13 (13=) Tony Gallagher £475m (£400m)
Tony Gallagher doesn’t just build houses and industrial units. He builds entire towns. His Gallagher Estates is building not one but two sustainable new towns; one in Bedfordshire and one in Cambridge.
The Bedfordshire development - at The Wixams just south of Bedford - is for a new community of 5,500 homes, one million square feet of employment space, a new railway station with a link direct to Kings Cross, up to seven schools, a town centre, a health centre, sports and leisure facilities and 150 acres of parkland and public open space.
The community is being built on the former Elstow industrial and storage depot and has been 10 years in the planning.
Meanwhile, at Northstowe near Cambridge, Gallagher Estates is building a new market town of 9,500 homes, employment areas, a hotel, a shopping centre, leisure facilities and a hotel, plus one secondary and five primary schools.
More than 18,000 people will live in the new town which is located partly on the site of a former RAF barracks.
These two huge projects form just part of the portfolio of developments across the country for Gallagher’s two divisions – Gallagher Estates and Gallagher Developments. Gallagher Estates is the group’s residential development arm and owns or controls land with planning consent for more than 32,000 residential plots.
Gallagher Developments is the group’s commercial property development and investment arm, with the primary focus being the retail sector. The division owns land with planning consent for six million square feet of commercial development. The core business involves an investment portfolio of around 3.5 million square feet of retail parks throughout the country.
It’s not difficult to see that the Warwick-based company is growing and extremely successful with a land bank rapidly rising in value. In fact Gallagher UK is one of the most successful privately-owned commercial and residential property development and investment companies in the UK.
Tony Gallagher, as owner and chairman, has driven Gallagher UK to a powerful position in the development business, with substantial cash reserves and no borrowings. The value of its land bank means that our £475 million estimate for Tony Gallagher’s wealth is a conservative figure. He also has investments in Germany.
