Sri and Gopi Hinduja named UK’s richest people, with £28.5bn fortune

theguardian.com:

Sri and Gopi Hinduja have been named the UK’s richest people, with an estimated £28.5bn fortune – the largest recorded in the 34 years of publication of the Sunday Times rich list.

The brothers who run a property-to-industrial conglomerate from London saw their wealth swell by £11.5bn over the past year to put them at the top of the annual wealth ranking ahead of the inventor Sir James Dyson, who is in second place with £23bn.

Sri, 86, and Gopi, 82, Hinduja and their extended family own a wide range of industrial and financial businesses and investments based mainly in the UK, India and Switzerland. They are are currently transforming the Old War Office building in Whitehall into a Raffles hotel with 120 rooms, 11 restaurants and 85 serviced apartments.

As Britons face the biggest cost of living crisis in decades, the number of billionaires in the UK hit a record 177, up six on 2021. The combined wealth of UK billionaires hit £653bn, up £59bn or 9.4%.

“While many of us are experiencing the greatest cost of living squeeze we can remember, the super-rich have had another record year,” said Robert Watts, the compiler of the list. “This year’s Sunday Times rich list again uncovers record wealth and more billionaires than ever before.”

Julia Davies, a founding member of Patriotic Millionaires UK, a group of super-rich people calling for the introduction of a wealth tax, said the list showed an “obscene concentration of wealth while millions struggle with simply living”.

“As the Bank of England warns of apocalyptic food price rises, 2 million people are skipping meals, and a third of people can’t afford the essentials. Meanwhile, the rich, as always, are sitting pretty. This disparity has to be fixed. It is political and economic