Anders Holch Povlsen has been named the richest person in Scotland once again.
The Sunday Times Rich List revealed that his fortune increased by £2bn in the last year and he is now worth £8.5bn.
The Danish chief executive of clothing retailer Bestseller - which includes brands such as Jack and Jones - took over the company founded by his father Troels Holch Povlsen in 1975. He also holds a large stake in online fashion retailer Asos.
Povlsen junior's love affair with Scotland began as a child when his parents took him on a fishing trip. Today he is the country’s largest private landowner with 220,000 acres. Home is Aldourie Castle, on the shores of Loch Ness.
He is closely followed by whisky tycoon Glenn Gordon and family in second place, who saw his net worth increase by £1.2bn in the last year to £4.6bn.
Based in Jersey, Gordon runs William Grant & Sons, owner of Drambuie, Glenfiddich and Grant’s.
Meanwhile, the owner of Highland Spring, Mahdi al-Tajir, has seen his fortune fall by £48m in the last year, to £1.63bn. He still moved one place up the rich list to fifth in 2023.
The list remains largely unchanged from 2022, but Sir Ian Wood and family also move up one place from fourth to third, after their fortune rose from £1.81bn to £1.82bn over the last year.
Mohammed al-Fayed, the proprietor of Harrods, has gone from fifth on the list to fourth, but his fortune of £1.69bn has remained unchanged.
This year’s Rich List comes as interest rates and inflation rise – marking the end of the “golden period” for the super rich, according to compiler Robert Watts.
“This year’s Sunday Times Rich List shows that a golden period for the super rich is over; for the first time in 14 years we’ve seen the number of UK billionaires fall.
“Two years ago we raised concerns about an unsettling boom in the fortunes of the very wealthy that continued unchecked during the political instability around Brexit and the pandemic.
“This is not a crash – but there are household names who have lost vast sums over the past year.
“The bursting of the tech bubble, the end of rock bottom interests and the jitters creeping through the banking industry have all taken their toll.
“The super rich don’t exist in a vacuum, many small investors lost money in some of their overblown stock market floats,“ continued Watts. “Many people also work for their businesses; financial losses for billionaires can have implications for us all.”
For instance, the personal fortune of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty has fallen by more than £200m over the last year, as the value of her stake in her father’s company plummeted.
The couple’s wealth is estimated at around £529m, a fall from £730m a year earlier.
Murty owns a small stake in Infosys, a £52bn Indian IT giant co-founded by her billionaire father.
Her stake is just under 1% of the business, but the company shares have lost around a fifth of their value in the last year as investors worried about the future of the Indian technology sector.
The latest UK-wide list also catapulted chemicals billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe into second place.
Recently a bidder to buy Manchester United, he saw more than £23.6bn added to his wealth, taking it to a total of £29.7.bn. The increase was largely due to “new information about his finances”, rather than a change in his financial position.
There were 171 billionaires in the UK this year, which six fewer than last year, but their combined wealth has risen by £30.7bn to £683.9bn.
The number one spot across the whole of the UK was again occupied by Gopi Hinduja and his family, days after his brother SP Hinduja died.
The list also showed that the Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson lost £1.8bn last year, pushing him and his family down to 44th place with £4.2bn.
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