The Billionaire Wealth Boom: From Forbes’ Rich List to Britain’s Invisible Elite

Are you better off than this time last year? The billionaire class certainly is. Forbes just dropped its new World’s Billionaires list, and the numbers are staggering.

There are now 3,428 billionaires, that’s 400 more than last year, and together they control a record $20 trillion in wealth. Put into context, the United States Federal government spent $7 trillion in 2025, while the UK government is projected to spend $1.8 trillion.

In the last year the average billionaire added $500 million to their fortune, bringing the typical wealth of a billionaire to $5.8 billion. To match the wealth billionaires gained this year alone the average UK worker would have to work (and set aside every penny) for 9,545 years. It would take 110,762 years to catch up to their total wealth. 

At the top sit six tech barons from the United States; Musk, Page, Brin, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Ellison, whose combined wealth exceeds the UK government’s entire annual budget. You might think they’d be at the bottom of the list for government handouts. You’d be wrong. The Spring Statement quietly revealed that the global tax deal agreed last year will let US multinationals off £1.2 billion in UK taxes every year to the end of this Parliament.

The Hidden British Elite

But while the top six billionaires are household names, you’ve probably never heard of the richest Brit on the list. Michael Platt, the hedge‑fund boss behind BlueCrest Capital Management, is the perfect embodiment of the LSE’s new research into the UK’s economic elite: powerful, wealthy… and practically invisible.

Platt is typical of the half of the UK’s economic elite who receive almost no media attention at all. In fact, Business Plus described Platt as “the man so secretive his receptionist hasn’t even heard of him,” and pointed out that his multibillion business’s website has nothing but an “under construction” holding page (this is still the case 2 years on). The rich are of course entitled to the same privacy as the rest of us, but at this level of wealth, privacy often shades into secrecy. And secrecy matters because it shields how money moves, how influence is wielded, and how taxes are dodged. 

Michael Platt has situated his company in Guernsey, a secretive tax haven. And Platt himself has a penthouse in Chelsea, but splits his time between homes in different countries, conveniently granting him tax residency since 2010 first in Geneva, then Jersey

According to the LSE’s new analysis, most of the UK’s 500 most economically powerful individuals operate in similar obscurity. Some names are of course more familiar — Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Richard Branson, James Dyson, Bernie Ecclestone, James Ratcliffe (who popped up a couple weeks ago in the news) — but most are not. And whilst many of these people are unknown to the public, we know they often have access or intimate connections to government, policy and decision makers.

Where does Billionaire wealth come from?

This hidden elite sits atop a UK wealth boom that has left most people behind. Individual’s wealth has grown from three times national income in the 1980s to nearly eight times national income today. This is driven not by productive investment but by soaring asset prices, capitalised on by the financier class, people like Micheal Platt, who get rich from owning things, managing investments and speculating on assets.  

The top 10% now own half of all UK wealth, and on current trends the top 200 will have more money than the government by 2035. Meanwhile, most households have little or no assets, and rising house prices translate directly into unaffordable rents and mortgages. Our tax system makes it worse: it leans heavily on wages and consumption, while income from wealth is taxed lightly, or not at all.

Why is the system set up like this? Because the wealthy — whether broadcasting their divisive views or luxuriating in the shadows — wield enormous power. Big money politics has been a degrading feature of US politics for decades. And as we revealed last week, the picture in the UK is looking increasingly similar, with a tiny handful of wealthy individuals making mega-donations. Since then, Reform UK alone has taken another £3 million.

Ultimately, all these stories point to the same truth: a tiny elite hold vast economic power and are converting it into political influence at everyone else’s expense. But whilst billionaires can buy power, the rest of us have to build it. So thanks for building with us.