Sunday Times Rich List

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Since 1989 the British national Sunday newspaper The Sunday Times (sister paper to The Times) has published an annual supplement to the newspaper called the Sunday Times Rich List.

The list is based on an estimate of the minimum wealth of the richest 1,000 people or families in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as of January of that year. It is usually published in April.

The list is not limited to British citizens and it includes individuals and families born overseas but who predominantly work and/or live in Britain. This excludes some individuals with prominent financial assets in Britain such as Rupert Murdoch (owner of The Times and The Sunday Times).

The list can be searched (see[link]) at the Sunday Times website.

Criticism & evaluation

The Sunday Times website states "We measure identifiable wealth, whether land, property, racehorses, art or significant shares in publicly quoted companies. We exclude bank accounts — to which we have no access... We try to give due consideration to liabilities."

The relevant information will often not be in the public sphere, in many cases, the figures must be based on informed gossip and informed guesswork; in other cases, wild guesswork. So the figures given should not be regarded as reliable. The precision of the figures given, combined with precise ranking, gives a spurious impression of accuracy.

Thus the list at one time ranked Robert Maxwell above Rupert Murdoch, though the former was actually insolvent. JK Rowling for instance has claimed that it values her absurdly based on very big estimations of the value of rights.

Analysis of social trends based on one year's list, or based on changes in the list from one year to another is for this reason necessarily based on very insecure foundations.

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