Billionaire Friend Ian Wace Reportedly Helping Fund Prince Harry and Meghan’s Return to Britain
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s unexpected move back to the United Kingdom has already raised questions about cost, security and family politics. A new report has added another: who is helping pay for it. According to Page Six, British hedge fund billionaire Ian Wace is assisting with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s relocation, drawing on a long private friendship that includes both social ties and a shared experience of family loss.
The claim is unconfirmed by either side. Page Six said two sources told the outlet that Wace is helping finance the move. Representatives for Harry and Meghan did not immediately respond. A spokesperson for Wace declined to comment. That caution matters. The report describes financial help, not a public contract or a disclosed gift, and no figure has been published.
Who Ian Wace is
Wace, 63, is a founding partner, chief executive and chief risk officer of Marshall Wace LLP, the London hedge fund he set up with Paul Marshall in 1997. Page Six put his fortune at about $1.2 billion. He is also known in British philanthropic circles as a co-founder of the children’s charity Absolute Return for Kids, or ARK. In other words, he is not a new acquaintance who appeared when the Sussexes needed a house. He has been part of a wealthy, well-connected London network that overlaps with parts of the royal world for years.
That overlap is personal as well as professional. Harry, 41, and Meghan, 45, have been close to Wace for a long time. In July, they took Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, to his private Scottish island, Tanera Mòr, according to reporting later picked up by Page Six and the Daily Mail. Meghan later posted an Instagram image that appeared to show the Scottish Highlands. Harry had visited the island before, in 2017, around the time Wace bought it. The property, the largest of the Summer Isles off the northwest Highlands, was purchased for a comparatively modest sum and has since been heavily restored, with reports of tens of millions spent on the island and its infrastructure.
A friendship with a private history
Coverage of the report has repeatedly pointed to a more painful connection. In September 1994, Wace’s first wife, Joanne, and their two young children, Guy and Alicia, were killed in a road crash in Hampshire. Contemporary accounts said Wace was travelling in another car and saw the accident. Harry lost his mother, Princess Diana, in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Page Six framed that shared history as an “emotional bond.” It is a sensitive comparison, and it should be treated as context for a private friendship rather than an explanation of a financial arrangement. Neither man has used the current story to discuss that past in public.
Meghan’s link to the Wace circle runs through Saffron Aldridge, the former model who married Wace in 2012. The couple later separated and divorced, with reports placing the split around 2023, but they are said to remain on friendly terms. In 2019, Harry, Meghan, Wace and Aldridge were seen together at a Cirque du Soleil performance at the Royal Albert Hall. British tabloids at the time said Aldridge had helped Meghan navigate aristocratic social life after her marriage. Aldridge is also known for children’s charity work, a cause the Sussexes have long emphasised. The Wace family has had wider royal connections too; Wace has been photographed at events with Prince William and Catherine.
The move itself
The financial question only matters because the relocation is real, sudden and expensive. On 19 August, it emerged that Harry and Meghan planned to leave California later that month and live in Britain for an extended period. Their children had already been enrolled in a British school and were due to start in September. They would not resume official royal duties. They would not move into a royal residence. They would keep their Montecito home and a holiday property in Portugal while setting up a private base in the UK. King Charles was informed only days before the news became public. A source told Page Six that Charles was “the reason they are moving back” and that he wanted more time with his son’s family. The BBC reported that the King welcomed the chance to see them in a private capacity.
On 26 August the family arrived, flying privately from California to Birmingham. Page Six later reported that they chartered a Bombardier Global Express through Planet 9, at an estimated $12,000 an hour for a journey of about 10 hours, putting the flight in the region of $120,000. A source said one reason for the private jet was to bring their dogs. A Sussex spokesman declined to comment on the arrival. There did not appear to be a visible official police presence as they left the airport.
Most reports place the new home in the Cotswolds, west of London and within reach of Highgrove, Charles and Queen Camilla’s country house. The exact address and the children’s school have been tightly guarded. The family lived in the Cotswolds briefly in 2018 before paparazzi found the property. Returning there would put them closer to Harry’s father while keeping distance from Windsor, where William and Catherine are based. Commentators have treated school enrolment as a sign the stay is meant to last more than a few months.
Security, money and unofficial royal life
Money is the other unresolved piece. Since stepping back from working royal roles in 2020, Harry and Meghan have not received Sovereign Grant funding. Harry spent years in court trying to restore a higher level of taxpayer-funded UK security and lost. Prime Minister Andy Burnham called security on their return a “private matter.” Estimates circulating in the British press for a full private protection operation have ranged from the low millions of pounds a year upward, depending on school runs, travel and whether both parents and both children need cover at once. None of those figures is official. If Wace is helping, the report does not say whether that help covers housing, security, moving costs, or something else.
The couple’s public line, through sources rather than a formal statement, is that they will continue their commercial work. Meghan is expected to keep running As Ever, her lifestyle brand, from Britain and to focus first on settling the children. Harry is expected to spend more time on UK-based charities, including Invictus-related work ahead of the 2027 Games in Birmingham. They remain fifth and sixth in some popular descriptions of the line of succession in press shorthand, but their official status is unchanged: non-working royals living as private citizens.
That combination — a high-cost private life, no palace salary, no confirmed state security package, and two children starting school — is why a billionaire friend’s name landed so quickly. Harry and Meghan have always relied on a mix of inheritance, commercial deals and wealthy supporters. Wace fits that pattern more closely than a sudden royal reconciliation does. He is British, rich, discreet, already inside their social circle, and connected to both Harry and Meghan through years of private hospitality rather than a single public appearance.
What the Page Six story does not settle is just as important as what it alleges. There is no confirmed sum. There is no statement from Wace, Harry or Meghan. There is no official confirmation that the Cotswolds house has been bought rather than rented. There is no final public answer on who pays for security now that the family is living in Britain rather than visiting. The palace has not recast them as working members of the royal household.
For now, the picture is simpler than the speculation around it. After six years in California, Harry and Meghan have brought Archie and Lilibet back to Britain, put them into school, and chosen a private life outside the official royal machine. A long-standing billionaire friend is reported to be helping them do it. Until someone on the record says otherwise, that is the story: not a restoration of royal funding, but a privately backed return.
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