Manchester council house kid grew up to be UK’s richest man
A man who grew up in a council house near Manchester is now the richest man in the UK according to the Sunday Times annual rich list.
Jim Ratcliffe, who founded chemical firm Ineos, came top of the list with an estimated fortune of £21bn.
Mr Ratcliffe, 65, moved from the council house in Failsworth to East Yorkshire as a boy.
The joiner’s son went to Beverley Grammar School, studied chemical engineering at Birmingham University, and got an MBA from London Business School.
Mr Ratcliffe’s personal wealth leapt by £15bn in the past year – partly because of a revaluation of his assets.
The Sunday Times also listed the richest people living in the North West.
The list is based on land, property, other assets including art and racehorses, as well as shares in listed companies
The richest man in the region is Hugh Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminsterm who is worth £9.9bn.
The 27-year-old’s properties include Eaton Hall in Cheshire and Abbeystead House in Lancashire.
He became the seventh Duke of Westminster having inherited his family’s property empire following his father’s death in 2016.
His property includes 300 acres in Mayfair and Belgravia along with property in Oxford, Cheshire, Scotland and Spain.
The family’s private interests and holdings include nearly 165,000 acres of rural land, a dairy farm, the Chester Grosvenor hotel, operated by Bespoke Hotels, and Cogent Breeding, the UK’s largest bull stud operation.
Property businessman John Whittaker is worth an estimated £2.2bn.The chairman of the Peel Group was born in Bury and got involved in the business in the 1960s.
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The Peel Group owns shopping centres, ports, airports, Pinewood Shepperton Studios and MediaCityUK.
Trafford Centre
The Salford born brothers Fred and Peter Done are worth: £1.35bn.
They opened their first Betfred branch in, Salford, in 1967 and now have more than 1,650 UK outlets and shops at 51 racecourses and took over the Tote for £265m.
Clothing entrepreneur Philip Day is worth £1.2bn. Born on a Stockport council estate he turned down a place at university to go straight into the clothing industry.
In 2001, he joined Edinburgh Woollen Mill and led a buyout of the company.
He later bought home furnishing company Ponden Mill and soft furnishings company Rosebys, golfing brand ProQuip, women’s fashion retailer Jane Norman, outfitters Austin Reed and Country Casuals, and British fashion brand Jaeger.
Businessmen Mohsin and Zuber Issa have a combined wealth of £1.1bn.
EG Group
They started their Euro Garages business in Bury in 2001, by the end of the year the firm will own and operate 4,600 sites across Europe and the US.
Mortgage lender Henry Moser has a personal fortune of just over £1bn.
Henry, who is originally from Bury, worked on market stalls before setting up his business in 1974.
The specialist mortgage lender added a number of bolt-on businesses including Lancashire Mortgage Corporation and Cheshire Mortgage Corporation before setting up Manchester-based Jerrold Holdings in the early 2000s.
Boohoo founders Mahmud Kamani and his family are worth £1bn.
The Manchester-based business started in 2006 with Kamani and Carole Kane supplying high street chains such as Primark and New Look.
Mahmud passed down his entrepreneurial spirit to sons Adam, Samir and Umar who have helped expand with boohooMAN and PrettyLittleThing.
Peter Jones and family have a fortune of £900m.
The 83-year-old is owner and founder of property development company Emerson Developments based in Alderley Edge.
The former joiner moved into housebuilding in Cheshire in 1959 and was one of the first developers to spot the development potential of south Manchester, buying up tracts of land cheaply.
Anthony Green and the Zocchonis Family have an estimated personal wealth of £811m.
Anthony Green is the former chairman of PZ Curzons, the Stockport-based company widely known for Imperial Leather and Carex soaps. He is also the nephew of the late Sir John Zochonis.
Property managers Michael and Chris Oglesby have a personal wealth of £587m.
Over the last 42 years their family-owned property company Bruntwoon has expanded to own a third of office space in Manchester city centre.
Bruntwood owns a portfolio of 115 properties and is constantly expanding, most recently with its involvement in Manchester Science Partnership.
