Sunday Times Rich List: Who are the UK’s wealthiest women?
The lack of women in the boy’s club of billionaires was loud and clear in the Sunday Times Rich List released, so where and who are the UK’s wealthiest women?
Bet365’s Denise Coates, who leads the online gambling company after re-mortgaging her father’s chain of betting shops to raise the cash to expand her website, has a net worth of £8.448bn.
Coates bought the domain name Bet365 in 2000 and launched the site the next year. Since then, the betting site has grown into one of the world’s largest gambling companies.
While Coates is a majority shareholder, the site brings in revenues of around $2bn a year.
Founder and chief executive of gaming platform Team17, Debbie Bestwick has climbed the ranks after a strong year for the entertainment industry.
The gaming industry, which has offered lockdown-friendly entertainment for families stuck at home, has helped Bestwick push her net worth past last years figure of £196m.
After working at a Nottingham video games shop when she was 16, Team17 was founded in 1990, as the gaming landscape was about to explode.
The company floated in 2018 when it was worth around £200m. Three years on, the platform has been valued at about £900m, with Bestwick’s share worth £200m.
Then there is London-based ex-banker Romi Savova, who left her job in investment banking in 2014 to pursue her multimillion-pound idea: to get everyone hooked up with a pension.
Financial technology firm PensionBee raked in £365m in its initial public offering (IPO) in the capital last month.
PensionBee lets its 137,000 customers manage their pensions from an app and also offers them one-to-one help from its team of so-called “BeeKeepers”. The app now controls £1.7bn worth of assets.