Age: 64
Staff: 38
Industry: advertising
2005 ranking: new entry
The grand old man of advertising, Lowe caused a sensation when he quit the agency he founded 25 years ago to launch a new one, Red Brick Road - and then pinched one of his old agency's biggest accounts, Tesco. Variously described as charming, poisonous, opportunistic and terrifying but inspiring, he rarely talks to the press. He was knighted by Labour for his services to advertising and charity in 2002, less than a year after he donated £2m to the country's first city academy, and has been called the "definitive champagne socialist".
