Expat Michael Hintze ranks highest but Mosman's Urs Schwarzenbach and Peppermint Grove's Mark Creasy amid the 2013 Sunday Times 1000 rich list
Expatriate Australian billionaire Michael Hintze tops the list of London's wealthy who have strong Australian links, in the latest Sunday Times 1000 Rich List.
Hintze ranks 95th with an estimated worth of £900 million. He doesn't have a home in Sydney but has been particularly active in his NSW and Queensland rural property acquisitions.
His rapidly expanded east coast farming portfolio has been deemed an investment not just looking for capital gain from the properties but seeking solid returns on production.
The London-based hedge fund founder has amassed one of Australia’s fastest-growing farm portfolios, with acquisitions totalling about 50,000 hectares since 2007.
His private pension fund, MHPF, spent about $142 million on the land and water purchases.
With an estimated worth of £850 million, Urs Schwarzenbach, the Swiss-born financier based in Britain, and his Australian wife, Francesca, rank the second highest when it comes to those with strong Austalian links in the latest Sunday Times 1000 Richest in Britain list.
Title Tattle reckons we can call them both Australian's as the Schwarzenbach's are occasional Balmoral clifftop house occupants. Title Tattle recalls they first paid $3.9 million in 1988 for their property on Mosman's millioniare's row and then $11 million for the neighbouring sandstone cottage in 2010 taking their Burran Avenue residential compound in Mosman to 2300 square metres. The Schwarzenbachs then lodged a $2.3 million demolition works project designed by architect Ian Little. They have extensive southern NSW rural interests bought by the big-spending, international polo-playing tycoon since 1987. He has spent more than $35 million in rural property, mostly between Harden and Jugiong, which includes showpiece polo-playing estate Garangula, and Redbank, the homestead briefly owned by impresario Robert Stigwood. The couple maintain Redbank, the $5.1 million Jugiong property purchased in 1999, as the pastoral company's headquarters.
Of course Redbank was held by the Osborne family for 145 years before being sold for $2.8 million in 1981 to the Stigwood, who bought the property on Rupert Murdoch's recommendation while in Australia attending the premiere of the movie Gallipoli. It sold again in 1984, and again in 1988, for $4.69 million. Redbank hosted England's Prince Harry as a jackaroo in 2003. The couple have lived at Thames Side Court at Lower Shiplake, near Henley-on-Thames outside London, for about two decades. They also own nearby Culham Court, a red-brick 1770 Georgian residence on 260 hectares, which was bought through Knight Frank in 2006 for £32.9 million via a British Virgin Islands-registered company. They also have a retreat in Marrakesh, the 19th-century Morocco palace Palais Layadi, which was built by Caid Layadi, a Northern African tribal lord. It was Schwarzenbach who called the intensive-care ambulance that saved Kerry Packer from his heart attack while playing polo in 1990. The son of a print shop owner, Schwarzenbach made his fortune from foreign exchange trading after founding his own company, Intex Exchange. Urs sat at 102 in this year's Sunday Times list, down from the 87th place last year.
The next richest we will claim actually lives in Perth's Peppermint Grove. With a £500 million net worth, Mark Creasy, the mining entrepenuer ranks 173rd on the list, rocketing up from 364th place last year. The British-born Creasy, 68, made his fortune prospecting for gold in Australia, selling a claim in the outback for £50 million in 1994. Sirius Resources, a mining company, that recently discovered nickel deposits on a site in Western Australia saw its share price more than double during two weeks in March. Creasy owns 20%. The veteran investor Mark Creasy has been climbing the ranks in Rich List as he was 680th richest person in 2006, with a then personal fortune of £85 million.
The Scottish-born engineer Bill Patterson - and co-founder of WorleyParsons who went off to run his own engineering consultancy in Sydney - ranks at 275 place, an improvement on the 327 place in last year's list. His fortune jumped £73 million to £308 million.
That high flying hedge fund guru - who took early retirement last year - Greg Coffey sits at 313 compared to 300 last year, with an unchanged £260 worth. Some of his fortune was spent late last year when the high-flying Australian finally secured his Balmoral compound, Title Tattle reported. It was sealed with the acquisition of a $3.5 million Burran Avenue holding taking his property consolidation to a four-lot 4,400 square metres that cost $17.8 million. The latest purchase added a strategic 610-square-metre holding to the hillside compound, which began with the purchase of the Merdjayoun estate in 2005.
Danny Hill sits in 368th spot. Remember him? Monaco-based ?Hill, 70, ?left Belfast for Australia after school and built a £215 million fortu?ne in property, mining and investments. He was involved in Perth record setting house deals back in the very early 1980s. As Title Tattle once noted Swan River mansion mania is not new. It was the house that theatrical entrepreneur Michael Edgley sold in Dalkeith for $2.1 million in 1979 to Japanese buyers. The Jutland Parade house sold again in 1980 for about $4 million, setting another Australian record through estate agent Willy Porteous, when bought by the mining speculator Danny Hill who at the time operated the El Caballa Blanco in the hills behind Perth. Apparently much of his wealth comes from providing ??housing in Queensland?, the list which has been going since 1989 says.
Lord Glendonbrook, formerly Sir Michael Bishop, with a current wealth of £200 million, ranks 387th. He was the chairman of BMI, the Midlands-based airline now owned by British Airways. Lufthansa took it over in 2009, paying £223 million for his stake. The Tory peer, 71, made £32 million from the 1998 flotation and 2001 sale of British Regional Airlines. Lord Glendonbrook lives in Darling Point for a substantial part of the year – indeed he just went back to the UK earlier this month having been in Sydney since late last year. Lord Glendonbrook was born in the village of Bowdon, near Manchester, and raised the only child of an Englishwoman, Lilian, and an Australian, Clive, who, as a teen, escaped an unhappy childhood in Melbourne, headed north and landed in Glendonbrook, to work on a farm. In 2010 he was appointed a peer of the realm in the UK, but with so many Bishops already in the House of Lords, he decided to take another title. His thoughts turned to the NSW Hunter Valley hamlet he first visited in 1965. He received permission to call himself Baron Glendonbrook of Bowden in the county of Chester.
In 522nd place is young gun fund manager, Hilton Nathanson the c0-founder of Marble Bar Asset Management, who sold his stake in 2007 to a Swiss bank for about $245 million. He hails from Melbourne.
Jon Aisbitt, best known for his stint at Goldman Sachs in Sydney, ranks 631st with a £125 million worth. He was really only a nominal Australian with a short stint spent on Sydney Harbour. It was 2002 when the London-bound departing Goldman Sachs co-chairman and his wife, Julie, secured $13.5 million for their Point Piper base. The Wunulla Road house was renovated before and after its $9.6 million purchase in 1999 by architect Luigi Rosselli, who appeared before a subsequent Land and Environment Court hearing to argue for its heritage listing. The house was built for the Rose family in the early 1960s by architect Adrian Snodgrass, who was influenced by the Wrightian style of the Sydney School of Architecture. Aisbitt, 56, chairs the Man hedge fund. He made £50 million from Goldman Sachs' flotation, £15 million from share sales and £55 million from investments in Ocean Rig and Redburn Partners, according to the list.
The Lonely Planet founders and philanthropists, Maureen and Tony Wheeler appear in the London list, although generally regarded to have settled in Melbourne's Hawthorn where they paid $1.47 million back in 1999. They rank 709 with a 112 worth. The Belfast-born Maureen and her husband Tony sold their Melbourne-based Lonely Planet publishing empire for £131 million. Tony and Maureen Wheeler started Lonely Planet after selling 1500 copies of their first book, Across Asia on the Cheap, which arose from their honeymoon trip.
Seumas Dawes, the London-based Australian merchant banker, who made his fortune at fund manager Ashmore group sits in equal 859th place with a £90 million worth on the Sunday Times Richest 1000 list. It reports that Dawes, 56, sold £17 million of shares and retained a stake worth £75 million in 2006. Dawes was in 821st in last year's list. Property Observer reported in February this year that Dawes had poured splurged some of his net worth in a serious Bronte acquisition. The funds manager and his wife, Rosemary initially spent $12.3 million for a large, modern three-storey residence in 2006. Unquestionably one of the most expensive coastal suburbs in Sydney's east, the Bronte property sits along the exclusive strip known as The Cutting. It was a modern five-bedroom residence on the ocean side of Bronte Road overlooking the beach and ocean. Then earlier this year the couple splashed out with the $16.5 million purchase of the neighbouring house, which they're set to bulldoze and expand their garden and garaging in grounds prepared by Formed Gardens. The new works which include gym and cabana, improve the neighbouring contemporary houses's north eastern aspect. It's only going to cost $846,000 apparently, which will take their spend to $29.6 million.
Buying only recently in Sydney, Lord Alli, sits in equal 859th place. The British media entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Baron Waheed Alli purchased an apartment in the Dominion development at Darlinghurst which is due for completion next month. He is the co-founder of Planet 24, one of Britain’s largest TV production companies, responsible for hit shows such as Survivor. Dominion – developed by Cbus Property – will consist of 108 apartments split across three buildings, each seven levels high close to Oxford Street. Property Observer reported last week that Lord Alli plans to use his interior designer, Jonathan Adler from New York, to help with the finishing touches of his fifth floor Darlinghurst apartment
Alisher Usmanov, the Russian industrialist who owns a 30% stake in Arsenal Football Club, was named Britain's wealthiest man in the Sunday Times rich list with a worth of £13.3 billion, according to the list . At 7th space were the top ranked property millionaires, the Rueben brothers who have kept a low profile since focusing their business activities on property around 2000. The cut-off wealth required to be on the list was £75 million.
Oh and other entreprenuer from our distant corner of the earth was Eric Watson, the now London-based New Zealander, who has assets in finance, property and retail in 585th place with a £137 million worth. He still owns a majority stake in NZ Warriors, the Auckland rugby league team.
