Revealed: The UK media millionaires

The billionaire owners of The Telegraph Group, 77-year-old twin brothers Sir David and Sir Fredrick Barclay, are Britain's richest newspaper proprietors. The twins have amassed a £2.25 billion fortune, £50 million more than last year, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List. They also own the Ritz hotel in London, and the Littlewoods mail order business.

The reclusive Barclay brothers bought the Telegraph titles for £665 million in 2004, and made Sir David's eldest son Aidan chairman of Telegraph Media Group. Aidan Barclay made headlines this week when he told the Leveson inquiry that he suggested David Cameron speak to the editor of his newspaper every day during the the last election campaign.

One of Fleet Street's success stories, the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday sister paper made £55.7 million last year, only a small dip on 2010's £60.1 million. Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch's Times and Sunday Times were deep in the red.

Express newspaper baron Richard Desmond, who has been slashing costs at his Daily Express to Daily Star empire, came second in the media rich list, breaking through the £1 billion mark. Desmond is cutting 70 out of almost 500 staff at his four newspapers amid talk of a budgetary hole of about £18 million. In third place are Viscount Rothermere and family, controlling shareholder of Daily Mail publisher DMGT, with £760 million.

Rothermere (aka Jonathan Harmsworth)'s empire has shrunk in recent years, with the closure of London Lite and the sale of the London Evening Standard to Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev (although the Daily Mail & General Trust retains a chunky state).

Canada's Thomson family also increased its fortune, to £700 million. It built one of the world's largest information companies, the Thomson Corporation, which merged with news agency Reuters in 2007 in a $17.2 billion deal, creating Thomson Reuters. The family's assets grew over the years from an Ontario newspaper to include the Sunday Times in London and North Sea oil interests at one stage.

London-based Cristina Stenbeck, 34, who was born and raised in New York, is the wealthiest woman among Britain's richest publishers, with a £369 million fortune. After the sudden death of her father in 2002, Stenbeck became steward of the family's interests at the Swedish-based Investment AB Kinnevik media and telecoms group, best known for its stable of Metro free newspapers (which doesn't include UK Metro).

WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell, 67, is Britain's wealthiest advertising mogul with a fortune of £174 million, up from £148 million last year. Sorrell has built WPP into the world's largest marketing services group. His stake in WPP is worth £156 million.

Neil Hutchinson, 34, who founded the London-based online advertising business TrafficBroker, now Forward Internet, has seen his fortune more than double in the past year from £59 million to £123 million.

Alan Parker, the founder and chairman of Brunswick group, has made his £95 million fortune out of PR. He ranks in 19th place.

Few media moguls saw their wealth decline. Ray Tindle, the owner of Tindle Newspapers and investor in Johnston Press slipped down to the list to 16th place as his wealth dropped from £145 million to £125 million. Johnston Press, Britain's second-largest regional newspaper group, today reported a pretax loss of £144 million for last year and slashed the book value of its 255 newspapers.

The 20 publishing and advertising millionaires listed in the table below are among the 1,000 richest people in Britain, according to the annual Sunday Times Rich List which will be published this weekend.



THE SUNDAY TIMES RICH LIST 2012: THE RICHEST IN PUBLISHING AND ADVERTISING

Rank	Name	2012 wealth	2011 wealth
1	Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay	£2,250m	£2,200m
2	Richard Desmond	£1,000m	£950m
3	Viscount Rothermere and family	£760m	£730m
4	The Thomson family	£700m	£660m
5	Paddy McNally	£515m	£620m
6=	Viscount Cowdray and the Pearson family	£500m	£1,015m
6=	Felix Dennis	£500m	£500m
8	Cristina Stenbeck	£369m	£350m
9	Mark Getty and family	£330m	£330m
10	Mike Danson	£310m	£278m
11	Lord Iliffe and family	£266m	£240m
12	Sir Martin Sorrell	£174m	£148m
13	Mike Luckwell	£135m	£135m
14	Philip and Patricia Brown	£132m	£132m
15	Lord and Charles Saatchi	£130m	£125m
16	Sir Ray Tindle	£125m	£145m
17	Neil Hutchinson	£123m	£59m
18	Nick Forman Hardy and family	£102m	£102m
19	Alan Parker	£95m	£95m
20	Gregory Nasmyth and family	£85m	£68m

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