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Britain’s richest people have experienced the biggest-ever rise in their wealth, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. Driven

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问题     Britain’s richest people have experienced the biggest-ever rise in their wealth, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. Driven by the new economy of Internet and computer entrepreneurs, the wealth of those at the top of the financial tree has increased at an unprecedented rate. The 12th annual Rich List will show that the collective worth of the country’s richest 1,000 people reached nearly 146 billion by January, the cut-off point for the survey. They represented an increase of 31 billion, or 27%, in just 12 months. Since the survey was compiled, Britain’s richest have added billions more to their wealth, thanks to the continuing boom in technology shares on the stock market. This has pushed up the total value of the wealth of the richest 1,000 to a probable 160 billion according to Dr. Philip Beresford, Britain’s acknowledged expert on personal wealth who compiles the Sunday Times Rich List.
    The millennium boom exceeds anything in Britain’s economic history, including the railway boom of the 1840s and the South Sea bubble of 1720. "It has made Margaret Thatcher’s boom seem as sluggish as Edward Heath’s three-day week," said Beresford. "We are seeing billions being added to the national wealth every week." William Rubinstein, professor of modem history at the University of Wales, Abe Ystwyth, confirmed that the growth in wealth was unprecedented. "Almost all of today’s wealth has been created since the industrial revolution, but even by those heady standards the current boom is extraordinary," he said. "There is no large-scale cultural opposition or guilt about making money. In many ways British business attitudes can now challenge the United States."
    Although the Britain’s richest are experiencing the sharpest surge in wealth, the rest of the population has also benefited from the stock market boom and rising house prices. Last year wealth rose by 16% to a record 4,267 billion, according to calculation by the investment bank Salomon Smith Barney. In real terms, wealth has increased by more than a third since the late 1980s.
    Much of the wealth of the richest is held in shares in start-up companies. Some of these paper fortunes, analysts agree, could easily be wiped out, although the wealth-generating effects of the interest revolution seem to be here to stay.
    A Sunday Times Young Rich List confirms that people are becoming wealthier younger. It includes the 60 richest millionaires aged 30 or under. At the top, on 600m, is the "old money" Earl of Iveagh, 30, head of the Guinness brewing family. In second place is Charles Nasser, also 30, who launched the Clara-NET Internet provider four years ago and is worth 300m. The remaining eight in the top 10 young millionaires made their money from computing and the Internet.
选项 A、January—the deadline for the survey.
B、31 million—the increase of wealth in just 12 months.
C、160 million—the total value of the wealth of the richest 1000.
D、146 billion—the collective worth of the country’s richest 1000 people.
答案A
解析 语义理解题。本文首段第三句指出"第12次年度财富排行榜即将显示：到一月份，也就是调查的截至日期，英国最富有的1000人财富总和达到了1460亿英镑"。本题的解题关键在于准确把握上下文的所指关系，句中the cut-off point for the survey是January的同位语，cut-off原意为"定点，取舍点"，句中则指调查的截至日期。
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