| Guy and Julia Hands met at Oxford, where they were friends with William Hague. He went into politics; they made lots of money. Julia, now 44, worked initially as a solicitor while her husband Guy, also 44, joined Nomura, the Japanese bank. He made a £3 billion profit for Nomura and was rewarded with about 10% of it. Before he left in 2002, Guy had built a gilded reputation in the City - and a personal fortune of £300m - on the back of successful deals that involved everything from Ministry of Defence homes to television rentals. He explained the rationale of his seemingly disparate investments: "They are all basic service industries - they are all people-facing and none can be replaced by a computer." Now the pair have entered the service industry full time with Hand Picked Hotels, a chain of 14 country house hotels that Julia will run. We value the chain on the £125m they have sunk into it until we see the profits coming through. It is also too early to see any profits from Guy's own investment business, Terra Firma Capital Partners. Allowing for tax and known losses of £70m suffered along the way, we reckon the Hands are still £35m better off this year.
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2003: £140m
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