Super-rich stay calm and get richer

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% to £658-billion (R11.4-trillion), the paper said.

It said that there were 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 (R282-billion).

“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,” the list compiler, Robert Watts, said.

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

Britain voted in June last year 6 to leave the EU after more than four decades of membership in a referendum that sent shockwaves across Europe.

Despite gloomy forecasts, the UK economy proved resilient in the last six months of last year 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.