Three times Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg. Image: ‘Michael Bloomberg speech cropped’. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikipedia

The Sunday Times newspaper is speculating that three times Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg may be persuaded to stand for the Tories as Mayor for London in 2016.

Mr Bloomberg is reputedly worth worth $36.5 billion, the tenth richest person in the United States and the 13th wealthiest in the world.

He is now 73 and was given an honorary knighthood by the Queen for his ‘prodigious entrepreneurial and philanthropic endeavours’ in the UK.

The Sunday Times quotes Steve Hilton, former head of strategy at No 10 and one of Cameron’s most trusted advisers saying:

It would be an incredible coup for London if Mike Bloomberg could be persuaded to run for mayor here. His kind of pragmatic, problem-solving leadership is exactly what London needs.

To be a Mayoral candidate, Mr Bloomberg would need to become a UK or EU citizen despite the fact he has a palatial home in Knightsbridge.

The paper speculates that should the Tories form the next government, they would be happy to ‘fast track’ his citizenship in order to facilitate his candidature.