Stephen Fitzpatrick has been named as the south west's latest billionaire. The news comes as part of the latest Sunday Times Rich List, which shows there are now nine billionaires in our region.
While there are some household names and local celebrities on the list - Stephen Lansdown, Peter Hargreaves, and Sir James Dyson are among the most notable - Fitzpatrick is somewhat less recognised. So who is he?
Well, he was born in Belfast in 1977. He studied business and finance at Edinburgh University in 1995.
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He then launched The Rental Guide, a property newspaper, before working in the City for companies like JP Morgan. He left the City to found Ovo Energy, which he still part-owns, in 2009.
His most recent venture is Vertical Aerospace, which is developing a flying taxi. The aircraft boast tilting propellers, which allow them to take off like a helicopter but fly like a plane.
The VA-VX4, the company's flagship, will be fully electric - with the engines being provided by Rolls-Royce - and will be able to carry four passengers at up to 200mph. The hope is that the first commercial flights will take place in 2024.
The company is based near Temple Meads. In December 2021, it merged with Broadstone Acquisition Corp and was floated on the New York Stock Exchange. The move helped to grow Fitzpatrick's wealth by £665 million to £1.34 billion.
Fitzpatrick also owns a £603m stake in Ovo Energy, which is similarly based close to Temple Meads. The firm has around 4.5 million customers but planned to cut some 1,700 jobs earlier this year.
Fitzpatrick came under fire for the move from across the political spectrum. The Labour MP Chris Matheson said in February: "Unite the union … tells me that Ovo Energy has a tangled web of companies into which £40 million has been salted away without any clear indication of what the money is or where it is coming from.
"Meanwhile, it is making 1,700 of its employees - a quarter of its workforce - redundant and its boss Stephen Fitzpatrick has said that they should keep warm by doing star jumps and that he is doing them a favour by sacking them because of the jobs market."
The Conservative MP and business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, responded by saying: "I agree with the hon. gentleman.
"I speak to the operators of energy suppliers the whole time, as does my right hon. friend the minister for energy, clean growth and climate change, and we have had many concerns about the practices of some of these businesses and are very mindful of some of the accusations being made against Ovo. I speak to Mr Fitzpatrick on a regular basis and I will absolutely pass on the hon. Gentleman’s concerns to Mr Fitzpatrick directly."
Fitzpatrick himself said he didn't "recognise that number [£40m]".
