Dyson scoops a £111m payday as profits soar

BILLIONAIRE Sir James Dyson bagged another multi-millionpound payday after his company handed out £111m in dividends.

Accounts for Weybourne Group, the parent company of the 70-yearold’s business empire, show that it paid ordinary dividends of £60m and preference dividends of £51m for 2016.

Brexit supporter Dyson is said to be a ‘majority shareholder’ in the company, meaning he scooped the lion’s share of the awards.

It will make little difference to his bank balance, however, with The Sunday Times Rich List estimating the family fortune at £7.8bn.

The latest bumper payday came after Weybourne revenues rose 45pc to £2.5bn and profits jumped 55pc to £472.5m.

The vast majority of turnover came from the Dyson Group, which is famed for its vacuum cleaners and last year launched its £300 ‘supersonic’ hairdryer.

Dyson is said to be Britain’s biggest farmer, owning thousands of acres through Beeswax Dyson Farming Limited, where revenues rose nearly 13pc to £14.1m and losses fell from £4.5m to £600,000.

The strong performance of the parent company came as he ramped up investment in research and development, spending £180m in 2016 compared with £142m the previous year. The total headcount around the world has also jumped by 36pc, to 6,435.

It has long been rumoured that Dyson is looking into developing an electric car.

When asked about his plans earlier this month, he said: ‘Who knows, who knows? You’ll just have to wait and see.’

Dyson has expanded its technology hub in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, and recently it bought a 517-acre former military airfield at nearby Hullavington where it will develop a second campus.

He is also ploughing money into training engineers, with 33 undergraduates starting at the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, in Wiltshire, this month.

‘There is a huge shortage of engineers in Britain – it’s estimated we’ll be 2m engineers short by 2022 – but more interestingly, we’re short of very good engineers,’ he said.

‘We want to develop the best tech in the world and make products that conquer the world.

‘It’s blindingly obvious that we need to take on more engineers, and if people study here then they’ll be learning from some of the best in the world.’

Dyson recently called for the UK to make a clean break from Brussels, and said leaving without a deal would ‘hurt the Europeans more than the British’.

Arguing that a period of transition would be ‘a muddle’, he said: ‘You end up having to do one transitional arrangement, and then another one.

‘So just have a clean break, it’s not a big deal.’