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Sunday Times Rich List: The wealthiest on the Isle of Man

Fri, 10 May 2019

The Sunday Times Rich List 2019 has revealed the richest people and families on the Isle of Man.

Between them, they are worth more than an eye-popping £11 billion - and that's just the top 15 to feature in the annual competition.

Mark Scheinberg maintains his status as the richest person the Island.

The PokerStars entrepreneur may be top of the list, but he has seen his wealth fall for a second successive year. Scheinberg leads a list of the island’s nine richest individuals and families, who have a combined wealth of £11.676bn – the group’s wealth growing £191m (or 1.7%) from last year, despite just a third of them having experienced an increase in their net worth. 
 
The Isle of Man resident, 45, co-founded PokerStars with his father, Isai, and built it into the world's biggest online poker company, before cashing out in 2014 for £3.3bn. He is now developing Centro Cenalejas, a shopping and residential complex in Madrid, where a 200-room Four Seasons hotel is due to open later this year. Born in Israel, he grew up in Toronto and is renovating the Thompson Toronto Hotel, known for having the most glamorous rooftop bar.  
 
Property tycoon John Whittaker has experienced a frustrating year. Down £300m, he has made the biggest loss in the region according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List. Whittaker, 77, has seen a proposed £3.4bn takeover of the Intu shopping centre operation by Hammerson fall through last April, and then a second bid collapsed last November. Whittaker owns 27.32% of Intu through his Peel Holdings, which has been behind some of the Northwest’s largest infrastructure projects for nearly 50 years. His Intu stake has fallen in value by roughly half to £393.4m, but he is still worth £1.95bn.  
 
Robert Watts, the Compiler of The Sunday Times Rich List, said: “There aren’t too many islands with five billion-plus fortunes. But the Isle of Man – with its well-documented tax advantages - still draws young and older members of this gilded class to its shores. 
 
“Even the super-rich are not immune to the deadlock over Brexit, turbulence on the stock market or the cyclone of change blowing through the high street.
 
“Just three of the entries on our Isle of Man Rich List have seen their wealth rise over the past year – and four are worse off. This casts doubt on the belief that the rich only ever get richer.”
 
Second on the Isle of Man Rich List, is Alki David, a member of the Leventis family, who have gained the largest increase in wealth on the Isle of Man this year, with a £400m net gain. The Leventis family merged their Greek bottling business with Coca Cola to create Coca-Cola HBC, the largest bottler in Europe. The company is valued at £9.6bn on the London stock market and the family’s £2.241bn stake has gone up by £330m in the last year
 
Meanwhile David, 50, is searching for premises in Edinburgh to sell his SwissX cannabis oil, saying “plant medicine is revolutionary”. Fashionista Donatella Versace and rapper Snoop Dogg are some of the best-known users of the substance, which has strong anti-inflammatory benefits but crucially does not have some of the negative qualities of marijuana. The billionaire is pursuing exploits in the world of TV and film, pouring £30m into the expansion of FilmON, a provider of free internet television as well as investing in hologram cinemas, buying the rights to deceased stars such as Judy Garland.  

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