Denise Coates cracks Sunday Time Rich List top 25

The Sunday Times published their annual rich list over the weekend, detailing the net worth of Britain’s 1000 richest individuals and families.

The top 25 makes for interesting browsing.

First observation: most of Britain’s super wealthy aren’t Brits.

The list top of the tree is dominated by Indians, Saudis, Russians, Swiss and other Europeans. Flying the flag for Queen and country are the Duke of Westminster (who didn’t exactly make his money – he just managed not to lose it, at number 5) and a handful of Sirs – the Barclay twins (12), James Dyson (17 – I do rate his vacuum cleaners) and Richard Branson (19). Oh, and there’s a new home grown entry in the top 25.

Which gets us to the second observation. Denise Coates, co-founder and majority shareholder of bet365 is now number 24 on the list, after increasing her wealth 60% from last year’s list! The Times puts her family’s net worth at £3.765 billion ($5.422 billion). A big chunk of that is hers personally – making her Britains second richest woman (The Queen isn’t number 1 by the way).

Forbes estimates her personal wealth right now to be $3.9 billion. She’s number 403 on their global rich list, with a bullet (737 a year ago).

Yep, online gambling’s been extremely good to Denise (how many of us can say that?). The rise and rise of bet365 has been one of the Internet’s mega-success tales.

Included in the Times blurb on Coates is this gem…

“…the family  sold a “small chain of pretty rubbish betting shops,” as described by Denise, to buy the Bet365 domain name for $25,000 on eBay”

The rest, as they say, is history.

I’m sad to say that I contributed at least a couple of hundred quid to Denise’s wealth rise over the last year. Planning on drastically reversing this trend over the coming year however.

Look out Denise!