UK rich list 2014: Hinduja brothers Sri and Gopi top the list with a £12bn fortune
Hinduja brothers overtook 2013’s richest person in the UK -- Arsenal FC shareholder Alisher Usmanov – to top the list this year. Last year, the brothers were third richest in the Sunday Times list with a wealth of £10.6bn.
Sri, 78, and Gopi, 74 run the multinational Hinduja Group conglomerate sprawling across property, oil and motor industries. In 2012, their overall business generated $25bn in revenues and employed 72,000 people globally.
Other Indian-origin entrepreneurs and industrialists featuring in the 2014 UK rich list include Lakshmi Mittal and Lord Swraj Paul.
The Sunday Times Rich List is a compilation of UK’s 1000 richest individuals, couples or families. The 2014 list revealed that the total wealth of Britain’s richest has touched £520bn – 15% higher from 2013.
At £520bn, their combined wealth represents one third of UK’s GDP (£1.48tr in 2014), suggesting that despite the economic downturn, the rich continued to get richer.
There were about 104 billionaires in the 2014 list with a combined wealth of £300bn. In comparison, there were just 30 billionaires in Britain in 2004.
This year’s rich list includes other super-rich such as Tesco chief Sir Terry Leahy, Duke of Westminster, property magnate and UKIP donor Paul Sykes, David and Victoria Beckham, Harry Potter star Emma Watson, and Simon Cowell.
Indian-born Sri Hinduja was ranked world's 112th richest billionaire by Forbes List 2014.
