Karina Rickards

KARINA-RICKARDS

Karina Rickards, 41,is a co-founder of Pipex Internet. It is not clear how much the Rickards paid for Pipex, one of the UK’s first internet service providers, but it may have been as little as [pounds sterling]. At the time, the ‘free’ internet service provider Freeserve was growing rapidly.
Pipex now has about 119,000 customers, or 6pc of the UK market.

It also has [pounds sterling] 20m cash and in the year to May it made a [pounds sterling] 10.1m profit.
The couple sold it to the quoted GX Networks, netting £55m, of which £50m was in cash and the rest in shares. David joined the GX board, leaving in 2004. In all, with share sales and other assets, we value the Rickards at £56m after tax.