Britain’s Wealthy Elite Is Very Ethnically Diverse

Britain’s Wealthy Elite Is Very Ethnically Diverse

Most people on the Sunday Times Rich List are foreign-born. Among them are three owners of companies we have been working with for years. Congratulations to Ratheesh Yoganathan (Lebara Mobile), Lord Gulam K. Noon (Royal Sweets) and Fakhruddin Suterwalla (TRS Foods).

The three companies are among our most prized clients, so it’s our pleasure to give you a brief overview of the profiles of these enterprises and their originators.

Lebara Mobile is a burgeoning company which serves four million customers and employs 1,400 in the UK. With 50 different nationalities on its payroll, it’s not only a model of reliable telecommunications, but also sets high standards for an egalitarian and broadly based workplace.

Ratheesh started it almost by chance while running the pricing department of ICS, also a telecommunications company. He partnered up with two colleagues and went into business, forming Lebara in 2001. The company is now worth £400 million and Mr Yoganathan’s personal fortune is estimated at £120 million. He plans to dedicate more time to charity work soon, dedicating fully to investing in the deprived communities of Chennai, South India.

Another remarkable presence on the Rich List is Lord Noon, who has been at the helm Royal Sweets since he was only 17, living in Mumbai. The company has since moved to the UK and is still a market leader in gourmet Indian desserts today. He has been involved in numerous ventures and has personally conducted scientific research in food manufacturing.  his career having started some very successful companies in this field.

Lord Noon is now chancellor of the University of East London and a member of the House of Lords. A revered philantropist, his fortune is estimated at £75 million.

If you have heard of TRS Foods, the importer, maker and wholesaler of UK’s finest Indian foods, you have probably heard of the Suterwalla family. The company started fifty years ago when Taherally Rehmanji Suterwalla (the initials) made it his job to supply the South Asian ex-pat community with their much-missed foods, and it’s been a household name since.

Now it handles over 900 types of products, some of them produced in-house at the TRS plant in Southall and all on distributed wholesale. The TRS family fortune is valued at £340 million, £72 million more than last year, excluding the £120 million that the company itself is worth.

If there ever was a need for another argument in favour of supporting a culturally diverse society, well, the Sunday Times Rich List has been providing it for most of the 25 years since it’s been around.

One must only take a look at the names to realise there must be a reason why Britain is home to so many world-class entrepreneurs from a wide variety of backgrounds. The wealthy have settled in the UK for its connectivity with the rest of the world, ease of doing business, strong rule of law and maybe most importantly, a tolerant, progressive society which evolved during centuries of democracy.

The socio-economic case for multiculturalism cannot be better made than by counting the jobs created by foreign nationals who decided to operate in the UK. Millions of people are employed in companies owned by wealthy foreigners across the whole spectrum of industries and services, helping Britain keep its status of top economy in all aspects of  trade.

In a climate of stagnation, recession and burdensome debt preventing the high levels of government spending we were used to, it is even more important to be able to rely on private investment. Is it any wonder then that 70 percent of Britons were found by Lord Ashcroft’s poll to not only accept that Britain has become a multicultural nation, but also welcome this development?

Here and Now 365 has always prided itself for promoting multiculturalism and celebrating the ethnic diversity of the UK.

 

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