Richest people in Yorkshire: Who is kitchen company tycoon Malcolm Healey, owner of Wren Kitchens and named the richest person in the region? Everything we know about the Hull business man

Business owners of well established retailers including Morrisons and Jet2 have been listed on Insider Media’s Yorkshire Rich List, published on Tuesday, November 7.

However, top of the list is Malcolm Healey, owner of Wren Kitchens and seller of electrical goods business eBuyer, who some people may not know about along with some other unknown faces. He has not been pictured by the press in recent years.

His brother, Eddie Healey, died in August 2021. His widow, Carol Healey, was named as the fourth richest person in Yorkshire. Here is everything we know about Malcolm and how he became the richest person in the region.

Who is Malcolm Healey?

Malcolm, 79, was born in Kingston upon Hull with his brother Eddie and worked in their family’s paint firm where they soon started a DIY chain, Status Discount, that grew to have 63 branches in northern England.

They sold the DIY chain to MFI in 1980, where he and his brother worked until 1982. By then MFI Group and Malcolm’s company, Humber Kitchens, bought Hygena, a kitchen and furniture retail company, from Norcos who were looking to dissolve the company and sell the Hygena name.

MFI gained full control of Hygena in 1987 and bought out Malcolm for £200 million.

Malcolm then moved to the US, where he founded kitchen manufacturing company Mill’s Pride, which he later sold for £800 million before moving back to the UK and during the nineties, he lived in Palm Beach, Florida.

Around two decades later, he founded Wren Living, which is now known as Wren Kitchens, in 2009, a kitchen manufacturing and retail company. At the beginning of 2009, the business had 82 showrooms across the UK, with an annual turnover of £490 million in 2018.

From 2020, Malcolm’s West Retail Group also owned the online electronics retailer eBuyer and he donated £250,000 to the Conservative Party in 2019, two weeks after its leader Boris Johnson became Prime Minister. Since 2017, he has donated a sum of £2,210,000 to the Conservative Party.

Malcolm and his family were listed as the 70th wealthiest family in the UK in the 2021 Sunday Times Rich List, when their estimated net worth was £1.43 billion.

He currently owns Warter Priory, a 12,000-acre estate near Pocklington, which he bought for a reported £48 million in 1998 and he had three children including Suzy, who was found strangled at her country home in August 2005. Richard Holtby, Suzy’s ex-fiance, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison by a jury at Kingston upon Hull Crown Court in June 2006.

In 2023 his net worth is £1.65 billion, whilst the year before his net worth was £1.6 billion.