COVER STORY The golden touch
Wealth creation in the Midlands is alive and well despite interest rate hikes and the hike in oil prices. The region's top 100 business millionaires have seen their collective wealth rise to £311.93bn, up £31.6BN from last year's £310.25bn, a healthy 16 per cent rise in this the fourth annual Midlands Business Insider Top 100 Rich List from philip beresford read on....
Wealth creation in the Midlands is alive and well despite interest rate hikes and the hike in oil prices. The region's top 100 business millionaires have seen their collective wealth rise to £311.93bn, up £31.6BN from last year's £310.25bn, a healthy 16 per cent rise in this the fourth annual Midlands Business Insider Top 100 Rich List from philip beresford
Our 100 are the real movers and shakers of the local economy, ranging from irrepressible mobile phone tycoon, John Caudwell, still at number one with a £31.28bn fortune, to Paul Newey, the founder and owner of the Ocean Finance loan business. The 100 all run a business that they have either built up or inherited. They are not the idle rich - the pop stars, the landed aristocratic or those with a tenuous connection to the region. Our 100 really matter. Their continued prosperity - as owners and managers of businesses - is our continued prosperity as their employees. Jobs grow from their prosperity as surely as night follows day. The new Church Broughton assembly plant in Derbyshire, where JCB is investing £380m to make its own range of diesel engines, is testament to that.
Last year we noted that there had been a surge in buyouts of family businesses or parts of businesses were being sold off. This year the trend has abated in the Midlands. We have not lost anyone to the beaches of Barbados or the like. But sales and flotations are being mooted at regular intervals. Bill Adderley, the ex-Woolies manager who started the hugely successful Dunelm soft furnishings retailer, is said to be looking at a £3300m float. In the technology area, Phoenix IT, which arose from the near ashes of an IT disaster, has just been floated by its rescuer Nick Robinson and his venture capital (VC) backers. Indeed, virtually every unquoted business in our list is now open to offers from VCs. Many are besieged by the VCs, such is the competition in the market for a good deal. Little wonder then that Paul Newey is reckoned - so a Sunday business page tells us - to be considering selling Ocean Finance with a £3250m price tag.
But don't run away with the idea that the working rich are simply cutting and running when the first half decent offer is tabled. Our region is still showing serious profits can be made. Our bottom line has crept up to £330m this year, against £328m in 2003. Finding profitable companies making £34m or more pre-tax profits is relatively easy in the Midlands, which means that corporate coffers are being replenished for future investment decisions, provided of course that the oil shock and successive interest rate rises don't lead to a recession rather than a slight slowdown needed to take some of the exuberance out of the housing market.
The Midlands Top 100 still reflects a strong industrial bias. Of the 100 millionaires or families, 34 are drawn from traditional industry or the new sunrise industries of software and mobile phones. Property makes a strong showing ina region that has the Kings of Dudley (aka the Richardson twins) as leading developers.
But we still only have four retailers. The idea that Midlands business is tilting to a retail paradise may be a bit premature to say the least. But there are winners - Gary Dutton, the new king of conservatories. He has built the Synseal operation into a huge and efficient manufacturer of conservatory roofs. Dutton is expanding through the good old-fashioned way of speeding up production to gain efficiencies. The result: a business that should see sales rise 27 per cent this year to £390m. Encouraging too to see nine women in the Top 100 - on their own or in partnership with their spouses. This is actually a far higher proportion than for any other rich lists in other regions or nationally. Maybe the glass ceiling is cracking in the Midlands industrial heartland of all places.
But it is a very different heartland to even a decade ago. In our Top 100, we still have no metal basher, or anyone from the motor industry. No industries dominate our Top 100. We have a wide cross section - from property to retailing, to high tech manufacturing, to media and so on. That very diversity is the Midland economy's strength. It is also still a place where would-be tycoons can feel comfortable with starting a business - 80 per cent of the Top 100 have started their own business and only 20 have inherited theirs.
For the full Rich List read on...
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