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No one of Turkish heritage was included in this year’s guide to the UK’s wealthiest. The collective worth of the one thousand named individuals, which included a record 130 women, is £658 bn.
Compiled by the Sunday Times, the annual list of the super-rich ranks Britons – both those born here or now resident in the country – based on their assets and cash balance. They include those who left school without any qualifications, refugees and immigrants, as well as individuals who inherited great wealth, such as the 26-year-old Duke of Westminster, ranked ninth richest with a value of £9.66bn.
In 2016, two Turkish Cypriot businessmen, Touker Süleyman and Mustafa Kiamil, made it onto the Rich List at 515 and 936 respectively. Their personal fortunes were estimated to be £200 mn and £100mn each. However, with incomes for many of the country’s wealthiest increasing, coupled with dozens of new entries, both found themselves bumped off the 2017 rankings.
This year’s super-rich list is topped by Indian brothers Sri and Gopi Hinduja, worth £16.2bn through their industry, property, energy and financial services empire. They are one of 134 billionaires living in Britain. Those at the other end of the Sunday Times’ wealth spectrum were worth a mere £110mn.
Mesut Özil – one of Britain’s richest young people
Arsenal’s German-born player Mesut Özil made it on to the 2017 Young Rich List. The 28-year-old, whose family hails from Turkey, saw his net fortune increase by £6mn to £23 mn, elevating him to one of the wealthiest fifty young people aged 30 or under in Britain. Özil is ranked joint 27th with boxer Amir Khan, also worth £23 mn. The USA remains the country with the largest number of sterling billionaires – 445 in total – followed by China (284), Britain (134), India (76), and Germany (74). Brazil brings up the rear of the top ten with 27 billionaires. London is the most popular city in the world for billionaires – 86 of them are based in the British capital. New York (74), San Francisco (60), Hong Kong (59) and Moscow (58) make up the rest of the top five. According to the Sunday Times, Turkey has 17 sterling billionaires, 14 of which live in Istanbul.
