Job: chairman, Daily Mail & General Trust
Age: 45
Industry: publishing, digital media
2012 ranking: 35
Viscount Rothermere is planning nothing short of global domination with Mail Online, which is vying with the New York Times as the world's most popular online newspaper.
Mail Online is part of the Rothermere family business, first established in 1896, that also includes the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, and a host of profitable business-to-business operations, including a majority stake in the Euromoney Institutional Investor group.
Rothermere wants the website – complete with its much-discussed "sidebar of shame" – to double in size and has said it can be a "bigger business than the Daily Mail – financially, in terms of reach, and everything else".
Rothermere – AKA Jonathan Harmsworth – inherited the business after the death of his father in 1998, with a family fortune estimated at £720m. He controls the majority of its voting stock and has moved to increase his grip on the Daily Mail publisher.
He oversaw the sale of the London Evening Standard to Alexander Lebedev, and its regional newspaper arm Northcliffe Media to David Montgomery's nascent Local World. That he is not higher up this list reflects the fact he is a hands-off proprietor, with power devolved to his editors, including the Daily Mail's long serving Paul Dacre.
His toughest decision – when he finally has to make it – will be anointing a successor to Dacre. Will it be Mail Online publisher Clarke? Mail on Sunday editor Geordie Greig? Or someone else?
