THE widening gap between the wealthy and the poor in Scotland has been illustrated by the latest Rich List, which shows a rise in the number of Scots among the ranks of the super-rich.
While most people struggled to cope with a double-dip recession and rising household costs, the personal fortunes of Scotland's most wealthy increased by up to 58%.
Seventy-eight Scots now have a place in the list of Britain's wealthiest people – the highest number since 2003, when there were 81. The billionaires' club includes tycoons Jim McColl and Sir Ian Wood.
The combined wealth of Scotland's richest 100 people is £21.142 billion, according to the Sunday Times Rich List: almost double the total in 2004.
Scotland's richest individual is again Mahdi al Tajir, 81, owner of Highland Spring, the Perthshire-based bottled-water company.
His fortune of £1.6bn makes him the 44th wealthiest person in the UK.
Second are the Grant and Gordon family, said to be worth £1.4bn thanks to their extensive interests in spirits.
Sir Ian Wood, who retired last year as head of energy giant the Wood Group, has a fortune of £1.2bn, although this sum refers to family wealth.
Other billionaires include the Thomson family, owners of the DC Thomson publishing empire (£1.1bn), Alastair Salvesen (£1.05bn, transport and plant hire) and Jim McColl (£1bn, engineering).
The biggest mover in the list among Scots this year is Eric Herd, 55, who has turned Cumbernauld-based Farmfoods into the UK's second-largest frozen food retailer. His personal wealth is put at £253 million.
The highest-placed women on the Scots list are Stagecoach tycoon Ann Gloag, whose shared wealth with her brother Brian Souter is put at £730m, and Harry Potter author JK Rowling, on £560m.
Lottery-winning couple Colin and Chris Weir of Largs, who won £161m on the EuroMillions lottery in July 2011, are joint 24th.
Pete Cashmore, 27, who founded the blog mashable.com as a 13-year-old in Banchory, Aberdeenshire, is said to be worth £60m.
Glasgow-born musician Mark Knopfler, 63, who last year bought London's Gagosian Gallery for £6.3m, is worth £65m. Sir Sean Connery has a fortune estimated at £80m.
A new entry is Stefan King, 50, the Glasgow-based nightclub entrepreneur, with an estimated £54m.
Singer Emeli Sande, who was raised in Aberdeenshire, is on the list of the UK's richest young musicians, with £5m.
The UK's richest man is the Uzbekistan-born Russian citizen Alisher Usmanov, who has an estimated £13.3bn fortune from mining and investments.
Second is Len Blavatnik, an Odessa-born former industrialist (£11bn) who, in 2011, bought Warner Music for more than £2bn. Another Russian, Roman Abramovich, whose interests include Chelsea FC, is fifth in the UK list, with wealth put at £9.3bn.
The Queen, who was 87 yesterday, has a personal wealth of £320m and lies joint 268th.
Ian Coxon, the Rich List editor, said: "The good news for [Scotland's] economy is that much of the £21bn of wealth accrued by the top 100 millionaires has been made by generating worldwide demand for Scottish products and know-how."
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