3. Matthew Riley – Daisy Group
Rank: 273rd (re-entry)
Estimated wealth: £500m
Rich celebrities eclipsed by his wealth: Sir Elton John (£475m), Sir Mick Jagger (£440m)
This comms entrepreneur has re-entered the Rich List after an action-packed 12 months saw his estimated wealth swell to £500m.
Having offloaded its enterprise IT arm, Daisy Corporate Services, to Wavenet last summer (Riley retained a minority shareholding in the enlarged business), Daisy acquired 4Com for £215m in April before earlier this month announcing its intent to merge with Virgin Media O2 Business.
Boasting combined revenues of £1.4bn, the newly formed B2B company will be second behind only BT in the UK telecoms market by size. Virgin Media O2 and Daisy will own 70% and 30% of the company, respectively.
A recognisable face to viewers of BBC’s The Apprentice, Riley founded Daisy in 2001.
“I thought it was an opportunity. So as ever, being an entrepreneur, I just asked the questions, ‘would you sell it?’ ‘Would you want to merge?’ ‘Is it something we can do together?,” Riley said of the Virgin Media O2 deal in an interview with Business Cloud.
“I’ve probably asked five or six times over the last 10 years and I asked again, and this time they said yes.”
Article continues on next page…
