In 1989, Her Majesty made headlines as she was placed at the top of the Sunday Times Rich List. This caused controversy as her finances included state assets that were not personally hers.
The Queen was listed as the wealthiest person in the United Kingdom with a net worth of £5.2 billion. In today’s value, that equates to about £13.2 billion. In the original list of the country’s 200 richest people, only 86 of them had made their fortunes themselves. Others on the list who earned top spots that year included the Duke of Westminster and Lord Sainsbury.
First published on 2 April 1989, the paper called the list an “indictment of Thatcherism.” At the time of publishing, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been in power for almost ten years. The report’s author, Philip Beresford stopped counting the value of things such as the royal art collection, things that could not really be described as The Queen’s personal wealth.
Beresford told BBC News about the change: “When I first started 25 years ago about two-thirds of the rich list were people who had inherited their wealth.
“Today, approaching 80% are self-made and that’s really a legacy of the Thatcher years.”
Peter York, the market researcher, and cultural commentator also spoke to the BBC on the 1989 list and its changes: “Just shows you that development works in arrears to what you think is happening”.
“The Thatcher revolution bore fruit in the sense that the home-grown money started to show itself in the mid-1990s.”
Since the report first began, The Queen has dropped out of the top 200 as a result of the decision by Beresford to stop accounting for things that weren’t considered her personal wealth.
