The UK’s super-rich have never been richer, according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List.

The top 1,000 richest people in the country now have more than £400 bn between them, it estimates – up almost £53bn in the last year.

Forty of the top 75 are foreign. Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal is top again with £27.7 bn, up £8 bn on 2007.

Times are harder for UK figures such as Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, whose fortune dropped by £400m to £2.7bn.

Sir Richard has dropped nine places in the list, down from 11^th in 2007 to 20^th.

New entries

It is the fourth year running that Lakshmi Mittal has topped the list.

Second is Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, the Russian oil and industry tycoon who saw his fortune increase from £10.8bn to £11.7bn this year.

New entries in the top include steel and mines magnate Alisher Usmanov – the largest shareholder in Arsenal football club – who comes in at five with £5.7bn.

He is followed by Ernesto and Kirsty Bertarelli: the former Miss UK winner and her husband have a £5.6 bn fortune based on pharmaceuticals.

Sunday Times Rich List editor Ian Coxon said it was the British-born billionaires, like Sir Richard Branson, who were being hardest hit by the credit crunch.

Monaco-based Sir Philip Green, 56, who with his wife Tina, 58, owns Bhs and Topshop, has seen the value of his retail fortune drop by more than 10% in a year to £4.3 bn, according to the list.

Ineos chemicals billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, 55, owner of the strike-torn Grangemouth refinery, has seen an ever bigger downturn which is attributed to higher energy costs and more competition from the Middle East.

Ratcliffe,10^th in the list last year with an estimated fortune of £3.3bn, now sits at 25^th, worth £2.3bn.

A fortune of £80m is needed to be one of Britain’s richest 1,000 people – up from £70m in 2007.

The top 1,000 richest included 762 self-made millionaires.

Philip Beresford, who has compiled the list since it was first published in 1989, said: “Until now, the 11 years of Labour government have proved a boon for the super-rich, rarely seen before in modern British history.”

“However, much of the rise in this year’s wealth can be attributed to one factor: the number of foreign rich who have made London or its environs the main home and base of operation.”

The Queen’s wealth has stayed fairly static at £320m, Mr. Coxon said – although she has been sliding slowly down the list in recent years and is this year at 264.

Meanwhile the Independent on Sunday has published its antidote to the rich list, which it calls the Happy List of 100 people who make Britain a better and a happier place to live.

These include Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, cricketer and fundraiser Ian Botham, and author and philanthropist JK Rowling.

Text 4.4 The world has two energy crises but no real answers

Gideon Rachman

Financial Times, Tuesday, July 10 2007

How very shocking! Brendan Nelson, Australia’s defence minister, has caused sharp intakes of breath by saying something that is obviously true. He remarked last week that the Middle East was “an important supplier of energy, oil in particular” and that – as a result – people “need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq”.

Mr. Nelson did not say that Iraq was a “war for oil”. He merely noted that there was a lot of the stuff sitting under the ground there – and that this mattered.

This is not news. If you look at the biggest geopolitical questions facing the world, energy is at the heart of most of them.

The world is, in fact, facing two energy crises. The first is rooted in scarcity and traditional power politics. It involves the struggle by the world’s largest and most energy-hungry economies to get hold of the natural resources they need. Just yesterday the International Energy Agency warned that the world oil market would be “extremely tight” over the next five years. Demands from China and other emerging economies are rising. But Mary Kaldor – co-author of a new book called Oil Wars (Pluto) – points out the struggle to find new oil is a familiar sort of conflict, reminiscent of the 19^th century “great game” or earlier imperial clashes.

The second energy crisis is new. It is driven by climate change. It demands international co-operation rather than competition. While the first crisis leads politicians and businessmen to search out ever more oil and gas, the second demands that they radically reduce their economies’ dependence on hydrocarbons.

Politicians find themselves pulled in two directions. Tony Blair, the former prime minister, spent much of his last few months in office trying to promote an international agreement on climate change. But he also thinks that one of his most important – if least heralded – achievements was to secure a long term deal for Britain on gas supplies from Norway.

In theory, the two energy crises could point in the same direction. The development of alternative, “clean” energies would reduce dependence on oil and gas. It is also crucial to any effort to cut emissions of carbon dioxide. The trouble is that there is little sign that alternative energy can be developed fast enough to rein in demand for oil and gas. Mr. Blair is a firm believer in the need to develop nuclear energy. But even this policy – controversial as it is – seems unlikely to fill the gap. One report published last week argued that four new nuclear reactors a month would have to be built from now to 2070 to make any difference to global carbon dioxide emissions (Too Hot to Handle? The Future of Civil Nuclear Power, Oxford Research Group).

But while the debate about global warming continues to generate more hot air than real change, the pursuit of new sources of oil and gas is now central to the foreign policies of all the world’s biggest powers.

China’s controversial foray into Africa is its first real effort to build power and influence outside Asia. The search for oil is fundamental to this policy – in particular, China’s controversial relationship with the government of Sudan. At home, China is opening a new coal-fired power station every week, to despair of global-warming activists.

Energy is also now probably the most important – and divisive – issue facing the European Union. Tensions between Poland and Germany have been raised by a Russo-German plan to build a new gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. But while the Germans are placing their bets on securing long-term supplies from Russia, some other EU countries are scrambling to diversify their sources of supply – alarmed by the prospect that Russia could threaten to turn off the gas, as it did with Ukraine in 2006. Britain has its deal with Norway. The Balts and the Finns are constructing big new nuclear power stations.

Few in Europe will be comforted to hear Alexander Medvedev of Gazprom, the giant Russian energy company, remark matter-of-factly that: “In 25 years’ time there will be only three major suppliers of natural gas – Russia, Iran and Qatar”. Meanwhile the Russian economy is growing fast and Russian foreign policy is becoming more assertive – fuelled by a booming energy industry.

The US has its own energy dilemma. It accounts for 25 per cent of the world’s oil consumption, but around 9 per cent of world oil production and 2 per cent of world oil reserves. America’s demand for hydrocarbons keeps rising and the economy is still utterly dependent on the stuff – 97 per cent of the US transport system is fuelled by oil.

The Iraq war has done nothing to ease this problem. If it was a “war for oil”, it was singularly unsuccessful. Just before the invasion, oil was trading at around $30 a barrel. Yesterday it hit an 11-month high of more than $76 a barrel.

President George W. Bush announced last year that he intended to end his nation’s “addiction to oil”. Billions are being poured into research on alternative energy.

The US government is doubtless sincere in its protestations that it means to kick the oil habit. But, like many an addict, it has said similar things before – and the addiction has only grown worse. Now the US is competing for energy supplies with new and hungry addicts. Chinese oil consumption is currently growing by more than 7 per cent a year.

Climate change has only increased the moral and strategic case for alternative energy. Speaking at the London School of Economics last week, Sir Nicholas Stern – author of an influential report on climate change – struggled to sound optimistic. He admitted that finding and deploying alternative energy fast enough to avoid climate disaster would be very difficult, but added: “It is possible. And if it’s not possible, we’re in real trouble”. I would say we’re in real trouble.

Text 4.5 World will face oil crunch ‘in five years’

IEA says supply falling faster than expected

Dependence on Opec to increase as prices rise

By Javier Blas in London

Financial Times, Tuesday, July 10 2007

The world is facing an oil supply “crunch” within five years that will force up prices to record levels and increase the west’s dependence on oil cartel Opec, the industrialized countries’ energy watchdog has warned.

In its starkest warning yet on the world’s fuel outlook, the International Energy Agency said “oil looks extremely tight in five years time” and there are “prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade”.

The IEA said that supply was falling faster than expected in mature areas, such as the North Sea or Mexico, while projects in new provinces such as the Russian Far East, faced long delays. Meanwhile consumption is accelerating on strong economic growth in emerging countries.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that supply from non-members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase at an annual pace of 1 per cent, or less than half the rate of the demand rise.

The widening gap between rising consumption and lagging non-Opec supply will force Opec to sharply increase its production in the next five years.

Lawrence Eagles, head of the IEA’s oil market division, told the Financial Times: “If we get to the point were there is insufficient supply, the only way to balance the market will be through higher prices and a drop in demand”.

The IEA Medium Term Oil Market Report came as oil is approaching last year’s record high. Brent crude oil yesterday rose 72 cents to a 11-month high of $76.34 a barrel.

Refineries are already paying record high prices as producing countries have cut the discount at which they sell their oil relative to Brent, according to an analysis by the FT. Most of the discounts had been reduced to levels not seen since 2004 and some even to six-years lows.

Oil demand will grow at an annual rate of 2.2 per cent during the next five years, up from a previous estimate of 2 per cent, to reach 95.8m barrels a day in 2012. China, the Middle East and other emerging countries will lead the increase.

Rex Tillerson, the chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, said recently that he thought non-Opec oil production was close to levelling off. He told the FT: “We still see capacity for a little more growth, but pretty modest, and then in our own energy outlook it begins to plateau. And that results then in this call on Opec”.

UK oil production is set to suffer dramatic decline from today’s 1.7m barrels a day to just 1.0m b/d in 2012, according to the IEA. The IEA estimates Opec would have to supply about 36.2 m b/d in 2012, up from today’s 31.3m b/d. That would reduce the oil cartel’s spare capacity to a “minimal level” of 1.6 per cent of global demand, down from 2.9 per cent in 2007.

Text 4.6 Starbucks warns of falling profits as US consumers tighten belts

§ Coffee firm’s shares dip 11% to four-year low

§ Chairman blames homes crisis and energy costs

Andrew Clark in New York

The Guardian, Tuesday April 24 2008

Starbucks last night warned it was facing the weakest trading environment in its 37-year history as American consumers cut back on lattes, mochas and frappuccinos. The Seattle-based coffee company’s shares dived by 11% to a four-year low of $15.90 in unofficial after-hours trading following a gloomy announcement that its profits were set to fall this year.

“The current economic environment is the weakest in our company’s history, marked by lower home values and rising costs for energy, food and other products that are directly impacting our customers,” said Starbucks’ chairman, Howard Schultz.

Analysts had expected second-quarter earnings per share to rise from 19c to 21c. But Starbucks revealed the figure was likely to fall to 15c instead. It said its like-for-like sales in the US were down in “mid single digit” percentage.

Some of the weakest performing coffee shops were in California and Florida – where the US property market has suffered a particularly heavy slump. “The wheels have really come off this train,” said Larry Miller, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

Starbucks has just relaunched to revive its fortunes, revamping its menu and introducing a new signature brew called Pike Place Roast. Under pressure from investors, the firm sacked its chief executive in January and closed about 100 underperfoming stores.

Schultz said he remained optimistic about the initiatives – although he indicated they would seek further cuts. “We are rigorously managing our expenses and seeking additional opportunities to reduce costs.”

The firm, which has 15,000outlets worldwide, made profits of $1.1bn from sales of $9.4bn last year. But it has been criticized for expanding too fast at home and becoming too like a fast-food chain.

A leaked senior management memo last year admitted the “romance and theatre” of its coffee was fading due to the overpowering smell of hot sandwiches in its stores and use of vacuum-packed granules rather than beans ground on the spot.

Onslaughts into the coffee market by Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s have further damaged Starbucks’ franchise. But so far, the company’s problems have been limited to its 10,500 outlets in America with little sign of a slowdown in the UK.

Other firms which have warned about profits as a result of contraction in spending in the US are the motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson, the motor homes maker Winnebago and the jeweller Tiffany’s. The package delivery company UPS imposed a freeze on hiring yesterday, citing an “anaemic” US economy.

Starbucks has told staff to be more chatty and introduced free wireless internet in its stores. It has struck deals to distribute CDs at its stores by artists including Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell.

Text 4.7 Russo-German gas deal irks Poland

BBC News, Sunday, 30 April 2006

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