Two British Pakistanis in list of 20 richest Asian billionaires in UK

LONDON: Two renowned British Pakistanis Sir Anwar Pervez and Lord Zameer Choudrey have been named in The Sunday Times' list of 20 richest Asians in Britain this year.

Bestway Group’s Sir Pervez and family are worth £3.102bn and at number 7 and his nephew Lord Choudrey and family are worth £1.531bn and on number 14 in the list. The family is counted among the giants of the cash and carry business across the United Kingdom.

Fourteen out of the 20 richest Asians have seen their wealth fall in the last year. Brothers Sri and Gopi Hinduja are still at the top of the Asian Rich List, along with siblings David and Simon Reuben, despite the fact that they have seen a decrease in wealth by £6bn.

Sir Pervaiz and Lord Zameer are the only two Pakistanis in the top 20 while the remaining 18 Asians are all Indian origin led by the Hinduja family who are at £16bn — down £6bn from last year.

The remaining billionaires are worth as follows:

- David and Simon Reuben, property and internet, at £16bn — down £2.664bn
- Anil Agarwal, mining, £8.5bn — down £2.07bn
- Lakshmi Mittal and family, steel, £6.781bn — down £3.888bn
- Sri Prakash Lohia, textiles and plastics, £3.605bn — down £1.797bn
- Mohsin and Zuber Issa, fuel distribution, £3.56bn — up £2.36bn
- Samuel Tak Lee and family, property, £2.85bn — down £155m
- Simon, Bobby and Robin Arora, discount stores, £2.111bn — down £149m
- Lord Paul and family, industry, £1.9bn — down £100m
- Farhad Moshiri is £1.875bn — up £300m
- Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is £1.808bn — up £119m
- Navin and Varsha Engineer are £1.8bn — up £100m
- Raj, Tony and Harpal Matharu and family are £1.3n — down £21m
- Surinder Arora and family are £1.265bn — up £136m
- Sunil Vaswani and family are £1.25bn — down £719m
- Nadhmi Auchi is £1.182bn — up £6m
- Mahmud Kamani and family are £1.031bn — down £132m
- Jasminder Singh and family are £1.015bn — down £85m

No one has lost more money from the financial impact of coronavirus than the Hinduja brothers, whose interests suffered on the Indian stock market during the coronavirus-induced crash before rallying during April. The Hinduja Group has operations in oil and gas, IT, energy, media, finance, property and healthcare.

Robert Watts, the compiler of The Sunday Times Rich List, said: “The early editions of The Sunday Times Rich List were dominated by white men sitting on wealth they had often inherited. But in recent years we have documented the explosion of wealth creation in Britain’s Asian communities.

“Many of the entrepreneurs on our Asian Rich List have some of the most inspiring stories of any of our 1,000 entries, often with humble roots and inauspicious starts to their careers. Sir Anwar Pervez once worked as a bus conductor and Surinder Arora initially served as a waiter in a hotel he now owns. Both are now billionaires. Britain will need the energy and job-creating skills of these people for our economy to recover from the damage wrought by COVID-19.

“Our Asian Rich List also includes wealthy families from the subcontinent, such as the Hindujas, Reubens and Mittals. These are people who chose to base themselves in the UK for a wide range of reasons, including the regulatory environment. COVID-19 will not destroy that appeal. We still believe the UK will continue to prove to be a magnet for the super-rich.”