Welcome to the billionaires\u2019 new piggy bank. A bank vault in a grade-II listed 120-year-old former mansion next to the Dorchester Hotel on London\u2019s Park Lane will open for business next week.<\/p>\n
This is no ordinary bank. This one will be slightly more discerning of its customers than the average high street bank branch. \u201cWe won\u2019t deal with millionaires,\u201d says Sean Hoey, managing director of the facility, run by International Bank Vaults (IBV)<\/a>. \u201cWe will be dealing only with billionaires.\u201d<\/p>\n Hoey, who was poached by IBV from Harrods where he was in charge of the Knightsbridge department store\u2019s safety deposit boxes<\/a>, claimed the new site would be \u201cfar more exclusive than Harrods\u201d.<\/p>\n It will definitely cost more, and that is a core part of the sales pitch. \u201cWe are the most expensive safety deposit box in London; actually, in the world,\u201d Hoey says. \u201cBut you know the saying, \u2018You get what you pay for,\u2019 and the customers here will be king.\u201d<\/p>\n The cheapest safety deposit box, which is just 5cm high, 16cm wide and 49cm deep, costs \u00a3600-a-year-to rent. That compares to \u00a3465 for a box twice the size in Harrods, and \u00a3240 in Metro Bank \u2013 the UK\u2019s largest supplier of safety deposit boxes with 150,000 boxes across 70 branches.<\/p>\n The smallest box is still big enough, Hoey says, to store a wide range of jewellery and \u201ca fair few gold bars \u2013 they\u2019re only the size of your mobile phone.\u201d If billionaires have more gold than that there are boxes the size of filing cabinets, and even a whole room for \u00a32.5m a year. \u201cWe have had a few enquiries about it.\u201d<\/p>\n IBV, which is owned by South African multimillionaire Ashok Sewnarain<\/a>, said it was opening the London vault due to spiking demand from the world\u2019s wealthiest people for safety deposit boxes, in fear of a possible reaction <\/a>against rising <\/a>inequality<\/a>. Hoey says the wealthy also fear the possible impact of the climate crisis, and are increasingly storing their wealth in gold bars as banks begin to charge them to store cash deposits<\/a>.<\/p>\n