King Charles’ firm The Crown Estate closes in on deal with Australian property giant

Australian property giant Lendlease is in the late stages of inking a 50/50 joint venture with King Charles’ property company, The Crown Estate, in the United Kingdom.

The $3.8 billion ASX-listed property developer responded to media speculation on Thursday saying it was in negotiations with the King’s company over six projects that are part of its UK development portfolio.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Royal Ascot last year. The racecourse is part of The Crown Estate.Credit: Getty

The Crown Estate is a collection of lands and holdings belonging to the reigning British monarch that sit under a for-profit corporation managed by an independent board and chair.

They are neither government property nor part of the monarch’s private estate.

King Charles’ private estate is the nine-bedroom Highgrove House in Gloucestershire and an audit by The Guardian suggests his personal wealth is estimated to be about £1.8 billion ($3.7 billion).

The Crown Estate is one of the UK’s largest property managers, controlling about £15.5 billion of urban and agricultural land, properties in the City of London and other areas, forests and half of the UK’s coastline. It includes Ascot Racecourse and Windsor Great Park.

Camilla, then-duchess of Cornwall, at Highgrove House in 2020.Credit: Getty

The corporation made £1.1 billion profit in 2024, of which 12 per cent went to the King and the rest to the British Treasury.

“Negotiations are in the late stages with The Crown Estate to enter a 50/50 joint venture,” Lendlease said.

The prospective deal will halve Lendlease’s future funding obligations, accelerate its master planning in the UK for government clients and generate future fee income, it said.

Lendlease said it would earn fees as the master developer of existing projects on behalf of the joint venture.

It expects to offset the cost of master planning and create further value by funding the venture through portfolio land sales.

“Lendlease’s immediate focus would be to continue to progress its master planning obligations, while retaining the rights for any vertical developments,” the statement said.

Lendlease chief executive Tony Lombardo has overseen a sweeping restructuring program, aiming to sell off $4.5 billion of overseas assets and funnel the cash into developing the company’s Australian operations.

The Crown Estate is one of the UK’s largest property managers, controlling about £15.5 billion ($32 billion) of land, including Windsor Great Park.Credit: Natalia Marshall

The change in direction was prompted by a long-running campaign from high-profile dissident investors led by John Wylie’s Tanarra Capital, which put pressure on the company’s managers to simplify its global business and focus instead on Australia.

The company announced in May last year that it would sell all its overseas construction divisions, most of which were in the US and UK, and end its decades-long quest to be a globally recognised property builder.

It subsequently sold half of its life sciences construction operations in Asia to a new joint venture entity with Warburg Pincus for $147 million and offloaded its US military housing business in a $480 million deal to Omaha Beach Investment Holdings.

Consigli Building Group concluded a deal last September to purchase a large chunk of the company’s construction operations on the US East Coast valued at $US1.8 billion, and took over its 400-strong workforce.

Early this year, Lendlease sold its UK construction business to Atlas Holdings for $70 million, marking the end of its international construction operations.

The company said in its half-year result in February that it had announced or finalised $2.2 billion under its capital restructure program and expected to hit its $2.8 billion target this financial year with a number of other transactions under negotiation.

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