Bristol-based Hargreaves Lansdown co-founder Peter Hargreaves has seen his personal wealth fall by nearly £200m in the last 12 months, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List.
Hargreaves saw his fortune slide below the £1bn mark, down £190m year on year to £830m, after shares in the company fell sharply.
Having been worth almost 650p this time last year, shares are currently trading at 525p, around 20% lower, although they have rallied off lows seen last autumn.
Hargreaves, now ranked 90th in the list compared to 65th in 2011, is no longer chief executive of the business but remains a director and has a stake worth £748m in the Bristol-based wealth manager.
The list published by the Sunday Times yesterday reveals Britain’s wealthiest have dodged the worst effects of the recession.
The total fortune of the 1,000 richest people in the country has risen by just under 5% since 2011, to £414 billion.
That exceeds the previous record of £412.8 billion set in 2008, which came just a few months before the financial crash from which the wider British economy has yet to recover.
Heading the list for the seventh year running is the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, although his wealth has fallen £4,814m to £12,700m, placing him just £385m ahead of Alisher Usmanov, whose Metalloinvest is Russia’s biggest iron ore producer.
Efforts by hard-pressed families to make their wages go further during the economic downturn have boosted the fortunes of the owners of cut-price retail outlets.
Liverpool-based Tom Morris and family, who own the Home Bargains stores, have seen their fortune leap from £160m to £620m. The B&M Retail discount chain, also based in the north west, has contributed to a £144m increase in the wealth of its owners, Simon, Robin and Bobby Arora, taking them to £487m and a place in the top 200.
