The Evening Standard City Rich list

The Evening Standard has launched the most authoritative guide to the richest players in the City. In the first part of the Top 50 countdown, the spotlight is on a rising new generation of powerful, fortysomething women.

NOW is a time of great change in the City, with technology making an even bigger impact and fresh business forces arriving, finding their feet and prospering.

The Evening Standard set out to examine who really calls the shots in 2003, who are the people to whom the adage 'money talks' applies. It's a way of taking a snapshot of the modern City: not looking at the most powerful institutions but the individuals who count, who compel others to sit up and take note, and who genuinely have made their own fortunes.

The 'genuinely' is important. The City is awash with talk of so-and-so making a killing. At bonus time, the gossip goes round of how much he (and increasingly she) has made. But proving someone actually bagged seven figures is well-nigh impossible. Employers don't want such payments discussed. If they have been made, they will be spirited offshore, away from the prying eyes of the taxman and nosy journalists. Our City Rich List is confined to 50 people whose success is transparent. They are not one-off successes. Their company reports and accounts are available at Companies House, in black and white.

If the health of the City is an indicator for the economy as a whole, then the list is a microcosm for the City in the 21st century. Decades ago, such a survey would have been dominated by aristocrats dabbling part-time in the Square Mile, by bankers and brokers with impossible double-barrelled names. And they would be men. Not any more. Traditional blue-blooded male bankers and insurers are still to the fore but have been joined by women (three make our 50) and by some professions that are still in their infancy. Hedge fund managers, private equity partners, spread betters, public relations advisers - these are the new, serious money-makers in today's City.

Chris Blackhurst, City Editor, Evening Standard

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50= Philippa Rose, 44
£20m
The Rose Partnership.

When Philippa Rose calls top bankers, it is often to get them a new job with a sixfigure salary. Her company, The Rose Partnership, based in the heart of the City, is the top headhunting operation for the very cream of the City professionals. The boom years in the City may be over but quality staff are always wanted, and that has helped keep the firm profitable. In 2001-02, profits halved to £1.4m on £9.7m sales, but that was after the highest-paid director (we presume it is Rose) took a £2.1m salary. Adding in some of that salary to the bottom line takes the profit to perhaps £3m and even today justifies a £14m valuation on the business. Rose and her family trusts have more than 85% of the shares, worth £12m. But with property and more than £11m in salaries and dividends in the past four years, we are safe to value Rose at £20m.

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50= Nicola Horlick, 42
£20m
SocGen Asset Management

After growing up in rural Cheshire, Nicola Horlick studied law at Oxford. She initially worked in her father's chemical business but in 1983 was taken on as a graduate trainee by Warburg in the City. In 1991, she joined Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, managing pension funds. She fell out with her bosses and left in 1997. She then started up Société Générale's UK operations. Her 8% was valued at £16m in 2001 but now could be worth £10m. In 2002, she received a £6m bonus. With her two homes, she is worth £20m.

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50= Richard Gower, 43
£20m
Armajaro Holdings

Richard Gower is a 49% shareholder and director of Armajaro Holdings, the London commodities trader founded by Anthony Ward (see below). Armajaro, which made £4.1m profit on £343.6m sales in 2001, will have done even better in 2002. We value Gower's stake at about £19m, adding £1m for property and other assets.

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47= Anthony Ward, 43
£21m
Armajaro Holdings

London commodities trader Armajaro Holdings was founded by Anthony 'Chocolate Fingerî Ward. A veteran of 20 years' trading, Ward was in the news in 2002 as a result of his coup in cornering the world's cocoa market. His stash of cocoa was worth £286m in September 2002 and he has been raking in huge profits as the prices have soared. We estimate the value Ward's stake in Armajaro to be around £20m, adding £1m for salaries, property and other businesses.

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47= Steve McGill, 45
£21m
Jardine Lloyd Thompson

Steve McGill has had a meteoric rise in the insurance world, taking him to the position of chief executive at Jardine Lloyd Thompson, the quoted City insurance broker. He has a £15.2m stake in the business but he has made more than £2.5m in gains on share options in the past year. His salary and dividends in 2002 reached nearly £1.5m. With his remaining share options and other assets, he should easily be worth £21m.

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47=Tim Shacklock, 46
£21m
Gleacher Shacklock

Shacklock is a big-hitting dealmaker formerly with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, which paid him a £25.8 million bonus last year. He left soon after to join US-owned corporate finance boutique Gleacher, renamed Gleacher Shacklock. Big deals he masterminded included the merger of Halifax with Bank of Scotland and the Orange float. Spent six weeks heli-skiing in the Rockies and Alps this spring, and loves classic cars. He and wife Barbara Stephenson, a deal expert at lawyers Norton Rose, are one of the City's power couples.

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44 RobertHiscox, 60
£24m
Hiscox

Robert Hiscox chairs Hiscox, the quoted Lloyd's underwriter that came to the stock market in 1997. His father was a chairman of the Lloyd's of London insurance market in the late 1960s. After public school and Cambridge, Hiscox joined Lloyd's insurer Roberts & Hiscox in 1963 and became a partner in 1970. A senior figure within Lloyd's, he also has a £14.2m stake in the Hiscox business but his two homes, his art collection and past salaries take him to £24m. Outside work, he is an avid supporter of various museums.

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43= Robin Saunders, 41
£25m
WestLB

American banker Robin Saunders is now the most powerful woman in the City. Working for WestLB, she specialises in securitisation deals for pubs, cinemas and the like. She also advises some of the richest tycoons in Britain, such as Bernie Ecclestone and Philip Green. But her high-profile work has come under scrutiny of late and WestLB has been forced to take a £1.2 billion hit for bad debts - much of it write-offs against deals brokered by Saunders.

If she parts company from WestLB, Saunders will not be a pauper. She has a stake in Green's Bhs worth at least £5m, which netted her £1.7m in dividends last year. She is also listed as the third highestearning woman in Britain, earning around £11.7m in total last year. The Financial Times recently reported that she has a stake in Swan Capital (parent to Mid Kent Water) which could soon be worth £20m. These figures are disputed, but even if it was half of that, with other stakes including one in Kyndal International, plus her Holland Park home, she must easily be worth perhaps £25m.

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43= Neil Eckert, 41
£25m
BRIT

A Benfield director until early 2000, Neil Eckert is now chief executive of BRIT, the quoted City-based insurance group. His BRIT stake is worth about £1.1m but Eckert had a small stake in Benfield at the time he left. We assume he still has those shares, which would have been worth around £20m in the recent Benfield flotation. Investments in a small property group and other stakes add another £3m. His father left £3.7m in his will when it was published last year. With past salaries, share options in BRIT, Eckert must be a £25m man.

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43= Dr Kaveh Alamouti, 49
£25m
Optimum Asset Management

Arbitrage specialist Kaveh Alamouti wrote his PhD thesis on the financial markets. He worked on complex trades for the Tokai Bank, which paid him £9m in 1992 and £14.5m in 1993. His 1994 salary fell to £2.35m. Since 1999, he has been running his own operation - Optimum Asset Management - which made a £591,000 profit on £1.1m sales in 2001-02. With his past salaries, Alamouti should easily be worth £25m, even after tax.

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40 Richard Szpiro, 58
£25m
Wintrust

Cambridge graduate Richard Szpiro is chairman and managing director of Wintrust, the niche City merchant bank. Szpiro and his family trusts have a 40%-plus stake worth over £18m. Other assets such as Clarabelle Securities, together with property should take the Szpiro family to at least £25m.