Not giving any ground

The UK Sunday Times rich list has told over the years the changing nature of the owners of Britain’s largest wallets.

The prime trophy properties of Kensington Palace Gardens have been snapped up by a global plutocracy whose fortunes may have originated in the back end of Russia or the steamier parts of Mumbai, but the old family Brits who still make the newspaper’s list do so largely because their ancestors were cunning or lucky enough to own large swathes of what grew into London.

Names such as Grosvenor, Cadogan, Portland and Howard de Walden bear witness to what a substantial London property holding can do for one’s fortunes over time — and they think and plan in generational terms, oblivious to the occasional adjustment in the market.

This is the arena in which Capital & Counties is playing, and the pasting it has been given by the market over the past 18 months may prove to have been a bit overenthusiastic for a company that is holding onto one irreplaceable asset in Covent Garden and a whole lot of potential in Earl’s Court.

The market has been wobbly ever since Brexit put a large question mark over Europeans’ right to stay in the

UK, and the high-end residential segment has been caned by government’s decision to whack stamp duty through the roof.

But the likelihood is that some sort of less than entirely self-defeating solution will be muddled through to both problems, and London will continue to be seen as a destination of choice across the world — in which case the firm will be sitting pretty.

Names such as Grosvenor, Cadogan, Portland and Howard de Walden bear witness to what a London property holding can do for one’s fortunes over time