| Every little helps. In January Lord Vestey, 62, put a bet on England winning the fifth Test in Australia. "The odds were 9-1," he said after pocketing his winnings. The Vestey fortune derives from the 19th-century meat trade. By the late 1980s, the family controlled every step of the trade, from overseas ranch to British butcher's shop. In 1990 the business was still run by Lord "Spam" Vestey, and his cousin Edmund, 70. At the time, Edmund told Forbes magazine that the Vestey family was worth £1.3 billion. But disaster struck in 1995, when Union International, part of the Vestey empire, went into receivership. The family had put at least £200m into the business over the previous 10 years and lost heavily. It managed to salvage some farms and a food processing operation that became known as the Vestey Group, but it has been having a hard time recently, making a £19.2m loss in 2001. With much of its farming interests in Venezuela, where they are threatened by nationalisation, the outlook must be grim. Vestey Group has net assets of about £105m and we value it on that figure. However, the family's estates in Gloucestershire, Essex and Scotland, plus trusts, easily keep it at last year's level. We take no account of Lord Vestey's cricket winnings.
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35=
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£700m
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