Rich list reveals Wales has lost its only billionaire

Apr 26 2008 by Catherine Mary Evans, Western Mail

WALES has lost its only billionaire, according to this year’s Rich List.

Sir Terry Matthews, 64, computer tycoon and owner of the Celtic Manor Resort, has dropped £60m in value to £950m this year.

Although Sir Terry remains the richest person in Wales and is ranked 79th nationally, he is now £50m short of being a billionaire.

The revelation comes with the publication of the Sunday Times’ Rich List 2008.

Philip Beresford, who compiled the list, said Sir Terry’s fortune had fallen because of share prices, but that the former billionaire is “still extremely wealthy and as committed to Wales as ever”.

He added that there is a shortage of young pretenders in Wales who are lining up to take the top spot.

“The Achilles heel of the Welsh economy is that it hasn’t got its share of great entrepreneurial talent to go with its sporting and cultural success this year,” he added.

Only one woman – Catherine Zeta-Jones, 38, – made it to the list, helped partly by her actor husband Michael Douglas’ already huge wealth. Although the couple, who live in the US and are considered Hollywood royalty, fell from 388th place nationally to 447th, their fortune remained at a more than comfortable £185m, positioning them at 11th place in the Wales list.

Brothers Sir Stanley and Peter Thomas, from Merthyr, fell to 290th place from 258th, but their wealth remained a combined £285m.

Shipping heir Lou Kollakis is one of only two newcomers on the list for those born, based or with business interests in Wales, after moving into tenth place.

The other is retailer Richard Kirk, who entered the elite list at 597th place, with £130m.

Mr Kollakis – worth an estimated £200m – amassed his wealth after taking over his father’s shipping firm Kappa Maritime. Although he directs the firm from Greece, the business is based in Wales.

He is now ranked joint 397th nationally among Britain’s richest 1,000.

In addition to Sir Terry Matthews’ fall in wealth, internet millionaire Duncan Cameron lost £319m from last year’s value of £480m, dropping from joint fifth to 13th.

Flintshire-based Simon Nixon, 40, who runs Moneysupermarket.com and ranks seventh in Wales with £343m, was his partner in founding the financial services website. This year he fell from 165th place nationally to 258th, but was still named as Wales’ seventh wealthiest, with £343m.

Pontypridd singer Sir Tom Jones, 67, saw his wealth fall from £190m to £170m, sending him plummeting to 483rd in Britain and 12th in Wales.

Property and media mogul David Sullivan, 59, from Cardiff, is fourth richest in Wales, despite having lost £100m in the past year. The owner of Birmingham City FC is now worth £500m.

The estimated total worth of this year’s richest 19 in Wales compared to 2007 is also down, from £6,281m to £5,805m – a fall of 7.6 per cent.

Despite this decrease, Wales still boasts higher wealth in its top 10 than commanded by the 10 wealthiest in three English regions – the East Midlands, north east and south west.

And some of Wales’ top tycoons have added to their already staggering fortunes.

Cardiff-born Michael Moritz, a 54-year-old journalist-turned investor, has added £93m to his wealth of £558m in 2007, climbing two ranks to nudge property magnate Albert Gubay from the number two spot in Wales. His value of £651m ranks him 125th nationally.

Last year, Moritz, formerly of Penarth, stepped down from the board of Google but still has his finger in several technological pies, with lucrative stakes in technology enterprises including Google, YouTube and PayPal.

The partner in Sequoia Capital invested £8m of Sequoia’s money into the fledgling Google in 1999, a holding that rose to be worth £6.3bn at its peak.

He repeated the trick by putting £6m of his firm’s money into YouTube in 2005. When the company was sold to Google the following year for £884m, that stake had soared in value to £265m.

The full version of the Rich List 2008 appears in tomorrow’s Sunday Times.