That’s rich
What the megawealthy really do with their billions
One client flew his wife’s pet poodle around the world in a private jet with not one but two vets
When the rich are truly rich, the only obstacle to excess is imagination. What can you buy that nobody else has even thought of? These are the concerns of Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, the top 1per cent of the top 1per cent, who have already got the yacht, the plane and the mansions, and are on to the next big thing. In the case of Lewis Hamilton, it’s buying a £16million private jet, then painting it red.
Forget having a fleet of Aston Martins. What you want is an Aston Martin submarine, which you can park in the hull of your superyacht and use for stealth missions to other yacht parties when the Med is teeming with paps. This is no joke, but a new reality, code-named Project Neptune, unveiled at the Monaco Boat Show in September. The sleek little subs are a joint venture with Triton, who make exploration submarines, and will have space for a pilot and two passengers. Only 12 are expected to be available every year, with a price tag of £3million, about twice the cost of Aston Martin’s most expensive car, the One-77.
As they say in Texas, if it flies, or floats or f---s, rent it. In other words, canny billionaires don’t buy their planes or boats or lovers, but lease them (possibly to yourself, as Hamilton did to avoid a £3million VAT bill). These sorts may be tempted by the services of Usher Me, a kind of Uber but for the super-rich. For £1,225 per hour, you can be transported around London in a Rolls-royce Phantom, with a driver who speaks English and actually knows where he’s going. But then, why not just use your own driver and fleet of supercars?
Toys form only part of the typical UHNWI’S shopping list. What they really crave is power, and world domination, or preferably the universe. Take Elon Musk (£14.7billion), the 46-year-old founder of Tesla.
His company Spacex has struck a $1.6billion deal with Nasa to explore and potentially colonise Mars. Because the world is just not enough. Jostling just ahead of him in the space race is Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and world’s richest man (£69billion). His Blue Origin venture has already sent a rocket up there six times, with the goal of developing a means to transport people and satellites around space.
Back on planet earth, Bezos likes to buy a newspaper. Not just one copy, but the whole business, as he did in 2013, buying The Washington Post for $250million. It gives him the power to challenge Donald Trump, a longstanding adversary, though allies say he has no editorial influence, and just likes the idea of promoting journalism.
In the case of Lord Cadogan (£6.5billion), wealth means being able to close a restaurant if you feel like it. Which was what happened in 2010, when he had a bad lunch at Oriel, the Sloane Square brasserie. “I didn’t like the food and the prices are far too high,” he harrumphed, so he declined to renew the restaurant’s lease – he owned the premises, along with 93 acres of Kensington and Chelsea. Another billionaire closed a nightclub in the south of France after a personal slight. He was partying with friends when the owner ushered him off a VIP table to make way for a better-looking trio of friends. He called the concierge service, Quintessentially, which arranged a meeting with the club’s owner, and by the evening’s end the club had been bought and closed down.
For the bored UHNWI, bespoke experiences are a useful way to liven up a dull morning. Aaron Simpson, cofounder of Quintessentially, says one client has booked a £1million kidnap experience, lasting three months. Not how most of us would choose to spend it. But this philosophy extends to experiences like shopping. For the mega-rich, trawling down Bond Street in search of a handbag is somewhat infra dig. What they want is to fly into Milan for a private tour of the Prada store, free of other customers. Or, even better, to have the clothes made bespoke for them, a practice popular with the Queen. One Savile Row tailor tells me it’s not unusual to be dispatched for a fitting to the other side of the world – his client will send a private jet to collect him, or failing that, a pair of first class tickets.
Of course, having an army of staff is obligatory, as are the services of at least one international concierge service. Fees for these start at £5,000 per year, going up to £150,000 for the full package, which includes a personal lifestyle manager, who will coordinate your life and staff, and attend to whatever whim pops into your head. One Quintessentially client recently flew his wife’s pet poodle around the world in a private jet with not one but two vets, in case one of them fell ill. The cost was half a million, but as he saw it, that was cheaper than the consequences of said poodle kicking the bucket.
Others are more interested in finding ways to keep themselves alive for ever. Google co-founder Sergey Brin (£36 billion) is a leading figure in the “life-extension community”, having sunk more than $1billion into his “longevity lab”, Calico. His team of well-paid Silicon Valley scientists are beavering away on “solving death”, which, through cryonics and gene therapy, they see as a surmountable problem, rather than an inevitability. Those who die before the problem is “solved” are having their heads or whole bodies frozen, in the hope that they can be revived once technology is in place. One facility in Arizona, Alcor, already has over 150 people in the deep-freeze, with prices ranging from $80,000 for just the head, or $200,000 for the full cadaver.
There is, of course, no point having all this money if North Korea follows up on threats to wipe out the West. Some UHNWIS have already bought bolt-holes in remote places where they can ride out the apocalypse. Bloomberg and the New Yorker reported on a trend among Silicon Valley tech geeks to buy isolated farms in New Zealand. In 2015 Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel bought a £4.5million house by a lake near Wanaka, along with 193 hectares, on the South Island. These neuroses are fuelling a mini property boom and housing crisis in New Zealand, where Americans are second only to Australians in buying up land – to wit, the incoming prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has proposed a ban on non-domicile buyers.
But perhaps the most extravagant gesture is the simplest – to give it all away. That’s what Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are doing through Giving Pledge, their charitable foundation that encourages fellow UHNWIS to donate half their wealth to charity. Because once you’re Bill Gates rich, giving away half still leaves you with £34 billion. Which is enough for a comfortable retirement, by anyone’s standards.