David & Simon Reuben

Early life

The brothers were born in Bombay, British India, the sons of David Sassoon Reuben and Nancy Reuben, a Baghdadi Jewish family. Their father went to Bombay from Iraq to secure work in the textile industry. Following their parents' separation, the brothers moved to London in the 1950s with their mother, and due to the change in financial circumstances, the brothers attended state schools and lived in Islington, North London, with Simon never completing his formal education.

The fortune

The Reuben Brothers invested in luxury leisure group Belmond Ltd in 2007, and sold their share in 2019 for £233 million. Other holdings include Travelodge Hotels; D2 Jeans and Blue Inc clothing retailers, with retailer Sir Stuart Rose; Luup and Metro Bank; The Wellington Pub Company, the largest free-of-tie pub estate in the UK with approximately 850 tenanted pubs; Global Switch, the carrier data centre provider in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region; and a joint venture with British Marine, that in 2014 had eight vessels with plans to double the fleet size.

Personal life

According to the Sunday Times Rich List 2023, David and Simon Reuben and their combined family had an estimated net worth of £24.4 billion. This made them Britain's fourth wealthiest family. The Times has reported that the brothers' businesses make extensive use of offshore tax havens. A spokesperson said that their businesses "fully comply with UK tax laws". The brothers are donors to the Conservative Party.

Career

David joined a scrap metals business while Simon started out in carpets. Simon went on to buy out England's oldest carpet company J. Holdsworth & Co from the receivers and made enough money from it to start investing in property, with early investments on Walton Street and the King's Road in Chelsea. The brothers increased their wealth during the 1970s and 1980s in metals and property trading.

In the early 1990s, the brothers invested in the Russian metals market. When Russian aluminum smelters were incapacitated by debt, Reuben's company Trans-World entered into tolling arrangements with factories in which they paid for and delivered raw materials in return for finished aluminum, which it then sold for profit. The company's investment in Russia was US$1.5 billion (£870 million), with global sales in 1995 above US$8 billion. TransWorld was accused of involvement in illegal activities, including several murders. The brothers were involved with several members of the country's new oligarchy, including Roman Abramovich. They settled a multimillion-pound legal dispute with Oleg Deripaska with a settlement being awarded to Reuben Brothers. In 1997, Russia's Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov linked both the Cherney brothers and Reuben brothers to the Izmaylovskaya mafia led by Anton Malevsky in Israel. In March 1998, Boris Yeltsin replaced Kulikov as minister. In 2008, the Reuben brothers returned to the commodity business, expanding their mining interests with a portfolio of mines in Morocco, Indonesia, and South Africa.