Great British Billion-Pound Businesses
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Meet Britain’s entrepreneurial elite. Here are the leaders who have managed to create a UK business worth £1bn – and kept going. These are people who have built ventures spanning everything from artificial intelligence and virtual reality to hoodies and craft beer.
You’ll find discount retailers and a diamond dealer, bookmakers and the woman behind a world-leading cybersecurity outfit. The 56 businesses are listed in order of our valuation.
Some of these founders left school without a qualification, others have PhDs. There are those who toiled away for years and are still in charge of their company after more than half a century.
There are others who have catapulted their way onto this list within just a few years by developing tech for which investors have been willing to write out very large cheques in the hope they are buying into the next Apple, Google or Facebook. One thing unites them all. At one point it was just them, perhaps a co-founder or two, an idea and a desire to try their luck.
Every big business was once a small business. A few years ago, I asked the man who tops our list of billion-pound founders, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, whether he was surprised by the growth of his chemical giant Ineos.
“Completely,” he said with a chuckle. “Look, these are extremely big numbers, but I’ve been doing this a long time. With the exception of 2008, we’ve been successful every year. So you do kind of get used to it.”
The UK needs more of these billion-pound entrepreneurs with the energy and hunger to keep building. It needs more businesses that employ people by the thousand, not by the dozens or hundreds. The profiles may be of truly exceptional people, but their stories have lessons for businesses of every size.
Foreword
James Whittaker, head of UK wealth management, UK CEO, Deutsche Bank
We are living through challenging times and there is a lot for our clients to process, whether they are investors or active entrepreneurs. The rise of interest rates, the changing geopolitical situation and a new government are just some of the factors leading our clients to adjust their approach, alongside the impact of technological advances. The business leaders in this list have demonstrated an ability to navigate testing times and continual changes to build impressive and lasting legacies.
Having spent the majority of my career working with entrepreneurs, including some on this list, it has been a privilege to have a ringside seat to see their energy and creativity as they realise their vision for their companies. As in their businesses, it’s important that business leaders choose the right advisers for their wealth. It can be easy to forget the emotions at stake when you’re working with people who built their businesses from scratch.
Deutsche Bank is proud to have been acknowledged by Euromoney as the World’s Best Bank for Entrepreneurs. Supporting entrepreneurs has always been a core part of our DNA. Historically, that’s been a keystone of our business, starting in Germany where we were facilitating international trade. But it’s become a focus and point of pride for the Private Bank to work with entrepreneurs in a very holistic way. That means looking at their life goals broadly, what they want for their businesses, their families, and what mark they would like to make on the world.
1
Sir Jim Ratcliffe
Ineos
£29bn
It wasn’t a start fizzing with privilege or promise. After his early years spent on a council estate near Manchester and an unexceptional school career, the aspiring industrialist found himself sacked four days into his first job.
His boss had insisted there was no way he could work in BP’s labs after a medical report had shown he suffered from mild eczema.
Ratcliffe didn’t even start his chemicals behemoth Ineos until his mid-40s, a time when many entrepreneurs begin eyeing up the chairman’s office.
But by then Ratcliffe was well-placed to harness the expertise and knowledge of the industrial sites and dealmaking he had nurtured in the first half of his career.
His genius has been spotting hidden value: buying up unloved chemical plants owned by the world’s industrial giants and seeing where such facilities could be knitted together with other overlooked sites. This alchemy would not have been possible without an appetite for borrowing too brave for many.
Ineos now has nearly 200 facilities across 29 countries, making the materials used to produce everything from food packaging and car parts to antibiotics and the chlorine used to purify water. Energised by interests away from the day job, he also made his own updated version of the Land Rover Defender with the Ineos Grenadier – and is now trying to turn around his beloved Manchester United. Still completing marathons in his 70s, Ratcliffe appears to be in it for the long run.
2
Sir James Dyson
Dyson Group
£16.8bn
Satisfaction doesn’t come easy to the billionaire inventor. There would be 5,127 prototypes of his first bagless vacuum cleaner before he was content.
That passion for improving everyday products soon drove Dyson towards things other technologists might have considered dull: hairdryers, air conditioning units and hand dryers.
More recently this tireless zeal for innovation led him to boldly enter markets dominated by existing players – be that electric vehicles or noise-cancelling headphones.
Not all of his endeavours thrive but Dyson banks the lessons learned along the way and moves on. Not satisfied with being a force in the UK, Dyson set about turning his Wiltshire-based operation into a global group, relocating his headquarters to Singapore to maximise growth in fast-growing, Asian markets.
All this has helped drive annual sales to more than £7bn. Now fascinated by what robotics and artificial intelligence may be able to do to improve everyday household appliances, Dyson remains fully charged.
3
Nikolay Storonsky
Revolut
£14bn
This Russian-born fintech tycoon came to the UK when he was 20 and worked as a trader for Lehman Brothers, losing around £500,000 when the firm collapsed in 2008.
Seven years later he launched Revolut, an app-based payments service undercutting mainstream banks with services such as fee-free foreign exchange.
Storonsky was also quick to offer cryptocurrency trading services, attracting millions of new customers as conventional lenders bided their time.
Revolut now operates across 160 countries and has attracted more than 40 million customers. The London-based company’s value has fluctuated across the past few years.
Storonsky, who renounced his Russian citizenship after the Ukraine invasion in 2022, hopes an imminent secondary share sale will put a value in excess of £30bn on Revolut.
4
Mohsin & Zuber Issa
EG Group
£9.5bn
The Issa brothers learnt the ins and outs of petrol retailing while working at their father’s filling station.
In 2001 they purchased their first forecourt, paying £150,000 for a rundown site on Bury’s Brandlesholme Road.
As they grew their portfolio, the brothers spotted how well they could do by selling food and drink from well-known brands in their stations, forging partnerships with Starbucks, Burger King, KFC and Greggs.
Today their EG Group has nearly 6,000 forecourts across the world, generating annual sales of £22.4bn. Heavy borrowing and a partnership with the private equity firm TDR certainly put a tiger in the tank.
Zuber, 52, sold his stake in the Blackburn-based business but remains a director. Mohsin, 53, is still firmly in charge.
5
Greg Jackson
Octopus Energy
£7.2bn
A member of Greenpeace from his mid-teens, Jackson set up businesses making mirrors and trading property before founding a renewable energy start-up in his early 40s.
Within just nine years, he has grown Octopus Energy from a small-scale disruptor into the largest electricity supplier to British homes. By harnessing cash from investors keen to power the green revolution Jackson has swiftly amassed a portfolio of more than 400 wind and solar farms across the UK and six other countries.
Octopus has also grown tentacles, providing electric vehicle leasing and installing heat pumps and smart meters. Acquisitions have helped. After buying collapsed rival Bulb and Shell’s UK household electricity and gas arm, Octopus now powers more than 7.7 million homes around the world.
6
Kristo Käärmann
Wise
£7bn
Many great businesses are born from frustration. As a young Estonian working in London, Käärmann was unimpressed with the exchange rate and charges he incurred when he transferred a £10,000 bonus back home. He felt his bank had left him about €500 (£422) out of pocket.
This spurred Käärmann to create his own international money transfer service, quickly growing his customer base by undercutting banks and other existing providers.
TransferWise, as it was initially known, attracted backing from high-profile investors, including Sir Richard Branson, PayPal’s Peter Thiel and Skype founder Niklas Zennström.
A spell of higher interest rates boosted Wise’s value as it was able to make money on customers’ balances. Over the past year, its users have grown by 29 per cent to 12.8 million – new business largely won by word of mouth.
7
Denise Coates
Bet365
£6bn
Predicting the future is a useful skill for a bookie. Back in the 1990s, Denise Coates was running her family’s modest chain of Midlands betting shops when she realised that the internet would make it possible for her to create a global gambling giant.
In 2000, amid the financial turmoil of the dotcom crash, Coates and her brother John started Bet365 from a portable building in a car park in Stoke-on-Trent. Relentlessly investing in their own technology has been critical to the Coates’s success.
Bet365 could adapt its website more quickly than its rivals and pioneered “in-play” or “live” betting, where punters could wager on a game once it had begun. Betting soon became possible on the number of free kicks, the half-time score and countless other aspects of football and an ever-growing roster of sports around the world.
8
Tom Morris
Home Bargains
£5bn
A retailer promising “top brands” and “bottom prices” was always primed to thrive during a cost-of-living squeeze. Over the past year, profits at Morris’s discount chain have grown to £332m.
This under-the-radar master of low prices has been helping shoppers make their money go further for nearly half a century. Initially called Home and Bargains, the discount chain began in Liverpool’s Old Swan district in 1976. There are now nearly 600 stores in the UK, a figure Morris intends to grow to between 800 and 1,000 in due course.
Home Bargains consistently achieves profit margins of around 9 per cent. This is far above those achieved by mainstream supermarkets and testament to the efficiency with which Morris runs the operation. He employs more than 27,000 people and is almost certainly the wealthiest Liverpudlian in history.
=9
Richard Harpin
HomeServe
£4.1bn
The first of Harpin’s eight secrets for entrepreneurs calls for patience. “Everyone is in a rush to be first,” he observes. “Second movers have the advantages. Watch, correct and adapt.”
HomeServe, a provider of emergency repairs and other services for homeowners he founded in 1993, was certainly no overnight success.
But providing plumbing insurance for South Staffordshire Water in time proved to be a game changer.
In 2023 HomeServe was sold for £4.1bn to Brookfield. Harpin remains chairman across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Through his Growth Partner fund and Business Leader, which he owns, Harpin is now trying to foster the next generation of entrepreneurs intent on creating billion-pound companies.
=9
Poppy Gustafsson
Darktrace
£4.1bn
While building one of the world’s fastest-growing cybersecurity firms, Gustafsson has not been afraid to do things differently.
Rather than winning business with a sales pitch, her staff often deploy Darktrace’s technology into an organisation free of charge, detecting previously unidentified threats and showing customers the value the company can add.
Another one of her counter-intuitive beliefs is that experience can be overrated.
Gustafsson cites a young graduate who managed to speed up the company’s sales cycle by two-thirds. They questioned Darktrace’s three-month proof-of-value process, which at that point was standard across the IT industry. The new recruit suggested moving to a three-week testing period.
A fresh perspective and common sense can trump a forensic knowledge of the way things have always been done, Gustafsson says. Shares in Darktrace have climbed by 75 per cent since their debut on London’s stock market three years ago. Gustafsson announced she was stepping down as CEO in September following Darktrace’s acquisition by the US private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
11
Mike Ashley
Frasers Group
£3.9bn
Starting out in 1982 with a £10,000 loan from his parents and a single shop in Maidenhead, Ashley had opened more than 100 sports shops by the end of the 1990s. But his Sports Direct chain was just the beginning for this high-street kingpin.
Before long the retailer began buying well-known sports brands, including Dunlop Slazenger, Donnay and Lonsdale.
While some of his peers have focused on websites, apps and social media, Ashley remains a passionate believer in bricks-and-mortar retail and its role in how UK consumers shop.
Over the years he has snapped up a string of ailing high-street chains, including Evans Cycles, Jack Wills and Game. In 2018 he took control of House of Fraser, renaming his own group after the department store chain a year later. A member of the FTSE 100, there are now 1,500 stores within Frasers Group.
Those close to him say Ashley is a master at spotting an opportunity and moving at speed. Well, he was a squash coach in his youth.
12
Martin Kissinger
Lendable
£3.5bn
Kissinger co-founded Lendable after completing a PhD in economics at the University of Oxford. The online service is something of a Tinder of finance, matching those looking to borrow with willing investors prepared to stump up the credit. The London-based fintech also aims to speed up loan decisions by using artificial intelligence to assess risk.
A £210m fundraising in March 2022 valued Lendable at £3.5bn. Many so-called unicorns – the term used to describe businesses valued at $1bn (£830m) or more – don’t break even. However, Lendable is consistently profitable and growing quickly, signing up a new customer every 30 seconds.
=13
John Bloor
Bloor Homes
£3.3bn
Having left school at 15, Bloor worked as a plasterer’s apprentice, giving him a hands-on introduction to the housing and construction industry. By his mid-20s, Bloor had managed to set up his Derbyshire-based housebuilder.
Blending traditional and contemporary building techniques are hallmarks of the company, which has helped to make Bloor Homes’ properties attractive, cheaper to maintain and more energy efficient.
Keeping 100 per cent ownership of the company has also made it easier for Bloor to ensure that high standards are maintained across the business. Sound, attractive building and a simple ownership structure have helped boost sales and drive profits to £408.8m during the past year.
As a side hustle, Bloor saved and transformed the Triumph motorcycle brand and is now well on the way to selling nearly £1bn worth of motorbikes a year.
=13
Sir Philip Hulme &
Sir Peter Ogden
Computacenter
£3.3bn
Hulme and Ogden met in the US while studying for MBAs at Harvard Business School. In 1981 they launched the IT services provider Computacenter. The Hertfordshire-based organisation provides consultancy services on what type of computer infrastructure clients need, sources the necessary hardware and software, and can also manage systems once they are in place.
Key to the firm’s success has been landing contracts with large corporates, the NHS and government departments.
These are clients with the means to continue investing in IT even in tough economic climates and challenging scenarios.
The pair floated Computacenter on the stock market more than 25 years ago and still serve as directors.
15
Laurence Graff
Graff Diamonds
£3bn
During his sparkling career, this world-famous diamond dealer has sold gems to Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump and Dame Elizabeth Taylor. Graff’s life among the glitterati is quite the reversal of fortune. He grew up in East End poverty and left school at 14, scrubbing toilets in his first job at a jewellers in Hatton Garden, London.
His chain of nearly 70 boutiques includes premises in Dubai, Monaco and Singapore. Sourcing the most perfect diamonds and ensuring the highest levels of customer service have kept the super-rich calling.
Although the company’s finances are not exactly transparent, Bloomberg has valued the company at £7.7bn. We are more cautious.
=16
Ian & Richard Livingstone
London + Regional Properties
£2.7bn
The Livingstone brothers have built a real estate portfolio consisting of 114 hotels. Sons of an Ealing dentist, Ian began his career as an optometrist, while Richard worked as a chartered surveyor.
The pair concentrate on buying high-class buildings and holding on to them for the long term. For example, London’s Hilton Park Lane has been on their books for almost 25 years and they have owned Cliveden House in Berkshire since 2012.
The Livingstones’ two separate companies in the London + Regional group show assets of £2.7bn. Their hotels together have more than 23,000 rooms in locations across the UK, Europe, the US and the Caribbean.
=16
David McMurtry
Renishaw
£2.7bn
Renishaw’s precision engineering technology is vital to manufacturers operating across the aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics and healthcare sectors. Apple, reliant on billions of tiny, intricate components for its products, is understood to be one of the Gloucestershire-based firm’s biggest clients. Exports have supercharged Renishaw’s growth across the years.
McMurtry – a former Rolls-Royce apprentice – founded the business with his former colleague John Deer. Renishaw’s shares now value the company at £2.7bn.
McMurtry recently announced he is stepping down as executive chairman but will remain a director.
=16
Herman Narula
Improbable
£2.7bn
Narula adored playing multiplayer video games in his teens and 20s. But he felt the way players interacted with one another in virtual worlds was too often clunky or lacking in meaning.
In 2012, the Cambridge computer science graduate set up his London-based metaverse developer Improbable to help create virtual environments where up to 30,000 people can simultaneously interact with one another.
The technology has been harnessed by retailers, event organisers and sports clubs, as well as video games makers.
A fundraising in late 2022 valued Improbable at £2.7bn.
19
Mark Slack
CMR Surgical
£2.4bn
CMR Surgical developed a class of surgical robot called Versius that has already been used in more than 22,000 operations around the world.
Slack is the medical director of the Cambridge-based firm and was one of a small team to launch the business 10 years ago.
Robot surgeons can save hospitals money and increase productivity. They operate more quickly and with smaller incisions, often increasing the speed with which patients recover.
Although initially used mostly for gynaecological and colorectal operations, more recent versions of Versius can be used for a wider range of procedures. CMR Surgical was valued at £2.4bn in a 2021 investment round.
=20
Tim Steiner
Ocado
£2.3bn
Next year marks 25 years since Steiner teamed up with two former Goldman Sachs colleagues to start a pioneering grocery delivery service, taking a 90 per cent pay cut to do so. The trio cleverly foresaw how millions of Britons would pay a premium to have their weekly shops delivered to their doorsteps.
Four years ago Ocado ended its long-running partnership with Waitrose and began delivering produce from Marks & Spencer instead. Ocado has faced fierce competition from traditional supermarket retailers like Tesco.
Steiner’s story reminds entrepreneurs not to overlook lucrative gems hiding under the roof.
Over the years Ocado has made a fortune from selling reconfigurations of its IT systems and software to Morrisons, the US supermarket Kroger and many other grocers and producers as far afield as Japan and South Korea.
=20
Alex Kendall
Wayve
£2.3bn
New Zealand-born Kendall and fellow Cambridge University PhD student Amar Shah took their own road when they launched their software developer for driverless cars.
At the time most players in this field were feeding rules into computers to account for every possible driving eventuality. By contrast Wayve’s artificial intelligence-powered technology harnesses videos and data from real life to “teach” autonomous vehicles how to drive.
This ensures driverless cars and vans can navigate any environment and respond better to surprises, such as a pedestrian straying into traffic.
Earlier this year Wayve attracted more than $1bn (£830m) of new investment from SoftBank, Microsoft and Nvidia. Although the price put on Kendall’s London-based firm by this fundraising was not made public, an earlier round valued the business at £2.3bn.
=20
Nicholas Vetch
Yellow Group
£2.3bn
Vetch won respect for starting and growing retail warehouse group Edge Properties, ultimately selling this outfit for £142m more than 25 years ago.
He soon started again with Big Yellow Group. When he floated the Surrey-based self-storage business on the stock market two years after its launch, his strong business record helped pull in the institutional investors that fuelled the new company’s growth.
There are now 110 Big Yellow Group sites across the UK and the shares value the company at £2.3bn. Who says you can’t make money out of selling empty space?
23
Rishi Khosla
OakNorth
£2.2bn
Khosla’s challenger bank OakNorth concentrates on the “missing middle”, businesses with a turnover of between £1m and £100m.
He says that mainstream banks too often focus on companies at opposing ends of the scale: micro-businesses or large corporates.
Launched in 2015, OakNorth has more than 200,000 customers and has so far lent £10.2bn. Annual earnings climbed by 23 per cent to £187.3m last year.
Now Khosla is looking to provide services to tech firms once served by Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed last year. A fundraising led by Japanese investor SoftBank has valued OakNorth at £2.2bn.
24
Will Shu
Deliveroo
£2.1bn
This former banker started a food delivery service after being unimpressed with the takeaways he ordered when working late in the City of London.
In 2013, he teamed up with childhood friend Greg Orlowski to launch Deliveroo and they quickly built market share with a slick, easy-to-use app.
Shu urges entrepreneurs to create businesses in areas they find energising, saying it will be easier to stay the course when they encounter those inevitable “bumps in the road”.
He also believes primary research is very valuable, still jumping on his bike to deliver food orders himself. Frontline conversations with customers, suppliers and partners are the best way to learn what is and isn’t working in a business, he says.
=25
Bill Holmes
Radius Payments
£2bn
While working as a travelling fuel salesman for the oil giant Esso, Holmes had the idea of helping filling-station chains launch fuel cards, offering fixed prices on petrol and diesel to lorry drivers. Although he admits the loyalty scheme concept was “not very sexy”, the business Holmes started above a hairdressing salon in a Cheshire village now has offices in 19 countries.
Radius has also diversified into providing insurance and data analytics services to fleet operators.
Annual turnover has hit nearly £4.7bn and investors have valued the Crewe-based business at £2bn.
=25
Sir Richard Branson
Virgin Group
£2bn
Can any other businessman claim to have diversified more effectively than Branson? This poster boy for a generation of entrepreneurs has created a group with more than 40 Virgin companies operating across 35 countries and employing some 60,000 people.
Starting out with a mail-order record business in 1970, he has since turned a buck with everything from rail travel and banking to gyms and radio.
One of his most audacious moves appeared to be taking on British Airways when he launched Virgin Atlantic in 1984.
But setting up his space tourism venture Virgin Galactic probably trumps that. Branson urges billionaires to master the art of delegating – and get out and have some have fun. He argues that if you’re not having fun in life, it’s hard to be inspired and have fun in business.
He embodies the belief that spending time away from the desk is where you meet new people, learn from others’ experiences and hear interesting stories you can plug back into your own business.
=27
Mike Danson
GlobalData
£1.8bn
A former management consultant, Danson used four credit cards to fund the launch of Datamonitor in 1990. He sold the market intelligence provider for £502m in 2007, buying back part of the business to start his new venture, GlobalData.
This London-based publisher produces reports and newsletters on nearly 20 sectors with intelligence covering almost 1 million companies. Danson has assiduously grown the company with a series of acquisitions, helping expand the range of information available to his customers.
In doing so, the company’s renewal rate has climbed to an unprecedented 98 per cent. Small wonder then that GlobalData shares are up 25 per cent over the past year.
=27
Chris Dawson
The Range
£1.8bn
A former trader at Plymouth market, Dawson’s discount retailer now has more than 200 UK stores. The Range is spoken of as a “poor man’s John Lewis”, with 16 different departments together selling 140,000 different products.
Turnover has topped £1bn for the past three years and Dawson has recently built a vast new distribution centre in Suffolk to power expansion in London and further into the South East.
A lover of a bargain himself, he paid around £5m for the Wilko brand last year.
Once a rival of The Range, the low-cost chain fell into administration last summer, but Dawson realised it was a much-loved high-street name and has begun opening his own Wilko stores.
=27
James Watt
BrewDog
£1.8bn
Watt was 24 when he teamed up with school friend Martin Dickie, pictured right. They got some “scary bank loans” and set up a brewer now credited with bringing craft beer to the masses.
Signing a deal to supply Tesco within the first six months was critical to BrewDog’s success.
The two Scots also excelled at quirky PR stunts to raise awareness and badge themselves as the pint-sized pretender yapping at the heels of big brewers.
When BrewDog’s super-strong stout Tokyo was criticised for its 18.2 per cent ABV, Watt and Dickie responded with a low-alcohol alternative called Nanny State. Then they set about swiping the title of world’s strongest beer from a German brewery, naming their 41 per cent ABV challenger Sink the Bismarck.
Their antics also included a drink laced with “herbal viagra” released ahead of Prince William’s wedding called Royal Virility Performance. The pair even dropped dozens of taxidermy “fat cats” over the City of London to raise awareness of their Equity for Punks fundraising.
This presented BrewDog as a rebellious movement rather than a beer producer. With a $2bn valuation and more than 100 bars (and a few hotels), BrewDog is no longer a poodle-sized challenger.
=30
Mark Dixon
IWG
£1.7bn
Starting his entrepreneurial journey by selling peat from a wheelbarrow while still at school in Essex, Dixon later established a burger van business.
Having had issues sourcing the buns, he set up a company supplying bread to other fast food retailers where he would first make some real dough, selling it for £800,000.
He used the proceeds to move into property after noticing how business executives often held meetings in cramped coffee shops.
That gave him the idea for Regus, the serviced offices giant now known as IWG. The group now owns 4,000 properties in 120 countries. Disney, HSBC and Accenture are among its clients.
A range of ancillary services, including executive lounges at airports and virtual offices, boosts the FTSE 250 company’s revenues. You can also listen to him on our Business Leader podcast here.
=30
Hiroki Takeuchi
GoCardless
£1.7bn
Enduring shocks and overcoming adversity is essential for anyone trying to grow a business at scale.
Few people in this list know that better than the founder of GoCardless.
In 2016, five years after founding his financial payments firm, Takeuchi was struck by a car while cycling in London. The accident left him paralysed from the waist down.
Takeuchi had to take three months off to concentrate on his recovery.
Despite this, the quality of the team he had already built around him ensured the business continued to thrive.
“That was good to see – it’s nice to know something you have built has got a life of its own,” he later said.
The story of GoCardless, valued at $2.1bn in a fundraising two years ago, is an extreme but powerful example of how putting together a strong team can help entrepreneurs and their businesses endure even the toughest of challenges.
32 – 50
32= Henry Moser, Together, £1.6bn
32= Dame Mary and Douglas Perkins, Specsavers, £1.6bn
32= Sir Peter Rigby, Rigby Group, £1.6bn
32= Sanjeev and Arani Soosaipillai, Prax Group, £1.6bn
32= Surinder Arora, Arora Group, £1.6bn
37= Stephen Fitzpatrick, Ovo, £1.5bn
37= Vishal Marria, Quantexa, £1.5bn
39 Euan Blair, Multiverse, £1.4bn
40= Tim Warrillow, Fever-Tree, £1.3bn
40= Matthew Scullion, Matillion, £1.3bn
40= Tony Langley, Langley Holdings, £1.3bn
40= Peter Jones, Emerson Developments, £1.3bn
40= Phil Brown, Causeway Technologies, £1.3bn
45= Mark Coombs, Ashmore, £1.2bn
45= Harry Hyman, Primary Healthcare Properties, £1.2bn
47= Ben Francis, Gymshark, £1.1bn
47= Lior Shiff, Tripletdot Studios, £1.1bn
49= Steve Turner, Spectrum Medical, £1bn
49= Fred and Peter Done, Betfred, £1bn
49= Charlotte Tilbury, Charlotte Tilbury, £1bn
49= Malcolm Healey, Wren Kitchens, £1bn
49= Morgan Tillbrook, Alpha Group, £1bn
49= Bernard Lewis, River Island, £1bn
49= Peter Harris, Bourne Leisure, £1bn
49= James Basden, Zenobe, £1bn
Methodology
To qualify for our list, an entrepreneur had to be a director of a company he or she founded or co-founded that has recently been valued at £1bn or more. We also included founders who are still the majority owners of their business but are not directors, such as Mike Ashley.
Valuations of public companies were derived from stock market prices at the start of July 2024. The valuations of private companies were set by figures made public after a recent fundraising or sale.
If this was not available, we used a multiple of their annual profits, or in a small number of cases, their net assets. Businesses focused on financial or property trading were not included.
