King Charles III Oversees $42 Billion In Assets

As King Charles III, the monarch will now preside over an estimated $42 billion in assets, the majority of which are held in trust for royal family successors and the nation, Forbes reports.

Real estate comprises the majority of the assets, the most eminent being Buckingham Palace, worth $4.9 billion.

The biggest real estate portfolio is the $17.5 billion Crown Estate, which owns London’s prime Regent Street shopping area and the Ascot Racecourse. The Tower of London is also the property of the royals.

Profits Earmarked

Each of these real estate portfolios earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year. While the royal family receives a percentage of these profits, the British government earmarks a large percentage for maintaining the royal properties and their staffs.

For instance, the Crown Estate earned a net profit of $361 million in fiscal year 2022. The British Treasury gives a Sovereign Grant of 25% of the net profit of the Crown Estate from two financial years earlier to the royals. In 2022, the Sovereign Grant was $99.6 million.

Ten percent of that money, $39.8 million this year, went toward maintaining Buckingham Palace, and another 15% was for the royal family’s travel, formal events, housekeeping and payroll.

King Charles also inherited his mother Queen Elizabeth’s $500 million of personal assets, which include her jewelry, art, rare stamps, horse farm and personal investments. Two of the Queen’s private homes were her castle in Balmoral, Scotland, and Sandringham estate in England.

A 1993 agreement with the British government permits royal family members to leave inheritances tax free, and this applies to King Charles’ inheritance from the Queen.

Crown Jewels

Like other royals, the King has access “in right of the Crown” to all of the royal jewelry, artwork, castles, palaces and estates—many of which go back centuries. Paintings include works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Caravaggio and Leonardo Da Vinci.

The King and other members of the royal family also have access to countless other trappings, of course. The King made his London debut in his mother’s Rolls Royce Phantom VI, presented to her in 1977 for her Silver Jubilee.