This year Sunday Times Rich List has finally been published, and as widely trailed in the UK press, the list’s top ten entries is dominated by wealthy foreigners, who may be resident in the UK partly for the huge advantages that non-domicile status gives them. Lakshmi Mittal and family top the list with £19.25 billion, almost double Roman Abramovich’s current fortune of £10.8 million which earns him second place, even after funding an expensive divorce. Property tycoon, the Duke of Westminster is third in the list with a fortune estimated at £7 billion. This year there’s more hype than usual surrounding the publication of the list. Last year the number of billionaires rose from 14 to 68 and the UK’s richest 1,000 increased their fortunes by 20 per cent to almost £360 million. The threshold for entry into the top 1,000 richest in the UK is now £70 million. The euphoria surrounding the creation of wealth is being reported everywhere. Commenting on the list, Mark Kibblewhite, head of private banking at Barclays Wealth says: “There has rarely been a better time to be living in the UK. Not only are we expected to have the highest proportion of high net worth households in the G7 in 10 years’ time, but wealth is now truly open to everyone with enterprise and endeavour the main route to riches.” “The UK is full of vibrant, dynamic and innovative individuals and the growth of wealth is testament to their astute business sense and our increasingly stimulating entrepreneurial culture. We are seeing wealth accumulation at a much earlier stage in life, and many still have a lot of earning potential ahead of them.” But what does all this mean to wealth managers? Looking at the Sunday Times Rich List Michael Maslinski, director of wealth management consultancy Maslinski & Co, told WealthBriefing that the most striking aspect of the list was the diminishing proportion of wealth that can be managed by private banks. “A large proportion of the people featured in the list are still running their own businesses,” he said. “These are people who probably don’t need investment management services, what they need is corporate finance and investment banking services.” This should be good news for the large institutions with in-house investment banking capabilities. Paradoxically, these are just the organisations that could miss out, according to Mr Maslinski. “It’s the boutique wealth managers who could take a lead in offering an integrated investment banking service for their clients. They don’t have the problems involved in passing a client from one part of a large organisation to another.” “I see a re-segmentation of the wealth management sector coming up,” he said. Although it could be argued that the UK’s investment management industry may not yet be an obvious winner from the massive increase of wealth at the top end in the UK, wealth structuring, especially the cross-border variety, trusts and philanthropy, amongst others, are all services that private banks will benefit from selling to those whose growing wealth is recorded in the list.