Roman Abramovich is Britain's richest man with £7.5bn fortune

Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch and owner of Chelsea football club, has been named as the wealthiest man in Britain, with an estimated fortune of £7.5bn.

Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch and owner of Chelsea football club, has been named as the wealthiest man in Britain, with an estimated fortune of £7.5bn.

Mr Abramovich heads the Sunday Times Rich List of the 1,000 wealthiest people in Britain thanks to his holdings in oil, aluminium and pharmaceuticals. It makes Mr Abramovich, 37, the sixth richest person in Europe and the 22nd richest in the world.

The Russian, who has invested some £260m into Chelsea, qualifies for the Rich List because of his Chelsea ownership, his home in London's Belgravia and his 440-acre Sussex estate.

His arrival has knocked the Duke of Westminster off the top position. With a fortune of £5bn from owning swathes of London's Mayfair and Belgravia, the 52-year-old Duke is now number two after three years at the top. Hans Rausing, the Swedish-born Tetra Pak billionaire, drops one place to third position with a fortune of £4.95bn.

High street retail giant Philip Green has seen his fortune virtually double to £3.6bn over the past year, placing him fourth. Indian-born steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal is fifth, with £3.5bn, the Rich List's biggest rise in wealth.

And Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson's wealth has more than doubled in past 12 months from £1.25bn to £2.6bn, placing him sixth.

This year's Rich List shows that the wealthiest people in the UK have seen their assets grow by an astonishing 30 per cent. The combined wealth of Britain's 1,000 biggest earners has jumped from £155.9bn in 2003 to £202.4bn this year, a record increase.

Just to get on the list, produced annually by the newspaper, they now need assets of £40m - £10m more than last time round. The continuing property boom has played its part. But so has London's allure as a playground for the world's super-rich.

Kirsten and Jorn Rausing (£2.58bn) are in seventh place, followed by Bernie and Slavica Ecclestone (£2.32bn), Charlene and Michel de Carvalho (£2.26bn) and David and Simon Reuben (£2.2bn).