370 million pounds sterling (426 million euros). It was the personal fortune of the late Elizabeth II estimated by the Sunday Times. A sum that her children will inherit according to the wishes of the late monarch. It should be noted that this estate should not be confused with that of the British Crown (“The Crown estate”) estimated at around 15 billion pounds which includes many real estate assets or farms but which cannot be disposed of. The same goes for the famous crown jewels estimated to be worth £3bn but not personally owned by the monarch.
The personal assets of the royal family that you can enjoy and that you can dispose of at will amounts, therefore, to 400 million euros. If this sum is large, it does not make the royal family the richest in the country, far from it. Industrial or financial fortunes like that of James Dyson, the creator of the famous eponymous brand of vacuum cleaners, are much larger.
But the Windsors are not the richest aristocrats in the Kingdom either. It is the Duke of Westminster who is in charge of the largest noble fortune in the country. It is estimated at 11.6 billion dollars, 27 times more than the personal wealth of the royal family!
120 hectares in central London
It is currently in the hands of Hugh Grosvenor, the 7th Duke of Westminster. At 31, “Hughie” inherited his father, the sixth Duke, who died in 2016 of a heart attack. The young heir is at the head of a colossal real estate empire managed by the Grosvenor Group company. It extends over more than 120 hectares in the center of London (the very exclusive districts of Mayfair and Belgravia in particular) and includes many residences such as the palace of Eaton Hall in Cheshire (north of England) and its sumptuous French gardens, but also investments real estate. in 60 cities around the world such as Paris and part of Silicon Valley.
It was Queen Victoria who created the title of Duke of Westminster in 1874 in favor of Hugh Grosvenor (the ancestor of the current Duke) who was then a Marquess of Cheshire whose ancestors were already important landowners in central London since the end of the century. XVII. century. A politician, racehorse owner, the Duke is also passionate about architecture and personally oversees many rebuildings in Mayfair, central London. When he died in 1899, he was considered the richest man in Britain.
Coco Chanel Lover
It is his grandson Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster and nicknamed ‘Bendor’, who is better known in France. Married four times, the Duke is known to have dated Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. It is he who finances the villa La Pausa that the seamstress had built in 1928 on the heights of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin (Alpes-Maritime) for an amount of 6 million francs.
Successors to the Grosvenor family will be eager to build on the family legacy by expanding internationally since the 1950s, always investing primarily in land and real estate.
The family is also well versed in philanthropy (the current Duke had donated several million pounds to the NHS during Covid) and has a relatively simple lifestyle in view of his immense fortune. Hugh and his brothers and sisters, for example, were educated in public schools or in small neighborhood colleges and private high schools.
Close to the royal family and in particular to Prince William, Hugh Grosvenor is the godfather of George, the eldest son of the princely couple.
Source: BFM TV
