Want to be a billionaire? Then move to Liverpool

IN Great Britain 2015,  the best way to get rich is to “open a shop, gamble, get married to or divorce a gazillionaire, or move to Liverpool — ideally all four”. 

That’s according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List which reveals that outside London (which has 80) Liverpool has more billionaires than any other British city.

The stack-em-high-and-flog-em-cheap approach has once again paid hefty dividends for three of the five billionaires in the list whose businesses are Liverpool based.

Home Bargains' Tom Morris and family are now worth £2.25bn, up £200m on last year. Morris, 61, founded Home & Bargain 40 years ago with a shop in Prescot Road, Old Swan. It now has more than 300 branches and in 2013-14 it recorded profits of £124.7m.

Meanwhile brothers Simon, Bobby and Robin Arora rise 10 places, thanks to the success of their discount stores, B&M Bargains. They are worth a cool £1.75bn, up £350m - the biggest year-on gain after the business was floated on the stock market last year. Aged just 30, Robin Arora tops the Young Rich List.

John Hargreaves and family just scrape into Billionaire's Row with their wealth of £1,000m. A former Liverpool market trader, Hargreaves, 71, built the Matalan discount clothing chain. His daughter, Maxine Hargreaves-Adams, dabbles in the higher end of fashion, saving Fenn Wright Manson and clothing label Nicole Farhi. Father and daughter live in Monaco whiiekl Hargreaves' son, Jason, is Matalan's chief executive.

The remaining two Liverpool billionaires are Lord Grantchester and the Moores family who owe their £1bn fortune to their former involvement in Littlewoods retail and football pools.

And although based in London, the continuing (£6.5bn) wealth of the 80-year old Barclay twins, Sir David and Sir Frederick, nowadays depends on Liverpool. Their Shop Direct online retailer, which includes Littlewoods, Very, and their Yodel delivery operation, are headquartered in Speke.

Elsewhere in the North West, The Duke of Westminster, whose Grosvenor company owns Liverpool ONE, is the richest person in the region.

Ding Dong: John Whittaker of Peel Holdings

The Grosvenor Estate is based at the family seat, Eaton Hall, near Chester, but derives most of its value from its 300 acres in west London, centred on Belgravia and Mayfair - quite probably where some of London's 80 billionaires are sitting on empty properties.

Grosvenor reported profits of £507m in 2013 on its net assets of £3.45bn. The 63-year-old Duke’s overall wealth rises £60m this year to stand at £8.56bn, putting him among the 10 richest nationally.

Peel Holdings supremo John Whittaker, 73, is the runner up to the Duke in the North West, seeing a £70m gain in his family’s fortune. In Liverpool the firm owns John Lennon Airport and the Port of Liverpool including Liverpool2, the £300m deep water container port due to open this year - a joint venture between Peel and Deutsche Bank. Then there's the Trafford Centre, Media City, Pinewood Studios etc.

A new entry to the region’s exclusive club of billionaires are brothers Fred and Peter Done, the men behind the Betfred bookmaking chain. Fred, 72 and Peter, 68, started out with a single betting shop in Salford in 1967. Now they are worth £1bn - proving that gambling is not always a mug's game.