People love a rich list. I hope it’s as an aspiration to working hard and achieving in the same way that people and families that appear in the ranks have done over the years. The fact that the Sunday Times press release the information below as an entre, encouraging you to go and buy the paper this week and gorge on the main course of those further down the list, is evidence that there’s a clear meal in it for us as the other 99%. Here’s how it goes down for the top 20 Channel Islanders this year;
| CI rank | Name | Island | 2016 wealth | Wealth increase/
decrease |
National rank |
| 1 | Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay | Brecqhou | £7bn | Up £500m | 12 |
| 2 | Sir Philip and Lady Green | Jersey | £3.22bn | Down £280m | 29 |
| 3 | Douglas and Dame Mary Perkins and family | Guernsey | £1.55bn | Up £100m | 66 |
| 4 | Steve Lansdown | Guernsey | £1.4bn | Up £107m | 75= |
| 5 | Simon Nixon | Jersey | £1.026bn | Up £81m | 113 |
| 6 | Douw Steyn and family | Guernsey | £700m | No change | 164= |
| 7 | The Clarke family | Jersey | £500m | No change | 228= |
| 8 | Tony Buckingham | Jersey | £425m | Down £50m | 268= |
| 9 | Graham Tuckwell | Jersey | £273m | Up £20m | 387 |
| 10 | Guy and Julia Hands | Guernsey | £260m | Down £5m | 403= |
| 11 | James Vernon | Jersey | £250m | No change | 418= |
| 12 | David Crossland and family | Jersey | £200m | No change | 515= |
| 13 | Derek Coates | Guernsey | £190m | No change | 557= |
| 14 | Ronnie Frost | Guernsey | £160m | Down £41m | 640= |
| 15 | Gordon Crawford | Jersey | £122m | No change | 825= |
| 16= | Brian de Zille and family | Jersey | £120m | No change | 831= |
| 16= | Con Folkes and family | Jersey | £120m | Up £18m | 831= |
| 18= | Roger Baines and family | Guernsey | £110m | No change | 885= |
| 18= | Nigel Jagger and family | Jersey | £110m | No change | 885= |
Some on the list are old, some are new. Some are soooo Money Supermarket. Largely the big hitters are familiar by name to us in the Channel Islands. What’s most galling is that those twins in Brecqhou clearly outstrip our Jersey crowd. Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay of Telegraph, Ritz and Sark news fame remain heads of the Channel Island wealth league, according to The Sunday Times Rich List 2016, published on Sunday. Valued at £7bn, they have seen their fortune rise by £500m in the past year.
The 81-year-old brothers last year sold their stake in the Maybourne Group of luxury hotels – comprising Claridge’s, the Berkeley and the Connaught in central London – in a deal that cost the Qatari purchasers £2.4bn. Based in Monaco, they own the island of Brecqhou and retain hotel interests in London through ownership of the Ritz. They also own the Telegraph Media Group, which made £54m profit last year.
In second place, Sir Philip and Lady Green are included in the Channel Island Rich List for the first time because their Taveta business, which owns Arcadia, is based in Jersey. Arcadia owns high street chains including Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton and Miss Selfridge. Green sold the struggling BHS chain for £1 last year and has offered £80m to top up its £571m pension deficit. Overall, the couple’s wealth is down £280m in the year at £3.22bn.
There are three other billionaires based on the Channel Islands, each seeing substantial gains in their fortunes in the past 12 months. Douglas and Dame Mary Perkins rank third on the islands with a fortune of £1.55bn, up £100m in the past year. The couple met at Cardiff University and later founded Specsavers. Sales exceeded £2bn for the first time in 2014-15, with earnings from Europe, Australia and New Zealand accounting for almost half the business. They live on Guernsey and their Specsavers Optical Group is based there.
Steve Lansdown’s wealth is up £107m on the year to £1.4bn. Guernsey-based Lansdown has stepped down as a non-executive director of the Bristol-based financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown, which he co-founded, but he retains a £973m stake in the business.
Simon Nixon, who co-founded Moneysupermarket.com in 1999, sold the last of his shares in the business last month. He has earned £551m from share sales since the business was floated. With properties valued at £310m and stock market investments worth £490m, Nixon has achieved billionaire status for the first time this year, valued at £1.026bn, an increase of £81m on last year. One of our newest 11k/21e’s, or whatever codeword you give those that move to Jersey having done well elsewhere, Simon runs a luxury holiday homes business called Simon Escapes and can be seen about the island being, well, pretty normal really. Having this list of folks residing in Jersey and our sister isles is great for the island and its economy. Long may they want to come and live here…
