Nadhmi Auchi

One of Surrey's more colourful entrepreneurs, Nadhmi Auchi has been in Britain for more than two decades. In that time, he has turned a small company into a multinational conglomerate with 120 firms worldwide spanning luxury hotels to telecom companies in the Middle East. Among his recent deals are a £7 40m Chicago property development, new hotels in Egypt and a £71m investment in telecoms. The Kingston-based tycoon has still found time to invest in the Lebanon team participating in the new Al Grand Prix racing series that is a rival to Bernie Ecclestone's Fl series.

Baghdad-born Auchi, the son of an accountant, studied economics and politics at university as befitting a middle class Iraqi. He joined the Ba'ath party which, at the time, was fighting for democracy in Iraq and was not in power. But he left the Ba'ath party in 1962, only to be jailed out of spite a year later when his erstwhile comrades came to power. He left the country in 1980, after the Iran-Iraq War broke out.

Auchi had set his heart on business not politics. In 1997, three years before he left Iraq, he had founded his main company, General Mediterranean Holdings, which was three years old and expanding. GMH, which is registered in Luxembourg, made £145m profit in 2005.

Auchi's total portfolio is worth £2.575bn, split 45% in investments, 25.9% in property and 28.9% in hotels, including the luxurious Le Royal hotel complexes in Beirut, Amman and Tunisia. We value Auchi on this figure.