Lord Alan Sugar is worth an estimated £1.138bn, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2026, which ranks him 146th in the UK. That is up £37m on last year. But the billion is not sitting in one place you can look up. His main UK holding company, Amshold Limited, reported group net assets of £23.8m at 30 June 2025, and the same company paid him a £390m dividend in 2021.
His fortune is trending in UK searches again this October, two months after a very public row with American Express over his credit limit. Below: the Rich List estimate, the company accounts behind it, and the 2021 dividend that links them.
Alan Sugar at a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full name | Alan Michael Sugar, Baron Sugar |
| Born | 24 March 1947, Clapton, Hackney (age 79) |
| Estimated net worth (2026) | £1.138bn, 146th (Sunday Times Rich List) |
| 2025 estimate | £1.101bn, 145th |
| 2024 estimate | £1.082bn, 159th |
| Main wealth sources | Amstrad sale, London property (Amsprop/Amshold) |
| Main holding company | Amshold Limited (Companies House no. 11880961) |
| Family | Married to Ann Simons since 1968; three children |
The Rich List number, year by year
The Sunday Times first counted Sugar as a billionaire in 2015. His figure has moved inside a fairly narrow band since: £1.21bn and 138th place in 2021, £1.082bn and 159th in 2024 (City AM), £1.101bn in 2025, then £1.138bn in the list published on 15 May 2026. The Jewish Chronicle, quoting the 2026 list, put the latest £37m rise down to Amshold.
For context, the 2025 list placed Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy 151st on £1.03bn, and JK Rowling 168th on £945m. Sugar sat just above both.
Remember what these figures are. The Rich List is a journalist's estimate built from company filings, property values and public deals. It is not an audited statement of what Sugar owns.
Where the money came from
Amstrad: the first fortune
Sugar started Amstrad in 1968, aged 21, reportedly with £100 of savings, selling car aerials out of a van. It floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1980 and made its name with cheap home computers such as the CPC 464 and the PCW word processor, before supplying satellite dishes for Sky. In 2007 BSkyB agreed to buy the company for about £125m.
Tottenham Hotspur
He bought into Spurs with Terry Venables in 1991 and chaired the club until 2001, when he sold 27% to ENIC for £22m. In 2007 he sold his remaining 12% for £25m. He later called his decade at the club "a waste of my life".
Property: the real engine
It was property that made him a billionaire. Through Amsprop and the Amshold group he built a portfolio focused on London offices and freeholds. City AM reported in 2024 that Companies House filings showed five properties sold for a combined £102m in 2021-22, against £43.6m spent buying and refurbishing them. The group also runs Amsair, a business jet charter firm run by his son Daniel.
What Amshold's latest accounts show
Amshold Limited is the ultimate parent of the group, with Sugar, his sons Daniel and Simon, and Michael Ray as directors. Companies House lists Sugar as a person with significant control. Its audited accounts for the year to 30 June 2025, filed on 19 December 2025, give these headline figures:
| Amshold Limited (group) | Year to June 2025 | Year to June 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Turnover | £8.98m | £8.73m |
| Operating profit before revaluations and disposals | £3.6m | £3.1m |
| Profit on sale of investment properties | £9.9m | nil |
| Profit after tax | £10.8m | £0.7m |
| Investment properties | £71.6m | £85.7m |
| Properties held for resale | £25.9m | £19.3m |
| Cash | £9.7m | £3.0m |
| Net assets | £23.8m | £13.4m |
The directors describe the market for quality London freehold investment property as "difficult with high interest rates, uncertainty and fluctuating valuations". The group's only debt is a £75m loan from a related party, fixed at 1% until 31 December 2026, and no dividend was paid in either year.
So the company most closely tied to his fortune now reports net assets of £23.8m, a long way short of £1bn. The two numbers measure different things: one is the book value of a single company group at a fixed date, the other is a newspaper's estimate of Sugar's wider wealth. The accounts do not say where the rest of that wealth is held. Earlier filings, though, recorded a very large sum leaving the company.
The £390m dividend and the £186m tax bill
Amshold paid Sugar a £390m dividend in 2021, Bisnow reported from accounts filed at the time. Bisnow called it one of the largest pay packets ever paid to a British businessperson. The company said the cash had built up over previous years and was freed by a restructuring that began in 2019. In June 2021 its London portfolio was valued at £271m.
In September 2023 the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Sunday Times reported that Sugar had tried to be treated as a non-UK resident, which, the Bureau said, would have made the whole dividend exempt from UK tax. It did not work, because members of the House of Lords are automatically treated as UK resident. He went on to pay a £186m bill, one of the largest in the country that year. The Bureau said there was no suggestion he had broken the law. His spokesperson told it: "Lord Sugar is a UK tax resident, and he always has been. All his income has been taxed on the basis of his UK residency, and is fully paid up."
The £186m was due on UK earnings including the dividend, so the two figures cannot simply be subtracted to work out what he kept.
How much does The Apprentice pay?
We could find no published figure for his fee. Sugar has hosted the show since 2005, and in March 2025 he told the BBC's Amol Rajan he had signed a new three-year deal covering three more series after the 20th, which takes him into his eighties. Treat any salary figure you see online with caution. Since 2011 the prize has been his £250,000 investment in the winner's business, in exchange for half of the company.
As he put it in that interview: "When I took the job on of The Apprentice, I was already a multi-millionaire."
The American Express row
In August 2026 Sugar complained on X that American Express had turned down his request for a higher credit limit after an hour on the phone, even though the person he finally reached "knew who I was and my financial status". When a follower asked why a billionaire needed credit, he answered in capitals: "I DON'T WALK AROUND WITH BAGS FULL OF CASH. I NEED A CREDIT CARD TO BUY THINGS."
The bottom line
Alan Sugar's net worth in 2026 is best stated as an estimated £1.1bn, with £1.138bn the latest Sunday Times figure. The trail runs from Amstrad's car aerials to a London property empire, and the standout disclosure in company accounts is the £390m dividend Amshold paid him in 2021. If you want to compare him with other people who show up in the Rich List and Companies House, see our breakdowns of Noel Gallagher and the Weston family.
