How rich is the Queen

It's difficult to avoid the royal wedding, so, as this blog is about money, let's look at the wealth of the royals, starting with the queen, and one of her favourite castles.

Her private wealth is estimated at $500 million.
This comes from property, including Balmoral Castle in Scotland (above),  stud farms, a fruit farm, and marine land throughout the UK, extensive art and fine jewellery and one of the world's largest stamp collections, started by her grandfather.

In the lists of the rich $500 million is not very impressive.  That is because most of her wealth is tied to her position and belongs to the Crown Estate and not to her personally. That includes $10 billion worth of property, plus Buckingham Palace, worth an extra $5 billion approx, and the royal art collection.
She also receives from the government an annual  stipend of $12.9 million.

Of course, that $500 million personal wealth is only an estimate.  It would be odd if someone in possession of that amount of personal money did not follow the suggestions of her advisers and place some of her money off shore.  I suspect we are looking at the tip of the iceberg here, because of course the figure given concerns only those assets that can be readily traced.

(I've given value in dollars, following Forbes research).

Tomorrow, let's look at what we know of the financial affairs of her son, the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, and his sons, including the bridegroom to be, Prince William.

Seeing 2011 in

Before work starts in earnest tomorrow, let's look at where some of the wealthy and powerful are spending the New Year break.

The Chancellor, George Osborne, is in Switzerland. At Klosters apparently, tho' his office said Davos, where the annual World Economic Forum is held. Of the two I prefer Davos - but there's not a lot in it, the two resorts are only 10km apart and share the same ski slopes.

The Royals prefer Klosters. This gorgeous shot above  is of Klosters at night, (thanks to the skisafari.com site who will tailor-make skiing hols for you, if you'd like to join the royals and George.)

Davos was immortalised in literature in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and its dry, pollen free air has attracted a lot of health research institutes, who have settled there.

If you need a hotel in Davos, George when last there stayed at the Fluela Hotel, pictured R. It's a traditional 5-star, been going since 1868 and the same family still own it. They say no more than 130 guests and no less thant 90 staff to care for them -  and it's opposite the train station. Crackling log fires and a pianist in the bar - and it greatly endears itself to me because it allows pets.  No charge for the animals, but their food is extra - come on, now, you can't have everything.  I think Mr Osborne shows a lot of taste in having picked this hotel to stay in on an earlier visit.

And where is Mr Roman Abramovich?  Doing something quiet and low key for the New Year,  I expect.  But perhaps not.  Next post coming up.