My investment secret: be as boring as you can

Have a read of the following list and see if you can guess its significance: lubricants, iron ore, steel, oil, pharmaceuticals, ships, telecoms, food packaging, oil, property. With the exception of telecoms and property, and perhaps pharmaceuticals, are they just boring, old, dirty industries which are part of Britain’s industrial heritage but play a declining part in our dynamic, 21st-century service-based economy?

In fact they are, in order, the principal business interests of the British residents who occupied the top ten places in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List. It is little surprise that there is only one representative from the aristrocacy: the Duke of Westminster, at number ten. But what is remarkable is the almost complete absence of people who made money in the ‘new economy’ — internet, social media or service industries. Even David and Simon Reuben, whose position at seventh in the list is largely thanks to the sale of a telecoms data business last year, made their first billion in aluminium.

Here is a paradox. While the UK economy has done well out of a switch towards a service economy, when it comes to making a multibillion-pound fortune there is nothing like a big old dirty industry. You might object that some on the list are elderly and that their wealth represents success in businesses established decades ago. Yet the fastest-rising fortune on the Sunday Times list, too, comes from just about the biggest, dirtiest old industry of them all: Jim Ratcliffe, owner of the Grangemouth oil refinery, rose from number 84 to number 26 last year.

As for service industries, the highest representative is Sir Philip Green at number 21. The highest representative from the entertainment business is Sir Richard Branson at number 23 and the biggest sporting fortune is Bernie Ecclestone at 29.