Few of the region's working rich are able to resist the lure of the entrepreneurial drug. Philip Beresford reports on the multimillionaires driven to keep on working
Another excellent year to report for the North West's working rich. The wealth of the Top 100 in Insider's Rich 100 has risen this year to a record £313.88bn, up £32.1bn on 2005's total of £311.77bn. This is a 17.9 per cent rise (not quite as high as last year's 18.1 per cent) and impressive given the storm clouds gathering on the economic front domestically and internationally.
Our multimillionaires show no sign yet of buckling under the strain. Indeed profits seem to be holding up surprisingly well, while the share prices of the quoted millionaires have also been largely unaffected by recent market gyrations. The bottom line entry point for this year's list stays the same as last year at £335m, but the average wealth at £3138m is much higher than last year's £3117m.
The list is headed by the North West's most tenacious and canny dealmaker in the formidable shape of John Whittaker. In the last year we calculate that his wealth has risen by £3400m to £31.3bn. Even then we know we are being conservative. Whittaker's remarkable skill of buying undervalued assets before the rest of the financial world wakes up to their true worth is legendary. He was in at airports and docks long before foreign predators or private equity buyers circled, and even when he did take them on he is one of the a very select band to beat them. His next battleground looked likely to be the property assets of UK Coal, where he has been assembling a stake, but in August 2006 he moved to quash market speculation that Peel would be bidding for Britain's biggest coal producer.
As last year, we have adjusted our rich list and ditched the aristocrats, the footballers and the pop stars to concentrate on the real wealth creators, creating not just their own wealth, but the jobs and profits on which we can all thrive. By our reckoning, the Top 100 employ well over 100,000 people, mostly concentrated in our region.
Of course when they become too successful, they tend to leave our list as the businesses are prime targets for takeover approaches by a private equity industry awash with cash. 2006 is likely to be the last time we see Henry Moser, whose Blemain operation is set to be sold, netting him a £3270m fortune. We have already lost David Mairs this year, the founder of insurance claims adjuster Ashworth Mairs, who sold up in January 2006 for £362m.
Still the entrepreneurial drug can be too strong for many to resist even when they have enough wealth to retire for life. As Brian Kennedy told Insider in July: "I did semi-retire; I lived in Majorca. It drove me nuts." And no one is more addicted to hard work than Whittaker, who, at 64, is still developing 20-year visions.
We are seeing the return of some who have sold their original businesses and reinvented themselves in areas such as property or leisure businesses. Take Alan Murphy, the tissue paper magnate, has carved out a new role as a property developer in the North West and Midlands. And everyone will now be watching the hyperactive John Caudwell, the former mobile phone tycoon, who has just collected over £31.2bn for his stake in the Caudwell Group.
The great bulk have made the money themselves: just 22 (one up on last year) actually inherited their wealth. This is far higher than any other rich list - notably, in the Sunday Times Rich List, covering the UK as a whole, barely 70 per cent are self-made. In the North West the notion of wealth creation is not restricted by class, creed or colour.
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