Hindujas grab top spot in The Sunday Times Rich List. Check details here
1 min read 24 May 2023, 02:35 PM ISTHindujas run a £35 billion conglomerate, up £6.528 billion on the previous year, that spans IT to Formula One and employs 250,000 people in 48 countries.
PremiumSrichand Hinduja and his family were declared the richest people in the UK by The Sunday Times Rich List only days before he breathed his last.
The 87-year-old Indian-born billionaire leader of a global business empire and the patriarch of Britain's wealthiest family, Hinduja, known by his initials S.P., died on Wednesday, his daughters confirmed. He was suffering from dementia and his family said he had "passed away peacefully this morning."
"It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of our father," Hinduja's daughters Shanu and Vinoo said in a statement.
"SP was a visionary titan of industry and business, humanitarian and philanthropist ... He touched countless lives on his path, and we are forever grateful for the time we cherished with him."
Hindujas top Sunday Times Rich List
Last week, The Sunday Times Rich List announced SP and his younger brother Gopichand as the richest people in the UK.
The family moved to Britain from Asia in the 1970s, and today runs a £35 billion conglomerate, up £6.528 billion on the previous year, that spans IT to Formula One and employs 250,000 people in 48 countries.
They bought the Whitehall block in 2014 for £350 million, and have since spent £900 million on creating the hotel and 85 homes for billionaires. The penthouse is expected to sell for about £100 million.
However, a feud overpowered the family ties for decades now.
How did the feud start?
A Sunday Times article cited, “What started as an argument about the ownership of one family asset, the Geneva- based Hinduja Bank, has become a deeply personal feud about how power, control and money should pass from one generation of the family to the next."
The tussle continued between SP and his daughters, Shanu and Vinoo, GP and the other brothers, Prakash and Ashok.
The drama festered behind the closed doors of the High Court until last year, when a judge agreed that newspapers could report on the hearings because the "truly alarming and profoundly sad" fight had gone on so long it risked the health of SP who was then estranged from GP and in hospital with dementia.
The extended family were lambasted by Mr Justice Anthony Hayden for failing to settle their differences and use their "extraordinary financial capacity" to afford SP "peace and dignity" during the final chapter of his life.
