In the September issue of North West Business Insider, the compiler of the Sunday Times Rich List, Robert Watts has once again compiled Insider’s own business Rich List.
He also compiled a special ranking of the 10 richest self-made entrepreneurs who rank the highest in the list of the working wealthy.
All stakes in quoted companies were valued by taking the share price in the Financial Times in early July 2024.
Private company stakes were valued on a par with the nearest equivalent quoted company or failing that by the prevailing prices in the sector.
If that was not appropriate, then Insider simply used a multiple of 10 times the profit figure to value a business, reflecting the stock market average.
Where it was appropriate, companies and therefore family stakes are valued on the net assets of the business.
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1. Tom Morris and family, 70 - 2024: £5.170bn
One of seven siblings, Morris was just 21 when he launched what was at first called Home & Bargains. Despite coming from a family of retailers, he would need a bank overdraft to open his Merseyside-based chain’s first shop. There are now nearly 600 Home Bargains stores and Morris is almost certainly the richest ever Liverpudlian. | Shawn - stock.adobe.com
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2. Tim Knowles, 59 - 2024: £734m
Knowles not only left school at 16 without a qualification. He wasn’t even able to read or write. Starting out by cleaning cars and selling ice-creams from a van, a year later he would buy his first property – a fishmonger’s in Chorley. After cleaning it out he rented it to other businesses. That would be the start of his FI Real Estate Management, a real estate outfit now overseeing assets worth more than £1.2bn. | Neil Cross-National World
3. Mark Radcliffe and family, 45 - 2024: £440m
Starting his money making at an early age, Radcliffe lied about his age so he could get a job at a battery farm when he was just 10 years old. By 30 he was hailed as Britain’s first eBay millionaire off the back of First2save, a mobile phone accessories venture. But it was with Victorian Plumbing where he made his real money. He started the bathroom supplies business from a garden shed and later floated it on the stock market. | Victorian Plumbing
4. Alex Langsam, 86 - 2024: £285m
Langsam was just a few weeks old when he arrived in the UK as a refugee, fleeing the Nazis’ takeover of his Austrian homeland. Despite failing his maths O-level he put himself through an economic degree and would later graduate from estate agency to property development. His budget hotel chain Britannia now makes millions of pounds a year from housing refugees and asylum seekers. | Britannia Hotels