Pink Rolls Royce, 'Hitler's car' and jet planes…luxury life of half-British Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar now crowned King of Malaysia
MALAYSIA's new monarch is truly living the life befitting a king with more than 300 ultra-luxury cars and his own private jet fleet.
Billionaire Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar, 65, boasts an estate estimated to be worth around £4.5 billion, but his real wealth is believed to be much greater.
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The new King's private jet fleet includes a gold-and-blue aircraft Boeing 737, where the family had their private profits army.
That is rivaled only by his collection of approximately 300 luxury vehiclesincluding a pink Rolls Royce and a car that none other than Adolf Hitler gave to his predecessors.
The unique 1936 Mercedes 540 with gull-wing doors was the only one of its kind ever built.
It was given to the great-great-grandfather of the current sultan by Adolf Hitler just three years before the start of the WWII.
The German dictator was a close personal friend of the then monarch and apparently tipped him off to the fact that the car would be available.
Considering the incredible history of the car, if the King ever decided to sell it, it would probably fetch millions of pounds.
The luxurious Istana Bukit Serene, his official palace, also reflects his family's fortunes.
Thanks to him, the sultan – half-British – is one of the richest men in the country company empire that ranges from real estate to telecom and current plants.
He also has vast interests in international real estate and stakes in a variety of other companies.
Although the estimated family fortune is estimated at $5.7 billion by Bloomberg, the true extent of Sultan Ibrahim's wealth is believed to go much further.
His holdings include a 24% stake in U Mobile, one of its stocks Malaysia's largest mobile service providers, with additional investments in private and public companies worth $588 million (£465 million).
He also owns $4 billion worth of land in Singapore, including Tyersall Park, a large plot of land next to the Botanical Gardens.
The sultan's investment portfolio is worth $1.1 billion (£869 million), thanks to significant cash flow from stock and property purchases.
He was sworn in as Malaysia's new king on Wednesday under a unique rotating monarchy system, in which the rulers of nine Malaysian states take turns as monarchs for five-year terms.
On Wednesday, Ibrahim, the king of Johor state, took his oath of office at the royal palace in the presence of other royal families, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and cabinet members.
A coronation ceremony will take place later.
Known as the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong, or He Who is Made Lord, the king fulfills a primarily ceremonial role, with the prime minister and parliament exercise of administrative power.
But the king is the formal leader of the government and armed forces, and he is widely regarded as the defender of Islam and Malay tradition.
All laws, cabinet appointments and the dissolution of parliament for general elections require his assent.
The king also has the power to declare a state of emergency and pardon criminals.
But in an interview with Singapore's The Straits Times in December, billionaire Sultan said he was not keen on becoming a “puppet king”.
'There are 222 of you [lawmakers] in parliament. There are more than 30 million [population] outside. I'm not with you, I'm with them,” he said in the newspaper.
“I will support the government, but if I think they are doing something inappropriate, I will tell them.”
Sultan Ibrahim is considered a religious moderate. In 2017, he ordered the owner of a laundromat to apologize for suspected discrimination against non-Muslim customers.
Married with six children, he has previously made annual trips around Johor on a Harley Davidson motorcycle charity to the poor.
Criticism that is perceived as encouraging contempt for the king can result in jail time.
A half-British king
The new king of Malaysia has historical ties with the English seaside resort of Torquay and is therefore half-British.
A Victorian seaside town, Torquay was often visited by the British and European monarchies at its height.
The Russian royal family, the Romanovs, established a private residence on a nearby headland and hosted nobles from all over the continent during their stay on the Devon coast, which they also rented out to visiting dukes and duchesses.
Torquay has since fallen out of favor with the rich and famous, but ties with the monarchy have been reignited by the coronation of the half-British billionaire as King of Malaysia.
Sultan Ibrahim's British mother first met her Malaysian royal husband at a dinner in Torquay in 1955 while he was studying local government.
Josephine Trevorrow, the teenage daughter of a Cornish merchant, was living at the English Riviera resort as an art student when she met Mahmud Iskandar, a Malay prince, and they married ten months later, much to the dismay of his Orthodox compatriots.
They divorced in 1962 after six years of marriage and four children, of which Ibrahim was the third. Josephine remarried four years later, but had no more children.
She died in 2018 at the age of 82 in London and her body was taken to Malaysia by her son for a royal funeral.
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