Is it true that - Super-rich reel as fortunes cut in half

"Super-rich reel as fortunes cut in half"

Britain's super-rich have seen their fortunes collapse by half in the economic downturn, with more than £200 billion of their money just melting away.

Research for the 2009 Sunday Times Rich List, to be published in the spring, suggests that the fortunes of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the UK have fallen more than 50% from £412.8 billion in the list for 2008 to about £200 billion.

The value of some assets, including hedge funds and property firms, has been shattered by as much as 90%.

The destruction of the wealth of Britain’s richest is so great and sudden that it has been likened to the bursting of the South Sea bubble in 1720 or the depression of the early 1930s.

Those who have seen their fortunes decline most spectacularly include Lakshmi Mittal, the steel magnate who has topped the Rich List for the past four years and who, in this year’s list, had family wealth of £27.7 billion. He is now worth about £11 billion.

The mining tycoon Anil Agarwal has seen almost £1.5 billion knocked off the value of his stake in Vedanta Resources – he now has less than £1 billion.

Other significant fallers include Sir Tom Hunter, the sportswear tycoon, and Sir Stelios HajiIoannou, founder of the easyJet airline.

Read more about this at:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5404353.ece

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