New Belstaff owner is Britain's richest man, Boohoo's Kane joins Rich List too

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 14, 2018

The new owner of Belstaff has been named Britain’s richest man in the latest Sunday Times Rich List. Self-made businessman Jim Ratcliffe is chairman and CEO of chemicals company Ineos, which acquired Belstaff last autumn, and his wealth rose to £21.05 billion from £15.3 billion in a single year. That sent him up 18 places on the list to grab top spot.

The Belstaff buy isn’t behind that massive leap, of course, as the brand still needs plenty of work to achieve its full potential. But it’s clear that it has an owner that has the ability to invest heavily in the label if he sees growth potential in it. 

The Weston family which controls Selfridges, Primark and Fortnum & Mason topped the retail list and came ninth overall with a net worth of £10.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Arcadia chief Sir Philip Green and his wife Lady Tina Green saw their position on the Rich List tumbling as their fortune fell by £787 million to ‘just’ £2 billion. 

This followed sales struggles at Arcadia as well as the £363 million contribution he made to the BHS pension scheme. They had also suffered a £433 million drop in their joint fortune in the previous year.

Other Rich List regulars are married couple Chrissie Rucker and Nick Wheeler who are founders of White Company and Charles Tyrwhitt with a combined £452 million fortune. Asos founder Nick Robertson (£372 million), and Missguided founder Nitin Passi (£250 million) also appeared on the list again.

One of the most interesting names on the list is Carol Kane, joint CEO of Boohoo, a new entry at number 942 with £120 million. Talking about the founding of the business 12 years ago with Mahmud Kamani, she said: “It wasn’t a dead cert, but we could see that bricks and mortar were starting to struggle. Mahmud and I thought, what have we got to lose? We wanted to be game-changers.”

Kamani, himself and his family are at number 136 on the list as they own a little over 35% of Boohoo and his wealth soared by £268 million in the last year to over £1 billion.

Another new entry this year was Tarak Ramzan and family. They control stock exchange-listed fast fashion chain Quiz and have a net worth of £166 million.