This billionaire businessman started out in medicine but soon moved into commerce realising that enterprise would better provide for his family. He was imprisoned on falsified charges of contract murder for 11 months in 1996. Subsequently cleared, Rybolovlev then went on to make his fortune in potassium and banking. This divorced father of two has used his fortune to fund the restoration of many of Russia’s churches and also bought Donald Trump’s former residence, The Masion de L’Amitie in Palm Beach, Florida, for $95 million in 2008. This risk taker also parted with another $88 million in December 2011 to purchase New York’s most expensive apartment for his 22-year old daughter. Rybololev’s passions are surfing and 19th and 20th century art.
Tag: United Kingdom
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Dmitry Rybolovlev
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Anouska Hempel (Lady Weinberg)
The founder of the world’s first boutique hotel moved to London in 1962 with just £10 to her name. She’s acted with Anton Rodgers in Zodiac and was in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service but it as a designer of global repute that she is best known. Married to Sir Mark Weinberg, the founder of St. James’s Place Wealth Management, Hempel was born on a boat sailing from Papua New Guinea to New Zealand. This society figure’s first hotel, Blakes, created in 1978, is the favourite of personalities such as Sharon Stone and Seal and still sets the barometer for style today. -
Bono (Paul David Hewson)
This Irishman is one of the world’s best-known philanthropic performers. Having invested £56 million in Facebook in 2009, he’s now the richest living musician. His shareholding of 2.3% in the company is now worth some £940 million. This “face of fusion philanthropy” is rarely seen in public without his trademark sunglasses and created his stage name in honour of a hearing aid shop. -
Charles Morgan
He’s a member of the family who created and still own the legendary Morgan Motor Company. He’s also worked in television news as a cameraman for ITN and is a motivational speaker specialising in change management. Morgan lists his quirk to be: “Looking English in spite of buying Italian jackets.” -
Nicholas "Nick" Witchell
This newscaster and royal correspondent reports for the BBC daily. He’s lesser known these days for having sat on a lesbian protestor who invaded his studio in 1988 and for having written a book, The Loch Ness Story, in which he declares his belief in the existence of the creature to be “quite unshakeable.” There’s more to him than meets the eye. -
Vidal Sassoon CBE (1928 – 2012)
He created the “wedge bob” hairstyle and liberated women from the “tyranny of the salon.” Four times married and a Sephardi Jew, Sassoon sold his brand in 1993 to concentrate on philanthropy. The Daily Telegraph once described him as an “anti-fascist warrior-hairdresser” and he will indeed be remembered as a man who led a revolution. -
Nancy Wake AC GM (1912 – 2011)
Churchill’s most highly decorated special agent. A resistance heroine who lived at The Stafford Hotel from 2001 to 2003 and regaled visitors with tales of her time as the legendary “White Mouse.” Her tipple of choice, gin and tonics, flowed as freely as did the stories of her time interviewing Hitler in the 1930s and 500-mile missions on bicycles.