by Real Business - Thursday, 30th August 2007

1.    De Leon, Russell & Parasol, Ruth    £2016m Russell De Leon and his wife Ruth Parasol (aged 40 and 39 respectively) are the husband and wife team who own 31.42% of the Gibraltar-based Internet poker site PartyGaming. Parasol studied at the University of San Francisco, going on to serve as an advisor to her father’s phone-sex-chat business. This moved on to Internet porn sites; threats of litigation prompted a switch to on-line gambling. The couple launched Starluck Casino in 1997, and together with their partners developed online casino software which enabled gamblers around the world to play one another in poker. Although 80% of the Company’s customers are based in the United States none of the Company’s operations are based there as online gambling is technically illegal. As a result, the servers and employees are based in Gibraltar, India, England and the Caribbean. PartyGaming went public on the London Stock Exchange in June 2005. Sales have increased by nearly 2000% in the last two years. De Leon, a Berkeley graduate and lawyer,  and his wife, also a lawyer, are based in Gibraltar and neither are directors of Partygaming, serving instead as consultants. Their stake is worth £1.58 billion. They sold £436m worth of shares in the float as well. In all the pair are worth £2.016 billion.

2.    Dikshit, Anurag £1704m Computer programmer Anurag Dikshit used to work for AT&T and other high tech companies. But in 1999 he was recruited by Californian businesswoman, Ruth Parasol, to write the software for a then fledgling internet poker site. PartyGaming grew and floated on the London stock market in June 2005 valued at £4.7 billion. It also showed nearly £372m profit on £601m sales in 2004. Dikshit who lives in Gibraltar where Partygaming is based, lives a low profile life. He is married to a doctor, and is said to be a vegetarian. He  graduated from the esteemed Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi. His college friend and fellow co-founder Vikrant Bhargava, is the group marketing director. Dikshit sold nearly £490m worth of shares in the float and retains a stake in Partygaming now worth £1.214 billion. He qualifies for this list as Gibraltar has the same relationship with Britain as the Channel Isles. In all we value Dikshit at £1.704 billion.

3.    Caudwell, John £1600m John Caudwell has drafted in NM Rothschild to look at the future options for his mobile phone operation. In September 2005 The Financial Times recently reported that the business could be sold or floated, but these are early days and Stoke's only billionaire bats away enquiries as to his future plans as speculation. But there is plenty to speculate about.  It was in 1970 that Caudwell took his first job as an engineering apprentice at the Michelin Tyre Company locally. He'd quit school the year before after a term of A-Levels with a burning desire to get out, on, up and rich. While waiting for his Michelin apprenticeship to start, he swept pottery floors, worked at a steel factory and as a night-club bouncer.  Eventually he became a successful car dealer but his path to serious money came through an early move into the fledgling mobile phone industry in 1987.  Today he is the biggest independent player in the European mobile phone industry. In 2005, his Caudwell Group had a record year making a £149m profit on £2.12 billion sales, far higher than the City had expected. Whatever the outcome of the Rothschild review, Caudwell is determined to build the group sales to £3 billion by 2007.  Meanwhile Caudwell has actually put another small part of the empire on the block and is looking for at last £100m for Caudwell Communications, his fixed-line phone business. In August 2003 he sold his Singlepoint customer billing operation to Vodafone for £405m. Of his remaining operations, the mobile distributor  it has been suggested that the total sale price for the group could range from £800m to £1.2 billion. We go for the upper limit after the 2005 figures, which values Caudwell's stake at around £1 billion. But adding another £600m for the Singlepoint proceeds and Caudwell's other assets, past dividends and property development activities, takes him to perhaps £1600m.

4.    Matthews, Sir Terry £1200m The flotation of Sandvine in March 2006 marked a year of frenetic stock market activity by Sir Terry Matthews, Wales's richest person. He had already floated three other high-tech companies with some success, showing that Matthews is still a top entrepreneur. But it is not just the high-tech world where Matthews is a leading player. When the Ryder Cup is played at the Celtic Manor course in Wales in 2010, a whole raft of new broadband technology will record every stroke by the players. It could hardly be any other way. Celtic Manor is owned by Matthews, who secured the Ryder Cup for Wales against stiff competition from all over Europe. Since taking an apprenticeship at the Post Office research department at 15, Matthews has had one long love affair with technology. After university in his beloved Wales, Matthews went to Canada and made his fortune, first with a telecom company called Mitel, and then more significantly with Newbridge Networks. It floated in 1989, and Matthews sold it to the French telecom giant, Alcatel, in 2000 for £4.4 billion. Matthews collected over £1 billion in Alcatel shares at the time. Those shares collapsed in value during the high-tech meltdown but should be worth around £530m now assuming he has kept the stake.  Aside from that, Matthews has sunk around £140m into creating Celtic Manor resort, and payback will come with the Ryder Cup. He also has a huge raft of investments in Britain and Canada through his Wesley Clover investment operation. He bought back a division of Mitel for £165m and has at least 20 active and ten less active investments. The recently floated stakes are now worth around £75m, with his video-surveillance company performing particularly strongly after the July 7 bombings in London. March Networks is now worth £268m, and Matthews' stake is worth £67m. We add a further £110m  for large industrial land holdings in Canada and his personal assets, taking the ebullient Matthews to £1.2 billion.

5.    Dunstone, Charles £1050m Carphone Warehouse recently announced that the number of customers hooked up to mobile phone networks had jumped 32.7%  to 2.73m in the last quarter of 2005, more than double City forecasts. It was a rare piece of good news in a retail world field with doom and gloom. The news helped West London-based Carphone Warehouse's shares rise to new highs, which is good news for co-founder Charles Dunstone. A former Uppingham public schoolboy and later mobile phone sales manager with the Japanese NEC group, Dunstone set up Carphone Warehouse in 1989 with £6,000 of his savings. He built the business until it was the largest mobile phone retailer in Europe, winning a royal warrant in December 2001. Dunstone's fortune was crystallised when Carphone Warehouse floated on the stock market in 2000.  An avid sailor with two luxury yachts, Dunstone is friends with the Prince of Wales and chairs the Prince's Trust Trading Board. However, his friends describe him as self-deprecating, with a charismatic and engaging personality, and note that he takes the London Underground to work. He recently bought a £1.3m manor house in Burnham Thorpe, the village where Nelson was born. Dunstone will not need a mortgage for the purchase. His stake has soared to £1009m in value on the back of its new broadband service and the Talk Talk fixed line operation which goes from strength to strength. He also sold £56.3m worth of shares at the float, and another £10m worth in June 2005. In all he is easily worth £1050m after-tax.

6.    Branson, Richard £1000m Virgin Group    Takeover activity has been swirling round Sir Richard Branson of late. His Virgin Mobile business is being taken over by cable operator NTL in a £920m deal. Over in Australia, where Virgin Blue, the low cost airline was taken over last year much against Branson's will, he could soon regain control of the business as the original predator is about to be swallowed. It is part and parcel of the deal-making that have characterised Britain's most admired businessman according to virtually every annual survey. Branson's empire-building since 1969 when he launched Virgin Mail Order to be followed by the first Virgin record shop in 1971 and the Virgin label in 1973. Today, the empire embraces trains, planes, mobile phones, the internet, music, wine sales, holidays to name but a few. In all there are over 200 Virgin companies, either controlled by Branson or where he has a significant stake, and they made a combine profit of around £265m on £5.8 billion sales in 2005. Some critics wonder whether Branson has spread himself to thin and claim the whole edifice will come crashing down. But Branson has thus far proved them wrong though businesses have closed: the latest being Virgin Cars which was sold to a partner early in 2006. While there are some hefty loss-makers, Branson has been able to sell stakes or entire businesses, raising around £1 billion in recent years to invest elsewhere. Two of his biggest operations, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains are both profitable. Indeed Virgin Atlantic (where he sold a 51% stake to Singapore Airlines) made a record £68m profit on £1.63 billion sales in the year to February 2005, making it one of the few European airlines to stay in the black during the recent aviation slump. The Virgin train service has recently upped its market share on the Manchester to London line from 40% to 60% following new trains and a faster service. After the 2004 float of Virgin Mobile in London, Branson will get a mix of cash and NTL shares worth around £640m when the deal is concluded. He is now looking at floating the American mobile operation. This could crystallise another £500m stake for Virgin. Branson was recently in Canada pushing the service and looking to gain 3m new subscribers there. On the aviation front, the low cost airline, Virgin Blue, has recovered from a difficult period and Branson is keen to expand when he regains control. It has been a profitable ride up until now. Having invested £4m to set it up in 2001, Virgin made £387m from share sales at the Virgin Blue float two years later. Virgin's remaining stake in the company  is now worth £258m. Branson plans to replicate Virgin Blue's success in America and he has also taken over the national airline in Nigeria. In all, with total profits of around £265m, the Virgin Group should be worth at least £2.4 billion in normal circumstances. The hefty sale proceeds over the years and the windfalls which total well over £1 billion should, however, have covered his losses on failed businesses and investments in new ones so we write that off. But we add £640m for the Virgin Mobile sale proceeds. Branson is not a one to flash his cash much on personal trinkets. A £5.3m yacht bought last Christmas was a rare indulgence. His wealth is carefully tied up in the company via overseas trusts. We add around £25m for homes, estates and the yacht, taking him to £3065m. But only around £1 billion of that is attributable to his high-tech activities (mainly Virgin Mobile proceeds) and we value him at that level for the purposes of this list.

7.    Ross, David £700m Carphone Warehouse reported strong Christmas trading with connections of new customers up nearly 33% in the final quarter of 2005. The shares surged to new highs which is good news for Carphone co-founder David Ross. A school friend at Uppingham of Charles Dunstone, the other co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, Ross gave up a job as an accountant with Arthur Andersen to help found the group in 1989 and he remains deputy chairman. Now Europe's largest mobile phone retailer, it floated on the stock market in 2000. The shares have been strong performers on the back of its sales boost, pushing up the value of Ross's stake to nearly £657m. He also sold over £39m worth of shares in the float, a further £22m early in 2004 and £10.3m in June 2005. In all Ross should be worth £700m allowing for tax.

8.    Bhargava, Vikrant £592m Vikrant Bhargava, 32, is the group marketing director of Partygaming, the quoted internet poker site which floated on the stock market in the summer of 2005 with a £4.7 billion valuation. A friend of  Anurag Dikshit, the software genius who designed the site, Bhargava is an electrical engineer from Rajasthan who confesses he has never played a hand of poker in a real casino. Yet it made his fortune: he sold £123m worth of shares in the float and retains a stake worth £468m. In all he should be worth £592m with salaries etc. Bhargava, like Dikshit, lives and works in Gibraltar where Partygaming is based. He qualifies for this list as a result.

9.    Rigby, Sir Peter £510m When HM Revenue and Customs awarded a four year computer services contract to Birmingham-based SCC in late 2005, it was proof, if that was needed, that Rigby had finally made it to the top table in the IT world. SCC, is now Europe's largest privately owned technology group, which is pushing fast into continental Europe and America. It supplies big organisations such as British Airways, Kellogg, Orange and Peugeot with IT support, from hardware and software to technical assistance. Rigby has no plans to retire yet and when he does, he plans to keep it in the family: 'I have two sons who are extremely able and competent in their own right,' he says. Rigby had planned to become a fighter pilot in the RAF, but when his father was struck down by illness, Rigby went to work instead. He became a star in the fledgling computer industry of the 1960, and with £2,000 savings launched Specialist Computers in the early 1970s. In 2004-05, the parent Specialist Computer Holdings made £7.2m profit on £2 billions ales, though a subsidiary made a much higher £20.8m profit. Rigby is a fixed-wing and helicopter pilot and has turned a life-long passion for aviation into a significant business. Patriot Aviation, based at Cranfield and Gloucester, operates flying schools, helicopter maintenance and charter operations, and is the sole UK representative for two major aviation brands - Bell Helicopters, where it sells, supports and maintains the world's most complete range of helicopters and Gulfstream, the celeb's and top business people's inter-continental business jets. His other business interests include two luxury country house hotels, Mallory Court in Warwickshire and Buckland-Tout-Saints in Devon. Mallory Court has been voted Best Small Hotel in the Midlands 2005 where it has received much interest and development around the existing country house and Michelin Star restaurant. Rigby's stake in the Specialist Computers is still worth perhaps £480m. Past dividends, salaries and his other interests should still add around £30m.

10.    Newton, Michael £500m Profits at Anglo Design Holdings fell from £23m to £16m ion sales also down £5m at £84.3m in 2004-05.  But boss Michael Newton reckons this fall is a blip and the company is on track to sales of £100m after a couple of strategic acquisitions. Newton is  the undoubted king of CCTV technology in Britain as the owner of  Cheshire-based Anglo Design. But how did a low key  Manchester University computer sciences graduate get to build a business for which he has had offers in excess of £400m?  It's a far cry from the early days when as a 22-year old graduate in 1982, Newton 'begged and borrowed' £6,000 from friends and family to start up in business with a company called Dedicated Micros, out of which Anglo Design emerged six years ago. Originally Newton produced a device which timed how long snooker players spent at the table. It was a modest success but in 1985 he turned to CCTV, inventing a multi-channel CCTV recorder which became an instant success. He leaves the cameras to others, concentrating instead on the complex software and associated hardware that streams footage from a mass of cameras onto a single recorder and screen. Newton in effect makes Big Brother work and naturally big organisation such as the US government, BP and Heathrow airport like his products. In 1997 he agreed to take 3i on board as a partner. It proved a disaster on both sides. 3i just could not work with him and Newton found the venture capital operation to be paralysed by lack of speedy decision-making. Four years after the deal was done, 3i sold its shares back to Newton for £2m having bought them for £20m. The one good move to emerge from the 3i days was that Anglo Design (then an obscure division in Dedicated Micros) was spun off and 3i had no interest in it. Newton developed it and now with Dedicated Micros back under his wing, runs both operations with the speed and ruthlessness to unsettle his competitors as befits a fan of both the blitzkrieg and a driver who takes part in the Le Mans 24 hours race. Dedicated's mechanised production lines now make Anglo's cutting edge products and its sales force sells them. In 2003-04 Dedicated Micro made a healthy £25.3m profit on £83.5m sales. Allowing for some doublecounting of shares, Newton and his family have a 58% stake. With the growth in the market, we reckon Newton's stakes in both operations together should easily be worth £500m.

11.    Cameron, Duncan £480m His mother should not be quite so angry with Duncan Cameron over quitting his degree course with six months to go. It proved a shrewd move for his wallet. He co-founded Chester-based Moneysupermarket.com, a financial services website  in 1999 with Simon Nixon (q.v.) . Unlike most of the dot.com companies of the period, it makes a profit - £15.8m on £59.6m sales in 2004. A flotation in 2004 was postponed but is now very much back on the agenda. The company is now valued at around £1 billion. Cameron, now semi-retired, remains a director and we value his 47.4% stake at £474m. Other assets including nearly £5m of dividends in 2004, should take him to £480m.

12.    Nixon, Simon £480m "Moneysupermarket.com has been one of the few real success stories of the British internet industry. It showed that in 2004 when profits soared from £8.5m to £15.8m on sales up from £38m to nearly £60m. Yet In July 2004, it quietly shelved plans for a £500m stock market float with the stock market somewhat anaemic at the time,  but these are now back on the agenda following the stunning results. For Simon Nixon, co-founder of the group, dropping out of university also proved his passport to a fortune. Becoming a financial adviser and with Duncan Cameron, then the brother of a girlfriend, he launched Mortgage 2000, providing brokers with weekly updates on all mortgages available. It evolved into a trade magazine, Broker Update. The explosive growth of the internet posed ""massive threat to our business - but also huge opportunities,"" he recalled. The partners set up their own site for surfers to compare quotes for mortgages, credit cards, personal loans and savings accounts. It proved a phenomenal success. The Chester operation sells 7,000 personal loans a day, 6,000 credit cards and more than 1,000 savings accounts as well as providing insurance quotes. Flights are also covered by sister company, travelsupermarket.com and they plan to add car hire and hotels. Nixon, recently named Entrepreneur of the Year, is pretty tight with his own money. He bakes his own bread and while he loves Ferraris, says he won't own more than one: ""I'm dead tight and I hate paying tax and insurance on two cars,"" he says. The recent price paid for the similar uSwitch business prompted Nixon to claim that Moneysupermarket.com now has a 'valuation in the region of £1 billion."" We can't argue with that. His stake is now worth £474m. We add \£6m for past dividends and other assets."

13.    Ibrahim, Dr Mo 343 "Mo Ibrahim is creating a charitable trust from his recent £364m sale proceeds of his stake in Celtel a mobile phone operation that was sold to the Kuwaiti phone company, MTC in early 2005 in a £1.7 billion deal. Despite the sale, Ibrahim has no plans to buy a yacht or plane from his windfall: ""I don't even have a small boat, I don't even have a toy boat in my bathtub. I don't have a biplane, I don't have anything. Those things are toys and I don't need them to be happy.'' So he is staying on as chairman of London-based Celtel, who  has mobile phones in his blood. Sudanese-born Ibrahim grew up in Cairo, the son of a cotton industry official. After an engineering degree, he worked in the Sudan before studying mobile communications in Britain. He joined BT in 1983 where he rose to become a technical manager at BT's Cellnet subsidiary which launched the first mobile phone network in the world. In 1989, tiring of the BT culture, he led a group of managers who invested £100,000 to start Mobile Systems International, a consulting operation.  Seven years later an American investor paid £36m for a 20% stake. In 2000, right at the height of the tech boom,  MSI was sold to Marconi for £570m. Ibrahim made at least £70m from the takeover. A separate operation dealing with mobile phones in Africa had been demerged in 1998 and Ibrahim stayed with this, now known as Celtel. With his proceeds from both sales Ibrahim should be worth £400m, but he is putting £57m of that into a new charity to help the needy in Africa. As a result we cut him back to £343m."

14.    Morrison, Jim £300m "Mobile phone designer i-mate is now based in Dubai's Internet City, having left Glasgow in 2003. The company later floated on London's AIM in September 2005 valued at £250m. The business was founded in 2002 by former BT executive Jim Morrison in the middle of an industry downturn upon leaving BT's demerged mobile arm MmO2 in late 2001. I-mates' pocket computers and so-called ""smartphones"" have large screens that allow users to send e-mails and surf web pages on the move, as well as make calls. It is among an exclusive clutch of mobile phone designers that use Microsoft's operating platform. Most of its sales are in the fast-growing Australian market and the Middle East, a region MmO2 retreated from after its demerger. A Glaswegian, Morrison is now said to be eyeing expansion into the UK and the US, where competition is fierce. In the six months to September 2005, I-mate reported a £7.1m profit on £54.7m sales. Its shares surged and it is now worth nearly £350m. Morrison's stake is valued at nearly £290m. He sold £10m worth of shares in the float and should easily be worth £300m."

15.    Wilkinson, Peter £253m Intechnology, the Harrogate-based data storage operation, is having a tough time. In August it issued a profits warning and announced a restructuring that would cut 10% of its workforce.  This was despite increasing turnover by 28% to £283.5m in 2004-05 and having invested £40m over the last five years in new services. For Peter Wilkinson, Intechnology's entrepreneurial chief executive, the problems should not hurt his pocket too much. He was the man who helped create the Freeserve internet service provider, which created a mass following for the net in Britain. That deal made him at least £40m on royalties when the service took off under its then parent, Dixons. At that stage in the late 1990s, Wilkinson was a veteran of the high tech scene in Britain. From his roots in the computer industry going back to 1984, Wilkinson launched the Planet Online Internet operation in 1995 backed by £1m of funding from Paul Sykes, (q.v.) his fellow Yorkshire tycoon. Legend has it that he sat next to Sykes at Elland Road watching Leeds United and they never looked back. In 1998 Planet Online was sold to the now ailing Energis group for £85m, and Wilkinson picked up £27.6m. Shrewdly he kept the football Internet sites which formed part of Planet Online and sold those two years later to BSkyB. The sale netted him £127m in BSkyB shares. Of the 8.6m shares he received, he 'hedged' 75% netting £77m and retains the balance, now worth nearly £12m. His main focus is now InTechnology, formed from the merger of data storage operations, STORM and VDATA, which Wilkinson had started in the early 1980s. It floated on the Aim in early 2000. After the recent profits warning, Wilkinson's stake is now worth £32m. Wilkinson has also picked up assets cheaply and investing in new projects. Perhaps the most valuable is Digital Interactive Television Group, offering a package of services to anyone wanting to set up digital TV channels from software to studio facilities where Wilkinson has put £6m of his own money. He sold the company to Yoomedia in December 2004, for £12.6m in a mix of cash and shares. In all Wilkinson's business stakes add up to around £72.4m while he has nearly £180.4m in cash, property and other assets, taking him to nearly £253m.

16.    Hood, David £235m David Hood's internet ambitions are growing. Cityvisitor, the local search directory set up by Hood and other former directors of Pace Micro, linked up with the BBC in June to provide a local business search facility on the Radio Times website.  Hood of course is best known as co-founder of  Bradford-based Pace Micro in 1982. He will not be pleased that Pace went into a loss of £8.9m in the six months to December 2005 warning that costly delays in contracts with US broadcasters could carry on into 2006. Hood may no longer be on the Pace board, but remains the largest shareholder with a stake now worth £28.5m. Hood is not putting his feet up. He has two high-profile businesses he runs from Leeds-Bradford Airport. His Multiflight air charter operation boasts a £41m Boeing BBJ2 737 jet, complete with double bedroom and shower. Hood also chairs a Leeds-based high tech company, Infoserve.com, where he has a 55% stake. It is this company which operates the online business directory www.city-visitor.com, attracting 48m hits a month,. Hood has put £2m into Infoserve. But Hood can afford it. Pace boomed in the early-1990s and floated on the stock market in 1996. Hood sold £109m worth of shares in the float and another £92.4m in 2000. In recent years Pace has issued profits warnings and the shares fell sharply, but now despite the recent loss, seems to be on the mend with business picking up in its important American market. With his sale proceeds, current investments and remaining Pace stake, Hood is easily worth £235m.

17.    Black, Andrew £230m Betfair pulled off a coup in February when Softbank, the Japanese technology group, too a stake in the internet betting exchange that valued it at £1.5 billion. Its operations are booming, having been made legal in the booming Australian market and it plans a big push into Asia. Black used to make a decent living as a professional gambler backing horses or playing bridge. But he resented the money that traditional bookmakers were making and thought that there had to be a better way of betting. It was when he met former investment banker, Ed Wray, at a 1999 garden party that he found the better way. Black described his idea for a different kind of bookmaking where punters would post bets of their own online and wait for others to take them on. Betfair was born the next year when the pair raised over £1m in venture capital funding. Based in Hammersmith, it now processes 12,000 bets a minute at different odds and in different sports in 85 countries and 11 currencies. Its site is working 24 hours a day seven days a week thanks to a £20m investment in technology and 125 IT staff. Black is reported to be mulling a flotation. In the year to April 2005, profits soared to £23.1m on £107.1m sales.  Following the Softbank deal, Black's stake is worth £225m. We add £5m for other assets etc.

18.    Wray, Ed £230m Betfair, the online betting group, has just been legalised in Australia and is set to make a big push in the booming Asian market. There is talk of a £700m flotation in the autumn. Yet it is only seven years ago that former JP Morgan investment banker, Ed Wray, met Andrew Black, a professional gambler at a garden party. Black described his idea for a different kind of bookmaking where punters would post bets of their own online and wait for others to take them on. Betfair was born the next year when the pair raised over £1m in venture capital funding. Based in Hammersmith, it now processes 12,000 bets a minute at different odds and in different sports in 85 countries and 11 currencies. Its site is working 24 hours a day seven days a week thanks to a £20m investment in technology and 125 IT staff. In the year to April 2005, profits soared to £23.1m on £107.1m sales. In February, Betfair agreed to sell a stake to Softbank, the technology group. That valued Betfair at £1.5 billion. It also puts a £225m price tag on Wray's stake. We add £5m for other assets.

19.    Emanuel, Richard £225m Richard Emanuel is rapidly expanding his Interactive Telecom Solutions business into Europe. Last year his Dutch mobile phone retail chain became the country's largest with the acquisition of rival Tell Me. It will increase the retail chain's outlets from 104 to 155, while boosting turnover to £135m. A further investment of around £2m has also been made in Fotoquick, a Stockholm-based digital photography enterprise. ITS is growing fast and in 2004-05 its profits soared to £11.2m profit on £96.5m sales. The profits rise will help lift the gloom left by the recent closure of the company's loss-making Tomo retail stores in Britain which failed to establish a foothold in a highly-competitive high street.  Now based in Monaco, Emanuel is one of Scotland's youngest entrepreneurs. In eight years from 1991 to 1999, he built DX Communications into one of the largest mobile phone retailers in Britain. He founded the Glasgow-based operation with a £3,000 overdraft and sold it to Cellnet in September 1999 for £42m. Aside from ITS, he has built up a large property portfolio including a £10m house on the Cote d'Azur. He has half a dozen property companies under the Real Corporation name worth at least £15m of net assets. More acquisitions at ITS are in the pipeline. In all, Emanuel is still easily worth £225m with personal property and other assets.

20.    Wylie, Graham £200m "Named Owner of the Year by the Horserace Writers and Photographers Association in December 2005, Graham Wylie will be disappointed that some of his 90 horses in training are injured and may not make the Cheltenham Festival (KEEP AN EYE ON THIS). In 2005 he won three races at Cheltenham and had hoped for a repeat performance. A Scotsman, Wylie can afford it even though he had no family wealth. His late father was a coal miner from Stirling, and his late mother was a seamstress from Hawick. ""They were living in Newcastle but they were proud Scots and were determined that I would be born in Scotland,"" he recalled.   He helped co-found Sage while a student at Newcastle University, and built it into a multinational software operation that supplied financial and accounting programmes. He retired in April 2003 from Sage and immediately married a local hairdresser in a ceremony where he hired Ronan Keating to sing. In October 2003 he sold a large chunk of his stake in Sage, netting £116.5m. He was left with 3% at the time but we can't find him listed as a shareholder today and assume he may have gradually sold those shares netting perhaps an additional £79m. But he did not stop his business activities, saying: ""There are only so many games of golf you can play and horses you can go and watch race.""  He started a new company, Technology Services Group, which is growing fast. In December 2005, it made its eighteenth acquisition and has a current annualised turnover of more than £44m. Wylie aims to achieve annual turnover, within the next three years, of £100m through making acquisitions and unlocking their growth potential. His other business activities include a shopping centre bought and refurbished for over £10m, a country house hotel and golf course, bought from his old university. But we raise him to £200m this year on the back of TSG's growth."

21.    Zennstrom, Niklas £200m Niklas Zennstrom is the man who most leading telecom operators fear the most. The low-key Swede, the only son of two teachers from Uppsala, studied engineering and computer science at university. After working for Tele2, a rival to the Swedish state telecom monopoly, Zennstrom and his business partner, Janus Friis, launched Kazaa in 1999, a file-sharing service that grew to be a competitor to Napster. The pair sold Kazaa and in 2002 launched Skype, the internet telephony business which now has over 54m users for its free internet phone service. In October 2005, Skype was sold to Ebay for £1.5 billion. Zennstrom and Friis are reckoned to have retained around 15% apiece, stakes worth £225m. These could rise in value to around £337m if earnout targets are met by the pair. Zennstrom is now based in London where Skype's finance and marketing team is based.

22.    Harrison, Peter & Family £195m The 120-seat Peter Harrison Planetarium and astronomy centre at Greenwich will be fully open in the Spring of 2007. It has been endowed by computer network tycoon, Peter Harrison, who is best known for his involvement in Britain's challenge for the America's Cup, yachting's top prize. He spent around £26.5m of his own money on the British GBR Challenge for the 2007 challenge, but a lack of sponsorship meant it had to be put on ice. A realistic challenge could cost £40m and Harrison needs backers to share this burden. An accountant, Harrison worked in British industry in the 1970s before buying Chernikeeff, a small computer-network-integration company in 1979 for the princely sum of £133,000. Twenty years later, Harrison sold 49.9% of the Chernikeeff equity to a South African multinational for  around £100m, and the rest to his South African partner for £200m a year later. Aside from his sailing commitments, Harrison has also built his own £8m yacht. He has a company Yacht Chartering Ltd, with £8m of net assets in 2003. He has sunk £30m into the Peter Harrison Foundation which helps disabled and disadvantaged people. While Harrison's commercial property investments have done well, the cost of the GBR Challenge, tax and his recent charitable work clip him back to perhaps £195m.

23.    Shuttleworth, Mark £170m "Having conquered space, Mark Shuttleworth now hopes to conquer mighty Microsoft. For the last two years he has been backing and developing a free software operating system for personal computers called Ubuntu,  which in both the Zulu and Xhosa languages, it means ""humanity to others."" He is spending around £6m a year developing and supporting Ubuntu which has 6m users world-wide. Shuttleworth can afford to back Ubuntu as he sold his Thawte Consulting internet security firm in 2000 for £400m. He pledge half the fortune to charity. That left £200m but he then shot to fame as the world's  second space tourist flying on a Soyuz rocket to the international space station in 2002. That cost him a further £13m. Shuttleworth is heavily involved in South African charitable work. In his native Cape Town there is a Shuttleworth-City precinct in the centre, which is an IT and e-commerce zone. His Shuttleworth Foundation is also launching Open Learning Centres in Cape schools. Shuttleworth, now based in London, can afford it. Even after his space flight, the backing for Ubuntu and his charitable donations, he is still easily worth £170m."

24.    Lynch, Dr Mike £164m In late 2005 Autonomy Corporation, the Cambridge-based software operation, bought its main American rival, Verity for £282m. The deal gives it access to the vital American market and Verity's 15,000 customers. It was a coup for Dr Mike Lynch, founder of the Cambridge-based business, and the City liked the move as Autonomy's shares rose sharply. Its software collates and categorises unstructured data, drawing on the theoretical work of Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century Presbyterian priest who has attracted a strong following from mathematicians. A Cambridge graduate and maths genius, Lynch borrowed £2,000 from billionaire Joe Lewis in 1991 to launch his own firm, Neurodynamics. Fast forward to 2000, and Autonomy floated on the London stock market roaring into the FTSE100 with a £5 billion market value. Lynch became a billionaire on paper, but the shares crashed in the high tech meltdown. They have since recovered and before the deal with Verity is complete, Autonomy is valued at £868m. Lynch's stake is now worth £107m. Lynch grew up in London's East End. His Irish parents were not well off: his father was a fireman, his mother a nurse. 'I had the sense of wanting to hide gold under the floor and support myself,' he says. 'I always had the idea that if you couldn't swim you sunk.' He certainly has gold to hide now. With share sales and property assets, he is easily worth £164m.

25.    Timpany, Allen £162m Serial entrepreneur Allen Timpany established Guestel, an Apple Computer dealer, in 1980. He sold Guestel four years later and went on to launch and sell other high-tech businesses. His best deal though was in 1989 when  he responded to an advert in the FT and bought Vanco, a then loss-making data services company for just £1.  Operating as a virtual network operator, meaning it is not itself a carrier but rather resells bandwidth and services supplied by other carriers, Middlesex-based Vanco provides communications networking services to corporate customers worldwide. The company designs, implements, and manages corporate wide area networks, with the ability to cover more than 200 countries. Customers include Avis, Ford, and Siemens. It recently bought the assets of Chicago-based network services provider Universal Access Global Holdings, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004, for around $22 million. Timpany floated Vanco on the stock market in late 2001 - the first successful float after 9/11. Its value has soared and that £1 purchase has now been turned into a stake worth over £157m. He also sold £1.9m worth of shares in September 2004. In all Timpany is easily worth £162m.

26.    Corrigan, Wilf £158m Stepping down in May 2005 from running Californian chip maker LSI Logic, Wilf Corrigan said he planned to do a world tour. But the Liverpool docker's son will not be leaving the microchip industry and is moving up to a non-executive role at LSI,  the £2.1 billion company he co-founded in 1981. It was at the age of 19 while hitchhiking across America and Canada at that Corrigan became so enamoured of the continent. When he graduated from university in London, he headed straight back across the Atlantic on graduation. He worked in the electronics industry and saved one company, Fairchild,  making about £38m from the rescue and sale of the business. LSI shares have had a good run and Corrigan's remaining stake is worth £42m. In 2005 he sold around £11m worth of shares. Previous share sales of over £67m in 2000-01 and his Fairchild proceeds should take him to £158m.

27.    Johnson, Guy £155m Mobile phone tycoon Guy Johnson may have sold his stake in the fast growing Carphone Warehouse but he remains keen on the industry as a director of the fast-growing Fone Logistics. It was in early 2004 that Johnson sold most of his stake in Carphone Warehouse, the quoted mobile phone retailer, netting £56m. A co-founder of the London-based operation in 1989 with Charles Dunstone and David Ross (both q.v.) Johnson left the business in 2001 to 'take life easier.' He initially moved to Portugal but recently returned to Britain to become involved in new business ventures such as property and Fone Logistics. His remaining stake in Carphone Warehouse has soared in value to around £110m. After-tax and allowing for other assets, Johnson should be worth £155m.

28.    Sugar, Sir Alan £154m With his trademark slogan (“You’re fired!”) on The Apprentice, and his ad for National Savings, tough-talking tycoon Alan Sugar is a bit of a national treasure – a lot more popular, anyway, than he was as the outspoken chairman of Premiership club Tottenham Hotspur in the 1990s. But the Brentwood-based tycoon is best-known for his electronics firm, Amstrad, which is odd, really, because most of his fortune is now in property. He still runs Amstrad, whose shares have had a good run in late 2005 and early 2006 and his £47m stake in Amstrad is now held via his personal Amshold Group, which also owns the £107m Viglen computer operation. But Sugar has £480m worth of real estate held either via Amshold or overseas. In addition he has £150m of cash, and personal assets including property in London, Florida and Spain, which take his wealth to £790m. For the purposes of this high tech list, we ignore his property fortune and value him on the £154m we can see in Amstrad and Viglen shares.

29.    Taylor, Neil & Family £153m "Neil Taylor is set to take delivery of his new 90 meter (297ft) yacht "" NERO "" in late summer 2006. This state of the art, classically styled vessel has been 6 years in the planning and three years in the making. The yacht will be used by Taylor as a base of operations and to cruise globally as befitting one of Europe's most eligible young men and an astute business brain. A former plastics engineer Taylor moved into computer games during the 1990 recession. At the suggestion of his father, a retired company director, he founded Game, a computer games  Taylor persuaded his two entrepreneurial brothers - Carey and Chris - to  invest in the venture. In 1998, Game floated on the stock market and the Taylors made £32.8m in the float. In 1999, Game was sold, netting Taylor £15m for his stake. Since then the Taylor brothers have been broadening their interests.  They have large property holdings in France including an 8-acre estate on the Riviera.  They also have a toy business which achieved $150m in sales.  It has the Polly Pocket brand which is licensed to Mattel and 50% owned by the family.  Perhaps the most exciting Taylor venture is an eight figure investment in a state-of-the-art shipbuilding venture in China. It is set to make substantial profits in 2005-06,  helped by the huge increase in shipbuilding demand from the oil sector and has increased net assets by around £20m over the last 12 months With gains on currency dealing, financial investments (up between 28% and 40%) and bonds, the Taylor family is now easily worth £153m."

30.    Reeves, Jonathan £150m Dorset-born Jonathan Reeves is one of the top electronics tycoons in America. In 1997, the Connecticut-based Reeves sold his first networking firm, Sahara Networks for $212m. He did not retire but went on to launch Sirocco Systems which was sold in 2000 for a stunning $2.9 billion to Sycamore Networks. Not finished he later went on in 2002 to launch Mangrove Systems, a networking equipment start-up. The name was derived from the likeness between complex networks and the roots of a mangrove tree. Aside from his shares and property, Reeves has a yacht in Florida. After allowing for re-investment of his profits and the fall in share prices after the dot.com boom, Reeves should be worth at least £150m.

31.    Hulme, Philip £144m A sharp improvement in trading at Computacenter in December 2005 scuppered plans by founders, Sir Peter Ogden and Philip Hulme, to buy out  the computer hardware and services company for around £485m. Ogden and Hulme, who met while at Harvard studying for MBA degrees, founded the Hertfordshire-based operation 24 years ago, and had planned to take it private. Computacenter had floated on the stock market in 1998 and enjoyed a spectacular run in the dot.com boom before profit warnings hammered the shares in 2004 and 2005. With the recent upturn in business, the shares have recovered slightly and Hulme and his trusts have a stake worth nearly £95m.  Hulme, a Labour donor, sold £33.5m of shares at the float but gave away the proceeds to charity. He has also been selling down his stake in recent years and we can see at least £28m of share sales  in the last two years. But he also has a £29m stake in Dealogic, a computer software operation which floated on the AIM in 2004. In all Hulme should be worth £144m with other assets and allowing for tax on his share sales.

32.    Jackson, Alan £139m Intercity Mobile can now claim to be Britain's largest independent cellular service provider with 60,000 customers. Alan Jackson set up the Birmingham-based operation in 1986. He is now non-executive chairman and employs some top managers to run the business, which concentrates on blue-chip clients. Intercity can claim to be the UK's largest independent cellular service provide. The growth in Europe began in 1994 and in 1998 the company added fixed line services to its portfolio of products. In 2004, Intercity's parent company, Giftsign, saw its profits soar from £4.8m to nearly £7m on profit on £61.1m sales. But adding part of Jackson's £1.1m salary to the bottom line would push the profit to £7.5m, and justify an £120m valuation. His other companies, including Modern Operations and  Subscriber Management Services, have around £9m of net assets and are worth that sum, to add to £120m for Giftsign. Past salaries and other assets add £10m, taking Jackson to £139m.

33.    Ogden, Sir Peter £132m A sharp improvement in trading at Computacenter in December 2005 scuppered plans by founders, Sir Peter Ogden and Philip Hulme, to buy out  the computer hardware and services company for around £485m. Ogden and Hulme, who met while at Harvard studying for MBA degrees, founded the Hertfordshire-based operation 24 years ago, and had planned to take it private. Computacenter had floated on the stock market in 1998 and enjoyed a spectacular run in the dot.com boom before profit warnings hammered the shares in 2004 and 2005. With the recent upturn in business, the shares have recovered slightly and Ogden's stake is now worth £117m.  He made £31m from share sales at the float but gave £20m to charity. He also gave £25m to fund educational programmes at schools. Ogden also has a £29 m stake in Dealogic, the quoted software company. After allowing for his charitable work, he is easily worth £132m.

34.    Coates, Peter & Denise £126m A miner's son, Potteries-based Peter Coates founded a catering company, Stadia Catering in 1968, which provided food and drink at football clubs. He later grew the business to the point where most football grounds were supplied by his business - later renamed Lindley Catering Investments. But his real route to wealth came in 1974 when he opened three bookmaking shops. He built up The Provincial Racing chain of bookmakers, which grew to 49 shops. In 2000, Coates' daughter, Denise, came up with the idea of on-line betting a Bet365 was born with an initial investment of £12m. Now a leading online bookmaking operation, it made £3.8m profit on £608m sales in 2004-05. It is valued at around £110m. Coates sold the 49-strong chain of shops in July 2005 to concentrate on the online business, netting around £40m. He was chairman of Stoke City until 1998 when he sold 66% of the club to an Icelandic consortium in a deal which kept him on the board. Recently he had been trying  to buy out the Icelandic owners in a £4m deal but pulled out of that after selling the betting shops.  A leading donor to the Labour Party, Coates has also sold other businesses, including Lindley Catering, netting over £17m. With his remaining assets in Bet365, the sale proceeds, the Coates family should easily be worth £126m after-tax.

35.    Hauser, Hermann £120m "Shares in CSR (formerly called Cambridge Silicon Radio) are now trading at four times the 2004 flotation price. Investing in the high-tech chipmaker proved an inspired bet by Hermann Hauser, known as Cambridge's very own 'king of capital.' The Austrian-based physicist will also be hoping for a similar success with Optos, which makes retinal scanners, and which floated on the stock market in early 2006 valued at £165m. Hauser, who took his PhD at Cambridge made his first £100m fortune with the Acorn personal computer company in the early 1980s. But after a downturn in the computer industry in 1984, Acorn crashed, wiping out most of Hauser's fortune. In the 1990s, though, he cannily invested £10m of his own money into various Cambridge high-tech companies. Hauser says that, when evaluating a technology start-up for investment, he rates management and leadership skills more highly than the technology being peddled. ""I once thought that if I had a better mousetrap, then the world would beat a path to my door,"" says Hauser. ""But now technology is not my first priority."" His strategy has been successful: many of Hauser's investments have come good. In 2001, for example, the sale of an internet broking business made his family trusts £47m. At the time, the Financial Times noted in an interview that Hauser's personal wealth was then 'roughly at the same level as it was during the Acorn days.' We believe that the huge returns from Hauser's Amadeus Capital Partners investment firm, along with assets including a New Zealand estate, keep his fortune at £120m."

36.    Dawes, Martin £110m Growing businesses just comes naturally to Martin Dawes, one of Britain's most successful serial entrepreneurs. His latest is Martin Dawes Systems, which offer customer management tools including billing services for fixed-line and mobile telecom carriers. It was a spin-off from an earlier Dawes venture, Martin Dawes Telecommunications which he sold in 1999 netting some £70m. The systems business is growing fast, making £1.7m profit on £10m sales in 2004. It reported strong growth for the first quarter of 2005, with profits up 100% and revenues by 50%, leading  to 40 new jobs at its Warrington base and in Ireland. Dawes also sold another operation in late 2002 called Opal Telecom to Carphone Warehouse, the mobile phone giant. He picked up £13m with further staged payments and  joined the Carphone board. When Dawes left the board in July 2005, he had 6.4m shares. We are not sure whether he still has them, but they would be worth £17.4m now. Dawes' father built a chain of TV rental shops in the 1960s and then sold then to Radio Rentals in 1969. Dawes left school at 16, with no formal qualifications, despite a public school education. He joined the family business and, with financial backing from his father, set up on his own in Stockport, renting and selling colour televisions. He later moved into mobile phones in 1985 and has never looked back. We value Martin Dawes Systems at around £60m on its growth, and Dawes has a 46% stake worth £23m. We can see another £40m of business assets owned by Dawes. Despite a loss of nearly £30m on a failed internet venture, Dawes total sale proceeds and current assets add up to £138m we reckon. Allowing for reinvested income and after-tax, he should be worth £110m.

37.    Milford Haven, The Marquess of £103m The Queen's cousin, Lord Milford Haven, was once threatened with a bankruptcy petition over an unpaid bill for a Range Rover. It was later dropped but he was reported as having to sell his family seat in 1994 to meet his debts. But the entrepreneurial peer and keen polo player, had the idea for a web site that compared utility prices. In 2000 he launched uSwitch which was sold to EW Scripps, the American media group, in March 2006 for £210m. Milford Haven's trusts received around £105m. Based in Switzerland, and allowing for any Allowing for any residual debt, the Milford Haven family should be worth £103m.

38.    Rasul, Shaf £102m Shaf Rasul runs and owns E-net Computers, which reckons to be the largest Storage  media distributor in Europe and the biggest buyers of DVD and CD-R media in the world. It has long standing partnerships with the world’s top optical media manufacturers and has recently opened a global import/export hub in duty-free Dubai as well as a new £5m distribution centre at Edinburgh airport. E-net distribute storage brands such as -  Datasafe, Datawrite, Bulkpaq, Samsung, Imation and Ridisc - sell to webstores, and to large distributors supplying the high street. Already a multinational operation, he has his sights now set on the American market. Rasul set up e-Net in 1999, on the back of his  various property interests in his native Edinburgh. In 2004-05, E-Net made £4.5m profit on £67.2m sales. It is easily worth £55m. His property interests including joint ventures add £15m , the other high tech operations (£12m) and his Dubai interests ( £20m for a company that is the mirror image of his E-Net in Scotland) take Rasul to £102m easily.

39.    Corfield, Nick £100m The astonishing rise in computer stocks in the 1990s helped Nick Corfield to make his fortune. A computer boffin, Corfield went to Cambridge and went to America to continue his studies. But before  completing his PhD at Columbia University, he set up Frame Technology in Silicon Valley. He sold the business in 1995 for £320m, netting at least £50m at the time. Corfield took his proceeds in shares of the acquiring company, Adobe Systems which later grew to become one of the leaders of the internet boom. Despite giving £1m to help fund Cambridge University's Centre for Mathematical Studies in 1996, Corfield has since kept a low profile. Blocks at the Centre for Mathematical Studies are named after him. We assume he should have made at least £100m from his deals.

40.    McCabe, Bill £100m Bill McCabe, from Belfast but based in Dublin made £47m from judicious sales of stakes in SmartForce (now Skillsoft), a Nasdaq-quoted global leader in online learning he led until 2000. He invested part of the proceeds in other emerging technology companies through Oyster Technology Investments and he is diversifying into recycling buying half of Bedminster International (Ireland) in August 2003. He reinvested the proceeds in property, buying a central London office block for €80m in March 2005. Glasgow-based LNC Properties, which is controlled by McCabe, sealed the deal for the 84,000 square foot building, marking its first investment in the City. The premises, at 16 Old Bailey in the heart of London's financial district, was acquired from German investment fund CGI. The building is let to legal firm Withers. Earlier in 2004, McCabe is thought to have paid over €30m to buy a derelict building in the centre of Manchester, as Irish investors continue to cherry-pick properties in the UK. LNC Properties, which is said to be controlled by an Isle of Man company linked to McCabe, owns properties worth over €260m and has a credit line of about €340m. The company grew out of McCabe's €117m purchase of a mixed property portfolio from Scottish Life in 1999. LNC made a £4m profit on £12.3m sales in 2003. We value McCabe at around £100m this year on the back of his successful transition into a major league property man.

41.    Worth, Julian & Marc £100m The Worth brothers, Julian and Marc, founded Worth Global Style Network in 1998. Billed as the world's first fully interactive online news and information service for the fashion and style industries, WGSN, based in Marylebone, made profits of £3.6m on £15m sales in 2004. The Worth brothers sold a stake to outside investors during the dotcom bubble for £20m bought out most minority shareholders and owned 83% of the company, which has offices in New York, Tokyo and Melbourne. In October 2005 they sold the company to media group EMAP for £140m, collecting £116m for their stake before-tax. The brothers should be worth £100m after-tax.

42.    Sharma, Rahul & Rita £98m Worldwide Journeys, the London-based travel company, had a pretty tough 2005 but owners Rahul and Rita Sharma have invested some £3m in its Bestattravel.co.uk web site, and the rewards are coming through early in 2006 with an uptick in business. Rita Sharma had long experience in the travel industry when she launched Worldwide Journeys as an upmarket bespoke travel business in 1986. Her marketing savvy was complemented by the financial skills of her husband Rahul, a chartered accountant, who left his partnership with a London accountancy firm in 1992 to join the business. In 2001 the company launched the bestattravel.co.uk, and after a slow start, the on-line operation is firing on all cylinders and complements its bespoke service. The London-based operation made £1.4m profit on £45m sales in 2004. While 2005 has been difficult, the Sharmas are looking to the long-term. The web site alone is valued at £30m, and in two to three years, the business could be sold to a trade buyer. The Sharmas have resisted City entreaties to float the business with a £60m price tag, but that figure provides a useful valuation peg for us. They own all the business. We add another £38m for properties and other assets, taking the Sharmas to £98m.

43.    Bennett, John & Richard £95m In December 2005, an American company, ADP Dealer Services acquired Berkshire-based Kerridge Group for around £170m according to the authoritative Automotive News. Kerridge provides dealer management systems and software for the motor trade and made a healthy £7.1m profit on £92.9m sales in 2004-05, so that sale price seems logical. Founded in 1976, Kerridge was 61.9% owned by the family trusts of John and Richard Bennett before the sale. Before this deal, ADP did business in 14 countries in North America and Europe. Now with Kerridge, it will do business in 41 countries on four continents. Richard Bennett stays on as Kerridge chairman. The Bennett family trusts should have made £85m from the deal after-tax.  We add another £10m for other assets including an £8.7m stake in Kerridge Properties, taking the Bennett family to £58m

44.    Cann, Anthony & Family £95m Lancashire industrialist Anthony Cann sold his two companies, Presspart and Decopart, to the Rockware Group in 1988 for around £20m. He also has other  interests including Tds Promethean (Holdings) an £80m computer peripheral company which £10.4m on £69.3m sales in 2004. The Blackburn-based operation is 97% owned by Cann family trusts. Other businesses add perhaps another £10m. Cann is also reckoned to own eastern Europe's largest maker of trouser presses. We value the Cann family at £95m after-tax. Cann was awarded the CBE in 1994 for his work in fostering training in Lancashire through the East Lancashire Enterprise & Training Council.

45.    Crawford, Gordon £95m Gordon Crawford just does not want to put his feet up. Having made £76m from the sale of the quoted London Bridge Software operation in April 2004 to the American Fair Isaac company, the former town planner is now investing in fuel cell technology and an Edinburgh-based investment firm called Revera Asset Management.. Crawford, who later moved into computers, founded the London Bridge in 1987, to develop financial programmes that help banks identify bad payers among customers with more than one account. All the major banks now use its software. In the late 1990s, the shares soared and Crawford was briefly worth £1.3 billion on paper. Share sales at the 1997 flotation and subsequently raised £33m. He used these proceeds to buy a house in America and a 6,000-acre Scottish estate. He is a director of CMR, the fuel cell company which floated on the AIM in December 2005. His stake in the £53m firm is now worth £2,2m. He has another £3m worth of stakes in other quoted companies. In all, Crawford should still be worth £95m, but will rise if the fuel cell firm powers ahead.

46.    Dick, Alan & Family £90m The hush-hush GCHQ is not the only high tech communication operation in Cheltenham. Just ask Alan Dick. In 1971 he founded Alan Dick & Co which started out erecting television antennae for the BBC. But in the 1990s the firm really took off in the mobile phone boom, which created unprecedented demand for its products. Alan Dick responded by developing a range of structures with a low impact on the environment. In the year to May 2004, the parent company, Alan Dick & Company (Holdings) made a small £332,000 loss on soaring sales of £200m. It has £44.3m net assets.  But The Mail on Su

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