The Duke of Westminster, long known as the UK’s richest property owner, has been knocked into fourth place as new money from Asia sweeps into the UK.
As Britain’s super-rich property market continues to boom, London has become “the real estate capital of the world”. The number of prestige houses being built in Westminster more than doubled in just the last two years.
The Duke has been at the top of the rich list for UK property for the last ten years, as compiled by the Estates Gazette magazine. Now he has been superseded by investors from China, Hong Kong, and the billionaire Reuben brothers who gathered their wealth from the aluminium trade, particularly in Russia.
A Chinese billionaire, Wang Jialin, tops the list. He chairs one of the country’s largest company of real estate developers and the world’s largest operator of cinema theatres. He has £10.4 billion worth of property including One Nine Elms, part of the South Bank regeneration project.
He is followed by Henry Cheng Kar-Shun whose Knight Dragon company agreed a £480 deal to regenerate land surrounding the O2 in London and has financed upmarket development in Knightsbridge.
The Duke of Westminster’s property company Grosvenor controls £12.5bn of property around the world, with assets including its historic estate in Mayfair and Belgravia, as well as the Liverpool One shopping complex.
Even with growth over the last year of £500m, the Duke only made it into fourth place with £8bn.
Describing the astonishing rise in London property prices, the editor of Estates Gazette explained: “It offers a safe haven in a turbulent world. It is an established hub for global businesses of all shapes and sized. And it is a market that can make shrewd investors fabulously wealthy.
