Show me the money!
There are few things more difficult, and more likely to end in disappointment, than trying to determine a prospect's worth, despite this age of rich lists and so forth. However, there is a wealth (ha ha!) of information out there which, if used properly, can go a long way towards helping you in your efforts.
The Super Rich
Wealth-Bulletin.com
Provides a news and analysis service covering global wealth management, its clients and the broader wealth industry. Includes in-depth coverage of philanthropic issues through its richmonitor service. FREE
Published by RealBusiness.co.uk, it contains a number of people not found in the Sunday Times Rich List. FREE
Comprehensive list of UK rich lists from the Helen Brown Group. Scroll up or down for other countries' rich lists. FREE
Asian Rich list 1 is compiled by Philip Beresford for Sunrise Radio. Describing itself as "the Official index of Britain's Asian millionaires", it is available for £6.50 from their website.
Asian Rich list 2 is compiled by Dr Spinder Dhaliwal and published in Eastern Eye's Success Magazine. Describing itself as "the definitive wealth index and one of the most insightful and sought after publications in the UK" it is available with Eastern Eye for 70p or direct from the publishers for £2.50.
Australian James Taris's "Who's Who of Billionaires" has billionaire lists for various countries. FREE
Gary Price's List of Lists is a database of ranked listings of companies, people and resources freely available on the Internet. Very comprehensive, although with an American bias, it is now maintained by Trip Wyckoff, the editor of Specialissues.com. FREE
Published annually by The Birmingham Post.
A monthly publication by Sunrise Publishers which contains in-depth detail on the backgrounds, interests, careers and lifestyle of high profile and/or wealthy people.
Annual Reports
Annual reports may contain useful information on directors' pay. Quoted companies (i.e. those who trade their shares on the stock exchange) are required by law to publish a directors' remuneration report for each financial year and so will have more detailed information on directors' pay.
Check out the Company Resources page for Annual Report resources.
Useful articles about salaries & bonuses, covering the banking, accounting, securities & related finance fields. FREE
The Hays recruitment group has been compiling Salary Guides since 1984 and now produces over 30 across a range of industries. Useful indicator of regional salaries. Some guides are available as a PDF to download and some need to be ordered on CD. FREE
Recruitment site which lists over a dozen sites providing free salary information. FREE
2006 survey of FTSE Finance Directors' salaries from Financial Director. Almost 30 finance directors in the FTSE-350 earned more than £1m in pay, perks and bonuses, and plenty of others earned decent 6 figure salaries. FREE
Produces an annual list of the 200 largest law firms by annual turnover. The part of interest to us is the equity spread, which gives the salary range for equity partners.* If you click on Allen & Overy, you can see that the equity spread is £480,000 to £1,200,000. In other words, junior equity partners were paid £480,000 and senior equity partners were paid £1.2m, with partners in between being paid, well, somewhere in between. Yup, it's a bit rough and ready. FREE
* A bit of explanation. Equity partners are those who own a share of the company (and are liable for its failure) and share the profits after all expenses are met. Salaried partners normally receive a fixed share of profits (sometimes with performance bonuses) by way of salary and their status is therefore somewhat more akin to that of an employee than an equity partner. Partners typically start as salaried partners and enter the equity after a certain period, which varies from firm to firm. There is a useful glossary of legal jargon here.
OK, that's partners, but what about more junior staff?
Produces a list of salaries from trainee solicitor to 4 years post qualified experience for some 50 City firms. Also produces a list for regional firms, but only a few and not all have salary information. FREE
NOTE: Knowing a prospect's salary can certainly help in determining their worth, but bear in mind that gross salary figures do not take into account income tax, pension contributions, mortgage payments, private healthcare, school fees, etc., all of which may take a signficant chunk out of the gross figure. For example, someone on a salary of £1m will have to pay over £400,000 in income tax, thus considerably reducing their take home pay (the poor lambkin). And that's the easy part to calculate. If the prospect is divorced, they may be paying alimony, but who knows how much? And what about school fees? Four children at boarding school will not leave much change from £100,000.
So, all in all, gross salary can only give you a very rough and ready idea of what the prospect may have to spend on your sorry cause. Still, better than having nothing to go on, right?
Odds & Sods
Internet Prospector has produced a list of websites discussing net worth and giving capacity. FREE