Introduction

For the past 35 years, various governments have claimed to have variations on a similar set of goals for the UK economy: decarbonise; spread more wealth and growth out of London; end the housing crisis; encourage the growth of new (and frequently greener) industries; and to encourage stronger communities. 

It’s proved seemingly impossible for the UK to achieve those goals in a sustained way. For UK citizens, this has become increasingly  frustrating, polarising, and trust in the political system is collapsing. The costs for our unequal society continue to be borne by those who can’t afford them – and the costs are still growing. Throughout this time, however, the UK’s richest have thrived. Billionaires in particular have seen their wealth soar. 

How can we explain this apparent contradiction? Looking at sources of billionaire wealth from 1990-2025, we can see an answer: the obscene growth in wealth for the UK’s richest has more to do with frustrating these goals than solving them. The UK’s economy has become incredibly specialised at finding ways to extract wealth from a process – from interfering, adding little or no value, and charging a fee. 

This has made a small number of people very, very rich by contributing almost nothing and taking increasing rents from those that do contribute. 

Overall Changes

Billionaires 

The number of billionaires in the UK has risen from 15 in 1990 to 165 in 2024. This has created not just a billionaire class, but a whole cottage industry devoted to their wealth and whims. 

This includes the Sunday Times Rich List, which has spent years celebrating the hard work and creativity of the UK’s billionaires.  Take this quote from last year’s Sunday Times article describing the rich list:

“But the Rich List still uncovers inspiring, unheralded stories of entrepreneurs building businesses and fortunes… They may not be billionaires — at least not yet. If their wealth continues to climb, many other people will benefit from their success…We need more people with the guts and gumption to start up and grow businesses that employ people by the hundred, not the handful.”

In reality, however, the UK’s billionaires are increasingly drawing vast wealth from extractive sources that have nothing to do with guts or gumption. Many of these sources are causing real harm to the UK’s communities.

In 1990, two of the UK’s billionaires drew wealth from property holdings. By 2005, that had risen to 15 and by 2025, 42. Today, more than 1 in 4 billionaires draw some or all of their wealth from property and inheritance. Similarly, more than 1 in 4 billionaires are now drawing wealth from the finance markets, indicating the growing financialisation of the UK economy. These wealth sources are fundamentally extractive, adding little real value to the UK’s society, and allow huge profits to be realised by sitting back and allowing values to rise.  

Similarly, the number of billionaires in sectors that are shedding jobs – particularly in media and oil and gas – indicates that the growth of the ultra-rich has little to do with success for the wider economy. Instead, these billionaires appear to be profiting directly from the wider sector’s struggles. 

Along with the growth in billionaire numbers, billionaires have become ludicrously more wealthy. In 2025, the two richest UK billionaires held more wealth between them than all the billionaires in the 1990 list combined.

Billionaire Wealth

Billionaire wealth has grown explosively since 1990, with an over 1000% increase in just 31 years. This has occurred alongside an increasing inequality in the UK’s overall wealth distribution. The top 50 richest families in the UK now hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population, comprising over 34 million people. 

In that time, the source of wealth has changed dramatically. Wealth from property and inheritance has soared, reflecting the UK’s never-ending housing crisis and the enormous incentive the wealthy and powerful have to prevent it being fixed. This wealth is directly drawn from increasing rents and property prices and, therefore, coming at the expense of renters, aspiring home-owners, and small businesses. 

The rise in the value of inherited wealth in particular indicates a serious structural problem with our economy. Inheritance occupies twice the share of the national economy it did in the 1980s, making up nearly 9% of UK GDP. The last time the share was that high was in the 1950s, when inheritance taxes made up around 3% of overall tax receipts. Today, inheritance tax is only 0.3% of national income.

Although high inflation over the last couple of years has weathered the edges of billionaire fortunes, billionaires have managed to keep increasing their wealth from financial sources. Finance now accounts for close to 30% of total billionaire wealth; equal to £197.6bn in 2024. This is a fourfold increase in share since 1990. 

The surge since the beginning of the cost of living crisis and the global inflation surge in 2021-22 and continuing growth shows just how much profiteering has occurred, and how much is being passed on to private wealth. This increase has come directly at the expense of the wider UK, deriving from the increased bills, rents, and mortgage payments shouldered by the rest of us.

Themes

Growth of Extractive Wealth

The UK’s billionaire wealth has become increasingly extractive over the last 35 years. More and more billionaires and their wealth come from sources that contribute nearly nothing to the economy but add growing costs to the areas of the economy that do.

Growth of Property and Inheritance

• Property and inheritance are the most passive forms of wealth accumulation; you either sit and wait for a wealthy relative to die or allow the shortage of housing and land in the UK to increase the value of your holdings and the rents you collect. 
• The growth of wealth from property and inheritance is a worrying sign in the economy, reflecting an increasing tendency to hoard wealth.
• It also creates a growing incentive not to fix the crises of housing, climate, cost of living, or inequality.

• Property and inheritance created a large amount of new billionaires between 2010-2020.
• It continued a soft upward trend through Covid. 
• Over 1 in 4 billionaires get some or all of their wealth through property and inheritance.

• The amount of wealth accrued by billionaires from property and inheritance has skyrocketed, with a particular surge during and immediately after the Covid-19 pandemic. 
• Property and inheritance bucked the trend in 2025 and rose back up to close to it’s highest-ever share of the UK’s billionaire wealth at 28.5%

Growth of Finance

• Finance has made up a growing share of UK billionaires. 
• The fourfold increase in its share from 1990 makes the dominance of finance in the UK unmistakable.
• There was a particular increase during the beginning of the cost of living crisis and the global inflation surge in 2021-22, indicating the profiteering of that area being passed on to private wealth.

• Similarly, the amount of wealth accrued from finance to billionaires dramatically increased from 2010-15.
• There has been a sharp and continuing increase in the share of billionaire wealth from finance.
• This indicates an increasing financialisation of the UK economy, as well as the resumption in risky financial practices from the financial crash. 

Oil, Gas, and Gambling

Although not a major component of the UK’s overall billionaire class or total wealth, the growth in billionaires drawing wealth from oil and gas and gambling is also indicative of an extractive economy. 

Despite declining production and the number of people employed in oil and gas in the UK falling, The number of oil and gas billionaires has been steadily increasing. This reflects an extreme concentration of wealth from oil and gas at a time when funding is desperately needed for projects trying to reduce the harm caused by the oil and gas industry to the climate.

Gambling billionaires have also thrived over the past few decades, particularly after the 2005 Gambling Act allowed aggressive and predatory new practices. This has created a surge in people suffering with gambling addictions and mental health problems related to gambling, creating a serious public health issue. NIESR estimated the financial cost of problem gambling to have reached £1.4bn each year in 2023. However, it has also created enormous wealth for a few billionaires.

Financialisation of Creative Fields

• Destruction of the media sector has created huge profits for individual billionaires. Despite the collapse of local and trade news, which was a huge public good, media tycoons have increased their wealth enormously. 
• This is reflected in a steady increase in the amount of billionaires from creative industries and the massive increase in wealth extracted from those sectors. It plainly is being extracted, since these sectors are being particularly hard hit by layoffs and closures.
• Worryingly for the sector, not only are media and creative industry billionaires extracting wealth faster than their peers, this level of wealth allows the deployment of AI and content farm techniques without risk (to fortunes).