The 2010 America’s Cup will go down in history as one of the most litigation-mired yacht races ever. As a result of long and complex legal challenges, the Cup was decided in a two-yacht, two-race event in Valencia.
The race was won by the challenger – the BMW-sponsored USA-17 boat. The unsuccessful defender was the Swiss Alinghi team with their yacht Alinghi 5.
Owner and helmsman of Alinghi 5 was Ernesto Bertarelli, Italian-born sailing-mad billionaire, one of the richest men in the world, and husband of Staffordshire-born Kirsty Bertarelli who holds our number one spot in the Birmingham Post Rich List for the third year running.
Kirsty – formerly Kirsty Roper from Stone, in Staffordshire, who was crowned Miss UK in 1988 – married the biotechnology tycoon in 2000 after meeting him three years earlier at a party in Sardinia. Overnight she became the UK’s wealthiest woman.
Kirsty Bertarelli, her husband, and their three children, Chiara, Falco and Alceo, now live on the shores of Lake Geneva. They also own a house in Knightsbridge, where the couple can often be seen drinking in the local pub – Ernesto is a confirmed anglophile – and a chalet in the Alpine resort of Gstaad, where the family own the legendary winter sports hotel Grand Hotel Park.
Kirsty went to St Dominic’s Catholic School in her home town of Stone before attending Howells Boarding School in Denbigh, North Wales, where she was a member of the school choir and enjoyed sports.
Kirsty, now aged 38, left school and entered modelling, becoming Miss UK a years later at just 17. She went on to come third in the Miss World competition.
Her father, Michael Roper, and his two brothers ran the family's Churchill China pottery company in Stoke-on-Trent, and the Ropers are still significant shareholders. Churchill China was AIM-listed in 1994 and produces 13 brands at four sites in Stoke. It is one of the world’s major manufacturers and distributors of ceramic tableware, tracing its origins back to 1795.
Kirsty’s ambition was to make a career in music. She wrote her own songs and secured a record deal with Warner Records. In 2000 she co-wrote the All Saints hit Black Coffee which made No.1, and has made an album since.
She now designs fashion clothing – she designed the team strip for the Alinghi 5 crew – and jewellery, and has created her own fashion line.
Her charity work includes serving on the committee of Swiss charity Smiling Children which helps underprivileged children in developing countries get education and employment and fights against child labour. The charity is supported by the Bertarelli Foundation.
Ernesto Bertarelli ran the family company Serono – the biggest biotechnology company in Europe and a leader in reproductive treatments, as well as drugs for multiple sclerosis. He sold the company to Merck of Germany in 2006.
Ernesto’s businesses now include Kedge Capital, an investment management group with bases in London, Jersey and Geneva, and Ares Life, a private equity company. In its Swiss Rich List, Bilan magazine put the Bertarelli fortune at £5.95 billion, but we take a slightly more conservative view.
