The freshly published Sunday Times Rich List 2010 reveals that the fortunes of the super-rich have climbed dramatically. The collective wealth of Britain’s richest thousand stands at £335.5 billion showing a 30% increase on 2009, the largest in the 22 years since the List began. A paradigm case of the speed of the super-rich recovery is that of steel tycoon and rich list number one Lakshmi Mittal, whose personal wealth had slumped last year to £10.8 billion and has since more than doubled. The British rich are in fact recovering quicker than in Europe or in the world on average, and though the recovery of the rich has been emphatic, that of the wider economy has been less so. In the run-up to the general election, The Sunday Times emphasise the political significance of Britain’s super-rich, stating that ‘whatever hue of government emerges… it will lean heavily on Britain’s rich to provide the jobs of tomorrow and tax revenue needed to pare down national debt.’ An alternative list published for the first time this year is the Green Rich List. It focuses on super-rich individuals or families who have made serious investments to environmentally friendly businesses or causes - encouragingly, many of the names on the Green Rich List coincide with the mainstream List.
