Charles has outstripped the late Queen — making money in everything from Duchy of Cornwall biscuits to commercial property
he King has a personal fortune of £600 million, making him wealthier than the late Queen, analysis for The Sunday Times Rich List reveals. In last year’s Rich List, her fortune was calculated at £370 million.
One of Charles’s former aides has described how the King carefully rebuilt his finances after his £17 million divorce settlement from Diana, Princess of Wales in the mid-1990s.
As monarch in waiting, Charles assiduously saved some of the profits he received from the Duchy of Cornwall, which has led to him accruing a sizeable fortune.
The King’s former adviser said of the period after his split from Diana: “He became prudent at tucking away some money from the Duchy after that wipeout [of capital]. We’re not talking vast sums here — several tens of millions, no more. There have been suggestions that Camilla brought a good deal of money into their relationship — but that’s really not correct,” the source said.
Charles makes some frugal lifestyle choices — although most are linked to environmentalism. He often wears suits and shoes he bought many years ago. “I’m one of those people who hate throwing anything away,” he once told Vogue magazine.
He is also known for being meticulous about switching off lights.
The King’s personal wealth is not likely to place him in the top 250 of the latest Rich List, which will be published next month. This year’s edition will include 350 names.
Charles’s fortunes, when compared with last year’s list, exceed those of David and Victoria Beckham, Sir Elton John and the Warburton bread-making dynasty. The duchy is a £1 billion private estate of property and other investments dating back to the 14th century. Its holdings include 130,000 acres, 260 farms, the Oval cricket ground in south London, and the land on which Dartmoor’s prison stands.
The King with Sir Elton John as the latter is made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2021
There are two royal estates known as duchies. The Duchy of Cornwall is traditionally overseen by the heir to the throne while the Duchy of Lancaster is overseen by the reigning monarch.
Between 2011 and 2022, Charles increased the Duchy of Cornwall’s annual profits by 42.6 per cent to £25.4 million, our analysis shows. Over the same period, the duchy’s wealth climbed by almost 50 per cent to £1.04 billion.
In 1990, Charles launched his Duchy Originals range, selling produce from his Highgrove House estate initially through Harrods, and Fortnum & Mason. Biscuits would be followed by beer, herbal medicine and garden tools. The Duchy range was later sold in Waitrose.
A few years later, Charles tried his hand at house building, with the sustainable Poundbury development on the outskirts of Dorchester in Dorset. Work later began on a similar project in Cornwall.
The duchy, meanwhile, was quietly pushing up its income from renting commercial properties in London, Milton Keynes and Cornwall. These revenues have almost doubled to £17.6 million over the past decade and account for more than a third of the money brought in.
Between 2012 and 2022 alone, Charles received £212.7 million from the duchy — opting, rather than being obliged, to pay income tax.
Yet at the heart of this £1 billion estate lies one of the biggest confusions about royal finances. The three estates that hold the bulk of the estimated £20 billion of royal wealth are not personally owned by the King or those related to him.
The Duchy of Cornwall, the Duchy of Lancaster and the Crown Estate all have to comply with strict rules.
Charles was permitted to spend only the Duchy of Cornwall’s annual profits and was obliged to seek Treasury approval for disposing of any asset worth more than £500,000. He was also forbidden from personally banking capital gains from any property sale.
The Crown Estate, which holds £15.6 billion of royal wealth, is owned by Charles only “in the right of the Crown”.
The annual profits are paid not to the King but to the Treasury and he receives 25 per cent of them back from the exchequer. These fund the royal household’s expenditure as the sovereign grant, the successor to the civil list.
Charles cannot sell the Crown Estate’s assets. As the near 1,000-year-old institution emphasises on its website, it is independent of the royal family.
Similar rules apply to the Duchy of Lancaster, which the King has taken control of since the death of his mother. It has £652.8 million of net assets and dates back to the 14th century. The Royal Collection, which consists of more than a million paintings, statues, sculptures, books, pieces of jewellery and other valuables, is also owned by a trust.
The Royal Collection contains the paintings Boy Peeling Fruit and The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew by Carvaggio
“A lot of people do get confused about the royal finances — wrongly thinking that [the royal family] personally own the Crown Estate and the duchies,” said the author Robert Hardman, whose biography of the late Queen Elizabeth, Queen of Our Times, is published in paperback this week. “In all honesty their financial arrangements really aren’t as complex as [those of] many royal families and rulers in other countries, which are often far more opaque. Our monarchy really isn’t as wealthy as many people would believe. I certainly don’t think the King is a billionaire.”
Several well-known properties associated with Charles do not personally belong to him. Dumfries House, in East Ayrshire, is owned by a foundation set up to preserve the property, its prized furniture and 2,000 acres of land.
The King is also closely associated with the Castle of Mey, in Caithness, once the home of the late Queen’s mother. It has been owned by a charitable trust, presided over by Charles, since 1996.
Highgrove and the Llwynywermod estate both belong to the Duchy of Cornwall, control of which has now passed to William, who has succeeded his father as Prince of Wales.
So, if none of these estates, properties and other royal trappings count when assessing the King’s personal wealth, what does?
Sandringham and Balmoral are Charles’s most valuable assets. Sandringham, in Norfolk, encompasses 20,000 acres and has personally belonged to the royals for more than 160 years. It has 300 buildings as well as the grade II listed mansion. Produce from his orchards supply the Sandringham Apple Juice company, and safari tours are available for £160 per person.
Sandringham was valued at £55 million last year
A value of £55 million was put on Sandringham’s principal residence by McCarthy Stone, a property firm, last year. The entire estate could conservatively be worth £245 million, using estimates of agricultural land values in the area supplied by the estate agent Strutt & Parker.
Prince Albert acquired Balmoral for Queen Victoria in 1852. The Aberdeenshire castle is surrounded by 50,000 acres, with mountains, forests, lochs, and grouse moors, and 150 other buildings. These include Birkhall, the 18th-century house that has been Charles’s Scottish bolthole for more than 20 years.
McCarthy Stone recently valued the castle at £60 million. Strutt & Parker point to a wide variation between the value of poor and good quality land in the Scottish Highlands, ranging from £600 to £8,000 an acre.
We value the castle and the wider estate together at a cautious £210 million.
Both Sandringham and Balmoral were owned by the late Queen as personal assets. With her wealth of £370 million, any other family could have been left with a £148 million inheritance tax bill.
An entirely legal quirk, however, ensures that no inheritance tax is levied when assets are passed from “sovereign to sovereign”. Estates are usually subject to a 40 per cent charge on wealth above a £325,000 threshold.
John Major introduced the exemption in 1993 when he was prime minister, arguing that it was “necessary to protect the independence of the monarchy”.
Charles and the late Queen in 2016
The rule also created a compelling incentive for monarchs to leave all of their assets to the child inheriting the throne. Prince Andrew was said to have been left “in despair” by the way the Queen’s wealth was transferred.
The late Queen also had a large investment portfolio. It is understood to consist largely of blue-chip stock market shares and bonds, currently estimated to be worth about £100 million.
She was fond of breeding and racing thoroughbreds, although she had begun selling her horses well in advance of her death.
There have been suggestions that what is left of the pack is worth at least £27 million. A royal expert consulted for this article argued that the royal horses were in fact more of a liability now.
Tom Marquand riding the King’s horse Educator last year
The value of Elizabeth’s personal stamp and art collection is equally impossible to value with precision.
Assessing Charles’s inheritance and his net wealth would be easier without another quirk of the royal finances.
Wills are usually made public after probate is granted — partly to ensure executors have acted properly. But, under a convention dating back more than a century, those of senior royals are not open for public inspection.
What, if anything, the King inherited from his father is not known. Prince Philip’s will has not been made public.
The late Queen’s sealed will has been placed in a London safe with more than 30 others of senior royals who have died since 1910. Its location is another secret.
Source: The TImes
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