Lord Lloyd-Webber may be best known as a composer, but it is the combination of hit musicals and astute business sense that has made him his fortune.

His company, the Really Useful Group, was set up in 1977, initially to control his copyrights, but the business also comprises a small music label and seven West End theatres.

Really Useful is worth an estimated £500million, out of the composer's total fortune estimated at £750million.

A private art collection - he spent £18million on a Picasso - accounts for most of the rest of his wealth. Indeed, he once said that the sole purpose in writing music was to fund the purchase of art works.

Rarely out of the papers, he has had an eventful private life, marrying three times, to Sarah Hugill, Sarah Brightman, the former Hot Gossip star, and Madeline Gurdon. He has five children, two from his first marriage and three from his last - and recently declared, after turning 60 this year, that none of his offspring would inherit the business.

He was knighted in 1992 and created a peer five years later, although the title is used only outside the music business.

Latterly, though, he has become a television star, a BBC-backed rival to Simon Cowell, hosting a string of talent shows, such as How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?

He is working on a sequel to Phantom of the Opera and hopes to bring on board Sir Tim Rice, the lyricist who worked with him on their early musicals from the 1970s such as Evita. The original Phantom has taken an estimated £1.8billion at the box office worldwide. The sequel is set in Coney Island in New York in the late 19th century, a decade after the original.

However, as the attempt to gain control, or at least a stake, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organisation demonstrates, this is not the only transfer to the Big Apple that is on Andrew Lloyd Webber's mind.