. Despite losing the chairmanship, he retained a 13% stake in the company until May 2004, when he sold it for £74.4m.
McCarthy also has a Wiltshire estate, and at least £3m of other business assets we can see.
His sons now run Churchill Retirement Living, a Lymington-based property development company. In 2004, it made a healthy £4.9m profit on sales of £24.5m. The company is easily worth its near-£79m net assets, a sharp rise which we assume relates to McCarthy’s sale proceeds.
In all, the McCarthy family should be worth £120m.
Viscount Petersham
Elvaston Investments and Stanhope Gardens
Living quietly in Yorkshire, Petersham, 61, is the heir to the Earl of Harrington, and owner of some prime acres in South Kensington, London, around Stanhope Gardens. His daughter is married to Viscount Linley.
His London property assets are owned via a Bermuda holding company and have been valued at about £100m.
The assets of his two main companies, Elvaston Investments and Stanhope Gardens, came in virtually unchanged at around £9.3m in 2004. In all, we value Petersham at the same £120m this year.
Sir Robert Ogden
A Ogden & Sons
At the 2005 June meeting of Royal Ascot at York, in front of the racing world and royalty, Sir Robert Ogden’s highly regarded horse, the Newmarket-trained La Chunga, proved too quick for her opponents in the Albany Stakes, winning by almost four lengths.
Ogden, 70, loves the turf and showed that earlier in the year when he paid £48,000 for the services of the highly rated stallion, Rock of Gibraltar, the horse which soured the relationship between Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and Irish tycoon John Magnier.
The services of the star of the Coolmore stud were being auctioned for the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster appeal. Such a move by Ogden mixed his love of horseflesh with his charitable work, for which he was knighted in 2001.
He has more than 30 horses, but there is another side to Ogden. He gives university scholarships to disadvantaged youngsters from Yorkshire pit villages.
An early investor in London’s Docklands when no-one would touch it, he made his fortune when prices shot up. He also saw the potential in slag heaps, extracting coal and redeveloping the land for recreational use.
His two main companies — A Ogden & Sons and Ogden Properties — had £36.5m of net assets in 2004. Other companies add £2m of net assets. But with other private interests and his fine collection of horses, Ogden is easily worth a very conservative £120m.
