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Barry Houghton

Houghton sold St Helens-based Rainford, an electronics company, for £80m to the US firm Reltec, with his stake worth £38m. He stayed on to run Reltec’s European operations until it was sold to Marconi in 1999 for £1.3 billion. The second largest shareholder in Reltec, 59-year-old Houghton is based in Switzerland.