Warner Music owner Len Blavatnik is Britain’s richest man with a £13.17 billion fortune, according to the 2015 Sunday Times Rich List.
He takes the top spot from brothers Sri and Gopi Hinduja, now worth £13 billion. The total wealth of the richest 1,000 individuals and families in Britain has more than doubled in the last 10 years to £547 billion, the survey reported.
The Queen, who topped the first list in 1989, has dropped out of the top 300 for the first time. There are now 117 billionaires on the list, up from 104 in 2014, with 80 of them living in London.
Mr Blavatnik, who was born in Odessa in the then Soviet Union and became a US citizen in the 1980s, has investments that range from metals and oil to music publishing and digital media. He owns a £41 million home in London and has donated £75 million to Oxford University to found the Blavatnik School of Government.
A personal fortune of £100 million is now required to become one of the 1,000 richest people in the country, up £15 million compared with last year’s entry point of £85 million. In 1997 it took a fortune of just £15 million to join Britain’s richest 1,000 people.
Source: BBC News (published 26 April)