The Sunday Times annual Rich List showed on Sunday that Ukraine-born billionaire Len Blavatnik had become Britain’s richest person, while Queen Elizabeth slipped down the ranking despite an increase in her net worth.
The newspaper said the combined wealth of the very rich had more than doubled since the global financial crisis. Britain’s 1,000 wealthiest people held £547 billion ($830.67 billion), compared with about £258 billion in 2009, an increase of 112 percent.
Politicians were expected to use the figures two weeks before a fiercely contested national election. The opposition Labour leader accused Prime Minister David Cameron of governing for the rich at the expense of the poor.
Cameron rejected the charge. Nevertheless, the widening gap between people on the list and other Britons, whose living standards were only beginning to return to pre-crisis levels, posed a problem for his reelection campaign.
The list showed that Britain had 117 sterling billionaires, more than any country except the United States and China. London’s total rose to 80, the highest the city had ever recorded and more than any other city in the world.
The newspaper said Blavatnik, who rose from fourth to first place that year, had a fortune of £13.17 billion, up by $3.17 billion in 2014. With his investments in music, industry, and media, an average British citizen earning £25,000 a year would need 526,800 years to reach the wealth of the 57-year-old billionaire.
The Indian-born Hinduja brothers, Sri and Gopi, placed second after ranking first the previous year. Their wealth was estimated at around £13 billion, with investments in industry and global finance.
The Anglo-Canadian Weston family, owners of a retail empire, ranked third with £11 billion.
The newspaper said new money flowing into Britain was pushing British people down the wealth rankings. Queen Elizabeth’s fortune increased by £10 million to £340 [as stated in the original article], but she fell out of the country’s top 300 richest people for the first time.
Labour pledged that, if it won power in the May 7 election, it would abolish tax rules allowing wealthy individuals legally to reduce the tax they paid on earnings made abroad.
The change would affect around 116,000 people living in Britain, some of whom were on the Rich List.