The king's billions: A tour of UK's £17b royal empire

On Saturday morning, King Charles III will leave Buckingham Palace in a six-horse-drawn carriage en route to Westminster Abbey. The 1.3 mile (2.1 kilometers) route doesn't just convey him to his coronation — it also provides a snapshot of the various strands of the unique fortune he now sits atop.

If he turns to his left as the Diamond Jubilee State Coach passes down the Mall, he'll see the cream-colored mansions of Carlton House Terrace. Their marble staircases, ballrooms and sweeping views of St. James's Park make them among the world's most desirable properties — and many of them belong to the UK sovereign through the Crown Estate.

A few hundred meters later, the procession will swing to the right around Trafalgar Square. If he cranes his neck, the King may then spot the Art-Deco office close to the five-star Savoy hotel that also supports his royal fiefdom through the Duchy of Lancaster.

The route underscores how the two main entities that help to fund the British monarch are now serving the house of Windsor's new head. It's a byzantine collection of assets that includes riverbeds, castles and sandstone quarries.

Officially established as long ago as 1351, the two estates bestow the UK monarch with assets valuable enough to put Charles III among the world's 100 richest people. But the fortune behind Britain's head of state is wholly different to those of most other wealthy families.

For one, Charles doesn't personally own the most prized royal assets. The nation's monarchy and its possessions — including the Crown Jewels and the royal art collection — belong to the ruling sovereign, but it's not their private property and cannot be sold by them for personal gain.

Instead, Charles, 74, is entitled as Britain's sovereign to a chunk of income from the Crown Estate — the largest of the investment entities underpinning the UK monarch — as well as from the Duchy of Lancaster.

The estates serving the monarch oversee total assets of about £17 billion ($21 billion) with their net values together rising about 80% on average over the past decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That largely mirrors rising land and property prices across the UK.

The coronation is "showcasing the Crown Estate, which is really GB plc," said George Gross, a visiting research fellow at King's College London who teaches on the history of such royal ceremonies. "This is all about putting Britain center stage of the news all weekend."

For their official duties, the royal family are funded through the Sovereign Grant, an annual lump sum derived from a 1760 agreement between the monarch and the UK government. It's typically as much as quarter of the profits from the Crown Estate, whose holdings include Regent Street, a popular retail destination featuring high-end fashion stores as well as toy shop Hamleys.

"We're unique, we sit between the private and public sector under this parliamentary remit to serve the country,'' Dan Labbad, chief executive officer of the Crown Estate said on Bloomberg Television Thursday.

The grant for the year to March 2023 is £86.3 million, unchanged from the 2022 period, when most of the proceeds went towards maintaining royal palaces and staff compensation.

Profits from the Duchy of Lancaster, which owns 18,481 hectares (45,667 acres) of land across England and Wales, provide income for the UK's sovereign and has helped to fund the activities of other British royals.

While the Duchy of Lancaster publishes a set of annual accounts, it doesn't provide a full breakdown of funding arrangements for individual members of the royal family. 

The royals' finances are "very murky," said Laura Clancy, a Lancaster University media lecturer, who has researched Britain's monarchy. "They're like a corporation. People don't put them in that bracket very often."

Though Charles doesn't personally own the orb and sceptre he'll hold as part of the coronation ceremony, there are plenty of perks to becoming Britain's sovereign that are beyond the reach of even the world's richest individuals.

The monarch doesn't face inheritance tax on anything received from their predecessor, providing an incentive for Queen Elizabeth II to pass on the bulk of her personal wealth to her eldest son. She had a fortune of at least $450 million before her death in September, according to an estimate by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

That was largely derived from her own tax-free inheritance along with one of the world's biggest stamp collections. The UK's standard inheritance tax rate is 40%.

Charles is ascending the throne aged almost 50 years older than his mother did at the start of her reign. That means he's had a chance to build up his personal wealth over the six decades he held the title of the Prince of Wales, who receives a separate income through another estate, the Duchy of Cornwall.

That paid out more than £400 million over the past three decades from assets including the Oval cricket ground, farmland and even a Devon prison, with Charles using the proceeds to fund himself and his family as well as his charitable activities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Part of that total also helped to fund his multi-million pound divorce settlement with Princess Diana during the 1990s. Their eldest son, William, 40, is now Prince of Wales, while their youngest, Harry, 38, is no longer serving as a working royal and lives in the US with Meghan Markle, 41.

Charles, who voluntarily pays income tax, currently has a personal fortune of more than $800 million if he received most of Queen Elizabeth's estate and saved a slice of his annual proceeds from the Duchy of Cornwall, according to Bloomberg's wealth index. His assets now include Sandringham and Balmoral castles, as well as the land that surrounds those estates.

"The monarch is able to accumulate wealth as well as the heir to the throne," said David Haigh, chief executive officer of consultancy Brand Finance.

Charles has already sold off some horses Queen Elizabeth previously owned, giving a glimpse into his inheritance of his mother's personal wealth, but the precise details of what Charles received from the Queen's personal fortune will likely remain a secret along with those of her ancestors.

Those assets belonging to the monarchy itself won't feature, of course. Properties like Windsor Castle are simply occupied by the sovereign and held in trust for future generations. 

The most valuable of all is Buckingham Palace, where Charles will return on Saturday after retracing his route from Westminster Abbey in an even grander carriage — the four-ton Gold State Coach, drawn by eight horses. He may not own the palace but the King's official London residence gives him a lifestyle most billionaires can only dream of: it has an estimated value of £1.3 billion on the open market.

Meantime, the coronation celebrations are set to provide a boost of as much as £180 million to the UK economy through pubs, bars and restaurants making the most of the festivities, according to research from Barclays Plc, possibly offsetting estimated overall costs for staging the event that will kickstart his reign.

"It's fairly difficult to step into the shoes of a fairy-tale queen who was in the job for 70 years," said Haigh, whose firm has previously estimated that Britain's monarchy brings in more than £1 billion a year to its nation. "He has now got a job on his hands to reboot the monarchy for modern society."

— With assistance by Samuel Dodge, Alex Morgan, Jody Megson and Tom Maloney

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.