Meet the Duke of Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor – the British royal millennial who is richer than Queen Elizabeth
He avoided paying estate taxes on a US$12.3 billion inheritance, he is the owner of luxury property developer Grosvenor Group and keeps his personal life private
Widely touted in the British tabloids as one of the UK’s most eligible bachelors, 29-year-old Hugh Grosvenor, the current Duke of Westminster and godfather to Prince George, is also one of the world’s wealthiest millennials. Grosvenor took up the title on the death of his father in 2016, Major General Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the 6th Duke of Westminster.
The peerage title was created by Queen Victoria in 1874 when one of Grosvenor’s namesakes, Hugh Grosvenor, the 3rd Marquess of Westminster, became the first Duke. Since then the family has become entrenched in London’s landscape, both literally and figuratively.
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Regardless of how much Forbes magazine praised Kylie Jenner as “self-made”, Hugh Grosvenor has made no attempt to hide the very public fact he had a hand in his wealth, inheriting a shade more than £10 billion (US$12.3 billion) from his father. Among the estates he now owns are properties in elite Belgravia and Mayfair, and the historic and storied Grosvenor Square is named for the family. His personal wealth bests that even of Queen Elizabeth’s personal £429.3 million (admittedly of the monarchy’s massive US$88 billion) fortune.
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Courting controvers y
Over the years his family tried its best to keep Hugh from the media spotlight, and little is known about the private man, aside from the fact he attended Ellesmere College and Newcastle University before working with a green energy firm in the mid-2010s. He has three sisters and is now the owner of the Grosvenor Group, one of London’s most elite property developers.
Unlike Jenner, however, Grosvenor got caught in the crossfire for his inheritance, a trust of which he is the beneficial, not legal, owner, exempting the fortune from the UK’s considerable 40 per cent inheritance tax. As reported in The Guardian, the inheritance renewed calls for tax reform, particularly where the public interest is concerned. The Grosvenor family owns thousands of hectares of urban and rural land.