Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster

During the second half of the 20th century, the business expanded into the Americas and developed Annacis Island and Vancouver, both in British Columbia in the west of Canada in the 1950s.

Major General Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster, (22 December 1951 – 9 August 2016), was a British landowner, businessman, aristocrat, Territorial Army general, and peer.

He was the son of Robert Grosvenor, 5th Duke of Westminster, and Viola Lyttelton.

He was Chairman of the property company Grosvenor Group.

The family business started developing in Australia in the 1960s.

As Earl Grosvenor he joined the Territorial Army in 1970, as a trooper, family estate responsibilities having caused him to abandon a Regular Army career in the 9th/12th Lancers.

After entering RMA Sandhurst in 1973, he passed out as an officer cadet and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve of the Royal Armoured Corps (Queen's Own Yeomanry) on 13 May 1973.

He was promoted to lieutenant on 13 May 1975 and to captain on 1 July 1980.

Via Grosvenor Estates, the business he inherited along with the dukedom in 1979, the Duke was the richest property developer in the United Kingdom and one of the country's largest landowners, with property in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Oxford, Cambridge, Southampton and Cheshire, including the family's country seat of Eaton Hall, as well as 300 acre of Mayfair and Belgravia in Central London.

The business also has interests in other parts of Europe.

The Duke was also Director of Claridge's Hotel from 1981 until 1993, and of Marcher Sound from 1992 until 1997.

As a child, the Duke lived on an island in the middle of Lower Lough Erne in Northern Ireland (Ely Lodge, Blaney, County Fermanagh).

His early education was in Northern Ireland before he was sent at age 7 to Sunningdale School in Ascot, followed by Harrow.

Because of his Fermanagh accent, the Duke struggled to fit in at first, and even after his accent was "bullied" out of him, he found it difficult to make friends.

Unhappy at boarding school, his education suffered.

He left school with two O-levels in history and English.

He was promoted to the acting rank of major on 1 January 1985 and to the substantive rank on 22 December.

In the first-ever edition of The Sunday Times Rich List, published in 1989, he was ranked as the second richest person in the United Kingdom, with a fortune of £3.2 billion (approximately £ in today's value), with only Queen Elizabeth II above him.

Born in Northern Ireland, Grosvenor moved from an island in the middle of Lower Lough Erne to be educated at Sunningdale and Harrow boarding schools in the south of England.

After a troubled education, he left school with two O-levels.

They moved to Asia in the early 1990s and to Continental Europe just before the millennium.

He was Vice-President of the Royal Engineers Music Foundation 1990–94.

Promoted to lieutenant-colonel on 1 April 1992, he subsequently commanded the North Irish Horse, the Cheshire Yeomanry Squadron, founded by his ancestors, and the Queen's Own Yeomanry.

The Duke was President of the BLESMA from 1992, and the Yeomanry Benevolent Fund from 2005, national Vice-President of the Royal British Legion from 1993, and the Reserve Forces' Ulysses Trust from 1995, the Not Forgotten Society from 2004, and Chairman of the Nuffield Trust for the Forces of the Crown from 1992, all until his death.

He was promoted to colonel on 31 December 1994 and was appointed honorary colonel of the 7th Regt Army Air Corps (1 January 1996) and the Northumbrian Universities Officer Training Corps (30 November 1995).

The Duke was Grand Prior of the Priory of England of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem, 1995–2001.

In April 2000, the firm moved into new London offices.

The business was headed by the 6th Duke himself, who was Chairman of the Trustees.

Promoted to brigadier on 17 January 2000, he was also appointed Honorary Colonel of the Royal Mercian and Lancastrian Yeomanry on 14 May 2001.

He was also appointed Colonel-in-Chief of the Canadian Royal Westminster Regiment, the North Irish Horse, and as Colonel Commandant Yeomanry.

He entered the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and served in the Territorial Army, where he was promoted to major-general in 2004.

In 2004, he was appointed to the new post of Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Reserves and Cadets), with promotion in the rank of major-general.

In March 2007, having served in the Ministry of Defence as Assistant CDS for four years, he handed over responsibility for 50,000 reservists and 138,000 cadets to Major General Simon Lalor, in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal in which Westminster was also implicated.

The Duke became Deputy Commander Land Forces (Reserves) in May 2011.

He retired from the Armed Forces in 2012.

According to The Sunday Times Rich List in 2016, the Duke was worth £9.35 billion, placing him sixth on the list and making him the third-richest British citizen.

The Duke died on 9 August 2016 after suffering a heart attack.

The title then passed to his son, Hugh.

The Grosvenor family's first development was in Mayfair, Central London, in the early 18th century; the second big development came around 100 years later and was in another exclusive part of London – Belgravia, developed by the family after the end of Napoleonic Wars and the conversion of Buckingham Palace – which is just one mile east.

After developing the two parts of Central London, the family business expanded.