14. Gerald Hines
£800m
Hines Europe
2008: £1000m (-£200m)
American developer Gerald Hines, 83, has survived at least five recessions to grow one of the largest property operations in the world.
The current climate is inevitably causing the company some local difficulties. In San Francisco, for example, Hines and an investment partner handed an office block back to their lenders earlier this year after the anchor tenant went bust.
Hines must be glad that a few close calls in the 1970s led him to adopt the model that the company uses today - instead of taking all the risk itself, it shares the ownership of its investments and developments with institutional partners.
The son of a steelworker and a school teacher from Gary, Indiana, Hines also hedged his risk by spearheading a global expansion.
Hines has built up a network of offices in 16 countries and developed 247m sq ft of property worldwide since the company was founded in 1957. Today, it has more than 71m sq ft under development around the world and controls assets valued at around £15bn. The group manages a total of 120m sq ft, around half of which is Hines-owned, and half is on behalf of third parties. The third-party managed portfolio is valued at around £8.6bn.
For the past 10 years Hines has been based in Mayfair and the company has become active in Britain. European investments could feature in a recently announced opportunity fund.
In 2000, a Forbes analysis suggested that Hines was worth around £1bn, and possibly a lot more. In the current climate we clip that figure back to £800m.