UK super-rich got richer despite Brexit — Rich list

LONDON: Britain’s super-rich “kept calm and carried on making billions” despite worries about Brexit, according to The Sunday Times newspaper’s Rich List for 2017, with more billionaires living in the country than ever before.

In the past 12 months, the total wealth of Britain’s richest 1,000 individuals and families surged 14 per cent to £ 658 billion ( US$ 854 billion, 777 billion euros), the paper said.

It said that there are now more UK-based billionaires than ever before, at 134.

Industrialist brothers Sri and Gopi Hinduja topped the list with a combined wealth of £16.2 billion, up £ 3.2 billion over the previous year.

“While many of us worried about the outcome of the EU referendum, many of Britain’s richest people just kept calm and carried on making billions,” said the list compiler, Robert Watts.

“We expected to see a chilling effect in the run-up to the EU referendum, but that simply did not materialise.”

Britain voted in June 2016 to leave the EU after more than four decades of membership in a referendum that sent shockwaves across Europe. Despite gloomy forecasts ahead of the referendum, the UK economy proved resilient in the last six months of 2016 with a weaker pound and record low interest rates helping to boost exports and investor confidence.

“A buoyant stock market usually drives the wealth of Rich Listers higher, and since last June equities have soared,” Watts said.

London remains the city with the most billionaires at 86, up nine over the previous year.

Overall, 19 people increased their wealth by £1 billion or more in a year.

— Reuters photo A young girl looks at artwork attributed to street artist Banksy, depicting a workman chipping away at one of the 12 stars on the European Union, seen on a wall in the ferry port of Dover, Britain, May 7.