Lady Philomena Clark and family, the single-largest shareholders of Scottish auto dealer and motor financing group Arnold Clark, have been listed among this year’s wealthiest British citizens in the Sunday Times Rich List 2022.

According to the Sunday Times Rich List, Lady Philomena Clark and family are worth £1.267 billion, up £126m from last year, placing Lady Philomena among the 10 wealthiest people in Scotland. 

In January, Lady Clark and her family, appeared in the Sunday Times Tax List, which listed them as the 18th largest taxpayer in the UK.

Following a successful 2021 trading year, as the UK’s most profitable car dealer, Arnold Clark was expecting a tax bill of £64.8m in 2021 from HMRC.

Arnold Clark is led by chief executive Eddie Hawthorne.

In 2016, the Sunday Times estimated that Sir Arnold Clark, the Scottish businessman and founder of the company, who died in April 2017, was the first car dealer in the UK to become a billionaire. Although Clark founded his business on car dealing, his wealth was also built on motor financing and leasing.  

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In the 2004 New Year’s Honours list, Clark was made a Knight Bachelor, for services to the motor industry. 

Entrepreneur Lord Edmiston, who built up the IM group of companies that imports car brands from Asia, was listed as one of the most charitable people on the 2022 Rich List, having donated 7.22% of his wealth. 

Sir James Dyson rose two places to number two on the Rich List with his £23bn wealth. The Dyson Group saw record profits in 2021, with £1.5bn in profit on £6bn of sales. Dyson once revealed that he lost £500m in developing an electric car, an abandoned project. He told the Sunday Times: “Ours is a life of risk and of failure … We try things and they fail. Life isn’t easy.”

The 2022 study found that there are 177 billionaires in the UK this year, marking an increase of six from 2021.

All of the UK billionaires combined are worth £655.122 billion – up by 9.4 per cent in the past year. The 250 richest people in the UK are worth a combined £7110.723 billion.


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