16. Lord Sugar

Sugar is sweet on property

£730m

Amshold

2008: £730m (No change)

Profits soared from £16.5m to over £71m at Lord Sugar's Amshold Group in the year to June 2008.

Now a television celebrity through The Apprentice programme, which has 9m viewers, Sugar, knighted in 2000 for services to business, was recently created a peer.

Sugar, with a hugely successful business career for over 40 years, is now working for Labour with a role in fostering enterprise.

A Hackney tailor's son, he was best known until The Apprentice as the former chairman of Spurs and for starting Amstrad in 1968, which he built into a leading consumer electronics group selling phones and computers. But following the £125m sale of Amstrad in July 2007, his business activity is largely concentrated in the property field. He was prominent in football from 1991 to 2001 as chairman of Spurs but has now relinquished involvement with the club.

Sugar, 61, should have received around £36m for his Amstrad stake and £25m for his Spurs shares. He still has a stake in the £100m Viglen computer operation. But he has at least £400m worth of property held either via Amshold or overseas.

Amshold itself has £272m net assets in 2007-08, and has been a hefty investor in property around Mayfair. In addition, he has £150m of cash, and personal assets including property in London, Florida and Spain, taking Sugar to £730m.

Return to Estates Gazette Rich List 2009

Image from Rex Features