BRITAIN'S super-rich have never had it so good, with the UK's top 1,000 multimillionaires adding nearly £53 billion to their collective wealth last year.
According to The Sunday Times Rich List 2008, the cash boost means they now sit on a fortune of £412.8 billion - an annual increase of nearly 15%.
The UK is now home to some 75 billionaires - up from 68 in 2007 - 40 of whom arrived from overseas to settle in the country.
Steel tycoon
Lakshmi Mittal again tops the list with a personal wealth of £27.7 billion, up more than £8 billion on last year.
It is the fourth year running in which Mittal has topped the list.
He is followed by Chelsea owner
Roman Abramovich. The Russian oil and industry tycoon saw his fortune increase from £10.8 billion to £11.7 billion this year.
A brace of new entrants figure in this year's top 10. Steel and mines magnate
Alisher Usmanov comes in at five with £5.726 billion.
One place below are
Ernesto and Kirsty Bertarelli. The former Miss UK winner and her husband sit on a fortune of £5.65 billion built on pharmaceuticals.
Fall
Among the fallers in this year's list is Virgin boss
Sir Richard Branson. The value of his transport, Internet and mobile phone empire fell by £400 million this year to £2.7 billion.
It saw him slump from 11th in 2007 to 20th in the latest report.
The owner of the strike-hit Grangemouth refinery, Ineos chemicals billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, experienced an even greater dive down the list.
Higher energy costs and more competition from the Middle East resulted in Ratcliffe falling from 10th last year to 25th.
The top 1,000 wealth creators included 762 self-made millionaires.
Wealth
Britain's super rich needed a personal wealth of more than £80 million to feature in this year's list, up from £70 million last year.
Philip Beresford, who has compiled The Sunday Times Rich List since it was first published in 1989, said: "Until now, the 11 years of Labour government have proved a boon for the super-rich, rarely seen before in modern British history.
"However, much of the rise in this year's wealth can be attributed to one factor: the number of foreign rich who have made London or its environs the main home and base of operation."
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ace, manchester (27/04/2008 at 13:13)
The Rt Hon Dr Rev MC Spanner MP QC FCA FRICS JP OK (27/04/2008 at 16:55)
The majority of the wealth has not even been made in the UK let alone had anything to do with Labour. 70% of the Top 20 were not even born here.
I am not a Labour supporter by any means and have never voted for them but up until the parsimonious gutless control-freak running the country decided to scrap the 10% tax band, Blair had done a lot for the low paid by intorducing a minimum wage and introducing working tax credits. Labours previous reign had rates of income tax at 98%, strikes galore, three day weeks and the IMF bailing out the country
No country has ever found a way of making the poor richer at the expense of the rich. You can either let the rich get richer which creates jobs, opportunities and tax income or you can try to make everybody equal as in Cuba, Albania, Communist Russia etc where the rich leave with all their money and go elsewhere and the poor just get poorer.
The politics of jealousy never win.