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51 David Blood £80m
age 46, Generation
American banker David Blood and former American vice- president Al Gore resisted the temptation to call their new City fund-management operation Blood‘n’Gore. Instead they called it Generation. No accounts have yet been filed for the company. But Blood used to work for Goldman Sachs and had a £50m stake at its 1999 flotation. He may have sold down his Goldman stake since leaving the bank. But we estimate the value of that asset plus past bonuses at £80m.

51 Arpad Busson £80m
age 42, EIM
Best known as the boyfriend of Aussie supermodel Elle Macpherson, Arpad Busson is also making waves running the EIM fund-of-funds hedge operation. It has about $6 billion under management. There is little visible in the British accounts of EIM (UK) which showed £427,000 profit on £5.4m turnover in 2004, and gave its highest-paid director a “miserly” £705,000. Yet Busson's wealth was put at £20m in a 1999 FT article and should have grown to at least £80m.

It would be more but for his charitable work. Busson’s wealth does allow, though, for the obligatory Notting Hill mansion and Bahamas holiday home.

51 Bob Diamond £80m
age 54, Barclays
Bob Diamond is easily the highest-paid director of a FTSE 100 company. He hails from Massachusetts but has taken out British citizenship. His first job was as a lecturer at the University of Connecticut business school. After spells with Morgan Stanley and CSFB, Diamond joined BZW, the broking arm of Barclays. When he joined the bank’s main board this year, Barclays disclosed he has so far received £49m of shares, representing half of total annual bonuses earned. After tax and spending are deducted from bonuses still owed, he has another £21m of wealth. We add £10m for property and other assets, including a Kensington town house, and reckon Diamond to be worth £80m.

51 Christopher Mills £80m
age 52, JO Hambro
Capital Management Grandson of Bertram Mills, the circus boss, Christopher Mills sits on the board of several City investment trusts and other finance groups. He runs the North Atlantic Smaller Companies Investment Trust, where he has a £21.3m stake. He also has a 36% stake in JO Hambro Capital Management, worth about £47m. He has the £3m Growth Financial Services operation, which has paid out £6.2m in directors’ fees to the Mills family since 2000. Mills was paid £4.9m in the year to January 2003, and with his other assets should be worth £80m.

51 Bernard Oppetit £80m
age 48, Centaurus Capital
Fund manager Centaurus Capital opened for business in 2000. Its owner is Frenchman Bernard Oppetit, who came from the BNP Paribas in London. By 2001, he was reported to have made millions from the takeover of Dresdner Bank by the German insurer Allianz. In 2002, Centaurus Alpha Fund managed $400m. Now it has about $2.5 billion under management. Oppetit owns all of Centaurus. Hedge-fund analysts reckon he could be worth £100m. We settle for £80m.

51 George Robinson £80m
Hugh Sloane £80m
ages 48 and 49, Sloane Robinson Investment Management
George Robinson teamed up with Hugh Sloane to launch Sloane Robinson Investment Management in 1994. It has proved to be one of the City’s most enduring hedge funds. It made a profit of £1.1m on sales of £75m in 2003-4. But that was after directors’ pay of £53m. The company should be worth £300m, valuing the 13.4% stakes held by Robinson and Sloane respectively at £40m apiece. Total directors’ pay and dividends since 1995 come to £165m. We assume Sloane and Robinson have had the lion’s share, which should add another £40m to wealth of both men.

51 Nicholas Roditi £80m
age 59, Plantation & General
Nicholas Rodditi made his name and fortune in the 1990s running hedge funds with George Soros. The American magazine Financial World reported that Roditi earned £50m in 1995 and £80m in 1996. There is no hard evidence to support this but he does have £25m of stakes in quoted companies according to the Nominus research service. One of the biggest is an £8.3m holding in Plantation & General, a group with African interests. Another is a 4% stake in upmarket online retailer Ocado. In all, Roditi must be worth £80m.

51 Michael Smith £80m
age 52, CVC Capital Partners
Michael Smith is the senior figure at CVC, the European private-equity group bought out from Citigroup in the 1990s. It owns or has owned large stakes in such household names as Kwik-Fit and the AA. CVC’s three leveraged-buyout funds, managing £4.5 billion of investors’ capital, have generated top quartile returns since 1996. The funds have yet to generate cash-in-hand bonuses for the firm’s principals. But when the bonuses come, based on current performance, Smith’s payout as chairman could be £80m.

60 Christopher Hohn £75m
age 38, The Children’s Investment Fund Management
Christopher Hohn runs the London hedge fund Children’s Investment Fund Management. It donates a portion of its profits to the New York based Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a charity run by Hohn’s wife. In the 17 months to August 2004 Children’s Investment Fund Management Ltd (owned by a Cayman Isles parent) made a £2.8m profit on £4m sales. The separate Children’s Investment Fund Management (UK) LLP made £2.9m profit on £3.9m sales. There may be some overlap here, and the charitable donations will have cut into any profit. But the value of his company and previous salaries at the American hedge-fund operation Perry Capital should have netted him a £75m fortune.

61 David Kyte £75m
age 46, Kyte Group
David Kyte owns 64% of the financial futures trading business Kyte Group. In 2002-03 it made a profit of £4.5m on sales of £36.3m, and we value it at £80m. Kyte’s stake should be worth £51m. Assuming Kyte is the highest-paid director, he has had £8.7m of salary between 1996 and 2002. With property firm stakes added in, Kyte is worth £75m.

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