Manchester among top universities for super-rich graduates

The University of Manchester has one of the highest numbers of ultra-rich graduates in the country, according to a report published earlier this month.

The report places Manchester in 6^th place out of the top twenty universities in the UK, ranked in terms of how many of their graduates are classed as UHNWIs (Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals).

In order to qualify as an UHNWI, a person must have a net worth of at least $30 million, around £19 million – that’s roughly equal to 5,000 years living on student loans.

Wealth-X, the organisation that produced the report, claims that Manchester has a total of 102 UHNWIs, worth a combined $3.5 billion (£2.2 billion).

This figure puts the university comfortably ahead of other top institutions such as UCL, Durham and Warwick, who have 99, 66 and 53 UHNWIs respectively.

Manchester’s richest are also the oldest, with the average UHNWI being aged sixty-five.

Manchester lies 6th in the ranking, ahead of many other top UK universities

Of course, the University of Manchester in its current form has only been around since 2004, after the merger of Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology).

This means the majority of Manchester’s richest alumni will have graduated from one of these two universities.

One key graduate is Sir Terry Leahy, former CEO of Tesco, who achieved a degree in Management Sciences from UMIST in 1977.

Supermarket success – Sir Terry Leahy

It’s interesting to point out, however, that Manchester has the lowest proportion of female UHNWIs, with only 4% of its richest graduates being women.

And despite being 6^th in the country, Manchester’s wealthiest are ‘only’ worth an average of £34 million (£22 million) each. How embarrassing for them.

This is quite small when compared to a staggering $127 million (£82 million) and $258 million (£167 million) for Oxford and Cambridge graduates respectively.

In total, UK universities have over two thousand UHNWIs, who are worth around $270 billion (£175 billion) between them.

That’s a little more than the market value of Microsoft, and nearly three times that of McDonalds!

Women are vastly outnumbered when it comes to wealth