My investment secret: be as boring as you can

Have a read of the following list and see if you can guess its significance: lubricants, iron ore, steel, oil, pharmaceuticals, ships, telecoms, food packaging, oil, property. With the exception of telecoms and property, and perhaps pharmaceuticals, are they just boring, old, dirty industries which are part of Britain’s industrial heritage but play a declining part in our dynamic, 21st-century service-based economy?

In fact they are, in order, the principal business interests of the British residents who occupied the top ten places in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List. It is little surprise that there is only one representative from the aristrocacy: the Duke of Westminster, at number ten. But what is remarkable is the almost complete absence of people who made money in the ‘new economy’ — internet, social media or service industries. Even David and Simon Reuben, whose position at seventh in the list is largely thanks to the sale of a telecoms data business last year, made their first billion in aluminium.