7. Ian Livingstone & Richard Livingstone
£1,400m
London & Regional Group Holdings
2008: £1,880m (-£480m)
Always canny deal-makers, the Livingstone brothers sold a Moscow office investment to a Finnish investor for $185m in July 2008, a yield below 9%.
They wouldn't get that price today. Ian, 47, who began life as an optician, purchased and built up the David Clulow chain, which now owns more than 50 outlets and is overseen by the Optika Clulow Group, which he still chairs.
Younger brother Richard, 44, was a chartered surveyor for Richard Ellis and the pair formed London & Regional in the early 1990s, buying distressed assets in the midst of the commercial property crash. The brothers shun publicity but their empire stretches from Russia in the east to the Turks and Caicos Islands in the west. It includes the old Marks & Spencer headquarters on Baker Street, which they redeveloped and let to BDO Stoy Hayward and Knight Frank.
They own more than 60 hotels with around 10,000 bedrooms, more than half of Cape Town's V&A Waterfront shopping development, and a string of health clubs, including David Lloyd Leisure.
Their main company, Loopsign, which paid out a £230m dividend in 2007, actually made a £3.2m loss that year though its net assets rose to £1.6bn. But in the current climate we cut its value back to £1.1bn, adding £300m for other assets and that dividend.