The Sunday Times Magazine – 7 May 2017

Rich List 2017 Billionaires

11 £ 9.25bn £ 650 m ▲

HANS RAUSING AND FAMILY

Packaging

Rausing, 91, and his wife, Marit, sold their 50% stake in the Tetra

Pak carton operation for £4.4bn to his late brother Gad, whose

children Kirsten and Jorn (qv) now control the business. The East

Sussex-based couple are more preoccupied with spending on

good causes. The main family charitable vehicles are the Sigrid

Rausing Trust, run by their daughter Sigrid, which has donated

more than £275m in the past two decades, including £27.5m last

year, and the Arcadia Fund, run by daughter Lisbet. Rausing has a

£230m stake in Ecolean, a Swedish maker of environmentally

friendly packaging material made from chalk. 2016: £8.6bn, 9

13 £ 8.053 bn £ 1.653 bn ▲

ROMAN ABRAMOVICH

Oil and industry

Chelsea football club owner Abramovich, who will be delighted

with the team’s form in the Premier League, has planning

permission to build a 60,000-seat stadium costing £500m.

Abramovich, 50, was born in Saratov, just south of the Arctic

Circle, and he and the late Boris Berezovsky bought the Sibneft

oil operation in 1995 for £120m. Berezovsky went into exile and

sold his shares to Abramovich, who sold Sibneft to Gazprom, the

Russian natural gas monopoly. The stake held by Abramovich

and his partners was valued at £7.5bn. He has holdings in 13

businesses worth a combined £4bn, five homes and a vast art

collection. His 2007 divorce from Irina Malandina (qv) was costly.

He is now married to Dasha Zhukova, 35. 2016: £6.4bn, 13

14 £ 7.8bn £ 2.8bn ▲

SIR JAMES DYSON AND FAMILY

Household goods and technology 2016: £5bn, 17

The Rich List interview, page 10

15 £ 7.2bn £ 200 m ▲

SIR DAVID AND SIR FREDERICK BARCLAY

Property, media and internet retailing

Twins David and Frederick, 82, are considering selling a big stake

in their £2bn Shop Direct operation, where profits grew in 2015-16

to £105.6m. The siblings own a castle on Brecqhou in the Channel

Islands but spend a lot of time in Monaco, where their yacht Lady

Beatrice is moored. They own the Ritz and other UK sites , worth

£1.8bn, and Telegraph newspapers, which made £48.1m profit in

2015-16. Their Yodel delivery firm lost £59.3m. 2016: £7bn, 12

16 £ 6.763 bn £ 923 m ▲

MOHAMED BIN ISSA AL JABER AND FAMILY

Hotels, food and industry

Not all business leaders are as enthusiastic about Donald Trump

as Saudi-born Al Jaber, 58. In December the London-based

billionaire described the president as “capable and, as a

businessman, he’s shrewd about the bottom line”. Jaber’s net

worth could have doubled in 2015 if a $10bn suit against Barclays

Bank over alleged licence fraud had gone his way, yet he remains

one of Britain’s richest men via MBI International, which has

interests in food, energy, property and hotels. 2016: £5.84bn, 15

12 £ 8.057 bn £ 1.757 bn ▲

JOHN FREDRIKSEN AND FAMILY

Shipping and oil services

Fredriksen started as an errand boy at an

Oslo shipbroker and went on to build the

world’s largest tanker fleet. Often cited

as Norway’s richest man (a debatable title

since he relinquished his citizenship over

a tax row and became a Cypriot national

in 2006), London-based Fredriksen, 73

on Wednesday, is set to hand his empire

over to his twin daughters Kathrine and

Cecilie, 33. Both are business graduates

who hold directorships in family

companies (not to mention perpetual

listings as eligible billionaires).

“I hope Cecilie takes over soon, I’m

beginning to get tired,” Fredriksen told a

Norwegian newspaper six years ago,

before swiftly changing his mind. “But I

won’t retire. I think I’ll work until I die,”

added the tycoon nicknamed “Big Wolf ”.

His wife, Inger, who died from cancer in

2006, suggested her husband would

make a bad retiree. Supervising the

restructuring of $8bn debts at his

oil-drilling o peration, Seadrill, will add

another “three to five years” to his time in

the business, he vowed. Fredriksen owns

a Chelsea mansion with

a two-acre garden and

controls a £3bn

empire embracing his

Frontline shipping

operation, fish farming

and oil support

services,

backed by

cash reserves

of £4.4bn,

up £1.4bn

on last

year.

2016:

£6.3bn, 14

TETRA PAK FORTUNE:

HANS RAUSING

AND FAMILY

Entry 11, £9.25bn

Next in line: Cecilie, left,

and Kathrine will one day

take over from shipping

magnate John Fredriksen

FRODE HANSEN / VG / NTB SCANPIX; ALAMY; REX

The Sunday Times Magazine • 23