The highly anticipated Sunday Times Rich List 2019 has been released - and it includes a few faces from Cambridgeshire and its surrounds.
The richest people living in and around the county have been revealed and the wealthiest is worth more than £12bn.
Newmarket horse breeder Kristen Rausing and brother Jorn have a combined worth of £12.256bn, thanks to inheritance and investment.
20 names from the East of England made it onto this year's top 1,000.
Robert Watts, Compiler of The Sunday Times Rich List, said: “Although two famous dynasties feature in the top three places in our East Anglia Rich List, the days when the Sunday Times Rich List is dominated by aristocrats and inherited wealth has gone.
“We’re seeing more self-made men and women – often from humble roots. East Anglia’s wealthiest people include a proud Romany gypsy who was born on the side of a road, someone who grew up in Blitz-ravaged London and a former ‘pony boy’ who worked on London Underground tube lines.
“We’re also finding wealth made in more diverse ways. Industry, finance and property are no longer the only route into the Rich List. Vast fortunes are now being built from software, television and baby products.”
Below you will find a list of the 20 richest people living in East Anglia.
To find out how much money Cambridgeshire's richest people have made this year click here.
1. Kirsten Rausing - £12.256bn
Miss Rausing, who has runs two stud farms in Suffolk including Newmarket's Lanwades Stud, owns Tetra Laval with her two brothers, Jorn, 59, and Finn, 63.
The Swiss-based packaging group was founded by her grandfather Ruben and built into a multinational by their late father Gad and his brother Hans. Their mother Birgit still retains a large holding in the operation.
Miss Rausing also owns 50 per cent of the British Bloodstock Agency, which buys and sells racehorses on behalf of wealthy clients.
Wealth increase £1.408bn since 2018.
2. Jon Hunt - £1.3bn
Valued at £1.4bn, Jon Hunt stays second in the region. Having co-founded estate agent Foxtons in 1981, Hunt, 65, sold the business for £375m in 2007, a commercial success repeated last year with the sale of his Cannon Green office block netting him £120m, over four times the amount he originally paid for the property in 2014.
As well as owning a growing collection of Ferrari vehicles, Hunt recently secured planning permission for a 145-room hotel in Shoreditch through Ocubis, his London-based property investment and development company.
No wealth increase since 2018.
3. The Earl of Iveagh and the Guinness family - £973m
The Earl of Iveagh has had a good year and remains the third richest in East Anglia, up £51m this year. Iveagh, 49, who is better known as Ned, leads the Guinness family and their Burhill Group organisation, which operates 22 golf courses.
He inherited £62m of shares in Guinness, and the unpublished family stake in Diageo – the drinks company which today owns the famous stout beverage that carries the family name – is believed to be worth £310m, up 20 per cent in the past year.
Further assets add considerably to the family’s wealth, including £52.9m of assets in two UK companies, the £400m Canada-based British Pacific Properties, and the Elveden Estate, in Suffolk.
Wealth increase of £51m since 2018.
4. Douw Steyn and family - £900m
Douw Steyn’s fortune remains unchanged at £900m this year.
South African-born Steyn turned meerkats into insurance sellers through the iconic advertisements for Comparethemarket.com, the price comparison website, owned by his Peterborough-based BGL Group.
Steyn sold a 30 per cent stake in BGL for £675m in 2017.
No wealth increase since 2018.
5. Marcus Evans - £800m
The Ipswich Town owner from Bury St Edmunds is worth a whopping £800m.
In 2004 Evans made an unsuccessful £700m offer for the Daily Mirror, followed by another rejected offer of £550m in 2006.
No wealth increase since 2018.
5. David and Patricia Thompson - £800m
The couple are worth £800m.
David Thompson is the co-founder of Hillsdown Holdings, which is now known as Premier Foods - one of Britain's largest food manufacturers.
Thompson's career started at London's Smithfield Market as a food trader, before helping his father to float his meat wholesaling business. In the mid seventies, he used his knowledge of the industry to co-found Hillsdown Holdings, before selling his stake for £500m in 1989.
Now, he divides his time between North London and Newmarket, where he owns the Cheveley Park Stud.
Wealth increase of £70m since 2018.
7. Mike Lynch - £469m
The Rich List includes several Cambridge millionaires, including Mike Lynch, worth £469m.
Tech entrepreneur and Lynch is the 51st richest billionaire in the UK, according to Forbes - but is still being investigated by the US Department of Justice due to how he made his money.
Lynch sold his firm Autonomy to Hewlett Packard in 2011, but HP has since claimed he artificially inflated the company's market value prior to the sale - the firm was sold to HP for £8.bn.
The UK Serious Fraud Office dropped its inquiry into the deal back in 2015, but a legal battle is continuing stateside and the company's ex-finance director Sushovan Hussain was convicted of fraud in April 2018.
He may have gone from humble beginnings in Ilford, Essex, to heading a billion dollar company and being dubbed the "UK's answer to Bill Gates" - but controversy continues to follow him after the sale of his company.
No wealth increase since 2018.
8. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey - £390m
The Hollywood couple collectively earned £390m this year.
Their modern-day biblical drama Messiah has been picked up by Netflix.
Derry-born Downey is an actress, producer, and author who has earned multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her part in her History Channel mini-series, The Bible.
Burnett is the president of MGM Television and Digital Group, after working as a producer and author for many years.
He has won 12 Emmy Awards, five Producers Guild of America Awards, seven Critics' Choice Television Awards and six People's Choice Awards.
No wealth increase since 2018.
9. Mark Creasey - £387m
The Suffolk-born prospector and mining engineer last year declared he would shrink his Australian mining empire by a third, fed up with fighting government regulation.
Creasy, 74, made £50m tax-free from a gold claim, then gained more than £200m from the takeover of Sirius Resources and last year floated Galileo Mining, which extracts cobalt and nickel. The Australian Business Review's 2018 Rich List raised him to £387m.
Wealth increase of £32m since 2018.
10. Ray O'Rourke and family - £337m
Despite dropping one place down the East Anglia Rich List rankings to 10 this year, Ray O’Rourke saw his family’s wealth increase by £31m to stand at £337m.
The 72-year-old Co Mayo-born businessman founded construction giant Laing O’Rourke with brother Des, working on projects including the London Olympic Stadium.
Whilst the organisation made a pretax loss of £25.2m in 2017-18, O’Rourke Investment Holdings (UK) showed assets of £307.4m, a far cry from O’Rourke’s beginnings as a “pony boy” dragging carts in and out of construction tunnels during the building of London Underground’s Victoria Line in the 1960s.
Wealth increase of £31m since 2018.
11. Paul Day and Family - £325m
Former national table tennis champion and now managing director of a family-owned haulage and warehousing group, Paul Day, 60, is from Cambridge.
He and his family are worth £325m.
Wealth increase of £30m since 2018.
12. Jonathan Milner - £315m
Jonathan Milner is worth £315m, according to the Sunday Times.
Mr Milner, co-founder of Cambridge biotech supplier Abcam in 1998, jumped considerably from slot 16 in 2017 to slot 10 with an increase of £93 million.
The company was founded while he was working as a research fellow at Cambridge University, where he identified the market opportunity in supplying antibodies to support protein interaction studies. Now, the company supplies 45,000 different antibodies to 50 laboratories worldwide.
Dr Milner studied at Leicester University and the University of Bath before coming to work at Cambridge's prestigious university - proof that you don't need a degree from the highest ranking universities in order to kick start your business venture.
Abcam has recently been in the news over an aborted bid for Horizon Discovery Group.
Wealth increase of £15m since 2018.
13. James and Selina Hopkins - £293m
Entering the regional top 20 this year are James and Selina Hopkins, ranked 13 with an increase in wealth of £108m.
Hopkins, 59, owns the Suffolk-based housebuilder Hopkins Homes with his wife Selina, 45.
The firm is valued at £275m, and saw assets rise by nearly £26m to £116.1m in 2017-18.
Wealth increase of £108m since 2018.
14. Alfie Best - £285m
A similar rags-to-riches story plays out with Alfie Best, up £35m this year to £285m and 14 place in the East Anglia Rich List.
Best, 49, hails from a family of Romany Gypsy travelers and spent the first 15 years of his life living in a caravan, an experience he utilised in creating Best Holdings, Europe’s largest residential mobile home park operator.
The firm runs his Wyldecrest Parks brand, an Essex-based company owning 75 holiday and caravan parks, and reported £143.5m in net assets, up more than £100m on the previous year.
As well as his luxury mobile home parks, Best owns property across London, a 360-acre Hertfordshire farm and 11 villas in Barbados.
Wealth increase of £35m since 2018.
15. Edward Atkin and family - £267m
After selling baby-feeding business Avent for £300m in 2005 Edward Atkin, 74, has dedicated his time to his charitable foundation and to his Cambridge-based development company ARCC Innovations.
He and his family have assets totalling £267m.
No wealth increase since 2018.
16. Michael Gooch -£250m
The Wall Street broker is originally from Leigh-on-Sea. He trained as an accountant, before moving to New York where he worked for a number of major US finance companies.
In 1987, he set up the Wall Street brokerage GFI.
This year, he earned a whopping £250m.
No wealth increase since 2018.
16. Andrew Hill and family - £250m
Waltham Abbey-based Hill-holdings made record profits of £37.1m in 2016.
This year, the family saw a £55m increased to £193m.
Wealth increase of £57m since 2018.
16. Gordon Sanders and family - £250m
Also on £250m this year, the Sanders family wealth increased by £50m.
Property developer Gordon made his money from Runwood Homes.
Wealth increase of £50m since 2018.
19. Bill, Tim and Pollyanna Gredley and family - £241m
Property developer Gredley, 75, and his family own Cambridgeshire-based Unex Group. The family has horse-racing interests and other wealth.
This year, they stacked up a £241m fortune.
Wealth increase of £24m since 2018.
20. Sir Michael Marshall and family - £226m
Sir Michael Marshall is a new entry to the list, with a fortune of £226m. The Marshall empire dates back to 1909, encompassing aerospace, car dealing and property, and the family has a 77 per cent stake in the Cambridge airport-based business worth nearly £193m.
The family is led by Marshall, 87. Dividends and private interests add to the Marshalls’ fortune.
Wealth increase of £76m since 2018.
Today's top stories
