Arsenal may not have won the Premier League this season, but when it comes to
buying a home in London, Alisher
Usmanov, the Uzbekistan-born billionaire who recently acquired a £120m
stake in the club, is not prepared to settle for anything less than the best.
Usmanov, 54 – who entered The Sunday Times Rich List this year at number five,
with an estimated £5.73 billion fortune – has just paid £48m for Beechwood,
a stucco-fronted Regency pile set in 11 acres of secluded wooded parkland on
the edge of Hampstead Heath in north London.
The sale of the house, formerly owned by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani,
the Emir of Qatar, demonstrates the continuing strength of the top end of
the capital’s property market. The transaction, in the name of a company
registered in the Isle of Man and believed to be owned by Usmanov, was
completed in March, according to Land Registry documents seen by The Sunday
Times. Rollo Head, a London-based spokesman for the tycoon, declined to
comment on the deal.
Usmanov, who runs a metal-and-media business empire that spans three
continents, already owns a 30-acre estate on “billionaire’s row”, on the
outskirts of Moscow, as well as a villa in Sardinia. In 2004, he bought
Sutton Place, a Grade I-listed mansion set in 300 acres near Guildford,
Surrey, for £10m, but managed to keep the purchase secret until last year.
The property is only 25 miles from Fyning Hill, the 440-acre West Sussex
estate of Roman
Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea FC.
The two Russians have known each other since the early 1990s, when both were
setting out in business – Usmanov employed Olga, Abramovich’s first wife, in
his first big venture, manufacturing and selling branded plastic bags to the
emerging Russian middle classes. Although not close business associates, the
two men have remained in touch. When the opportunity arose to buy into
Arsenal, he consulted the Chelsea boss, who told him: “It’s a great club, go
for it.” Usmanov initially bought a 14.58% stake, which he increased to 23%
a month later, making him the second-largest shareholder.
A smart London home has become de rigueur for any self-respecting
oligarch since Abramovich bought a small flat on Lowndes Square, in
Knightsbridge, in the late 1990s. Usmanov wanted a substantial place in
London and is believed to have been looking for somewhere suitably grand for
two years. Beechwood clearly fitted the bill.
When it went on sale in January last year, priced at £65m, it was the most
expensive private house on the market in London, and one of the most
discreetly marketed. No sales brochures were produced and only one
photograph of the property, which cannot be seen from the road, is in
circulation. Only a few hand-picked individuals were invited to view it.
Savills estate agency, believed to be the appointed selling agent, declined
to comment when approached by The Sunday Times.
“Buyers at this level don’t want to be seen to be so wantonly extravagant,”
says Robert Bailey, whose eponymous agency specialises in finding homes for
the super-rich. “Both sellers and buyers prefer to make it known discreetly
to a select group of interested parties that it is available.”
Beechwood, which lies behind elaborate wrought-iron gates in one of the most
exclusive parts of London, was built in 1840. The Grade II-listed house was
designed by the architect George Basevi, whose commissions included the
Fitz-william Museum, in Cambridge, and Belgrave Square, one of the grandest
in the capital.
The emir, whose fortune has been estimated by Forbes magazine at $1 billion,
bought the house in the late 1970s from the Saudi royal family. He built an
indoor swimming pool, converted the squash court into extra staff
accommodation and installed a state-of-the-art security system. The
interior, however, is not thought to be quite so smart, and Usmanov is
expected to upgrade it to meet the 21st-century standards of the super-rich.
“It is luxurious, but dated,” says one property expert who has visited the
house. “It obviously had a lot of money spent on it in the 1980s, but anyone
buying it now would want to start again. It is very special, though. The
site is fantastic.” Another says: “It is one of very few estates in London.
It is a magnificent listed property, set in incredible grounds and
surrounded by trees.”
Beechwood’s main house has a reception hall, a drawing room, two dining rooms
and a first-floor sitting room/dining room, as well as eight bedroom suites.
A three-bed guest bungalow, eight-room staff quarters, a six-room pool house
and a two-bed gatehouse take the total living space to 32,488 sq ft. A
covenant prohibits any further building on the site.
At £48m, the deal – although substantially below the initial asking price – is
one of the most expensive ever struck for a London home. Four years ago, Lakshmi
Mittal, Britain’s richest man, paid a record £57m for a 12-bedroom
mansion on Kensington Palace Gardens, in central London. That record was
broken in February, when Elena Franchuk, a Ukranian businesswoman and
philanthropist, bought a 10-bedroom house on Upper Phillimore Gardens, in
Kensington, for £80m. It is still undergoing renovation and may not be ready
to move into for a couple of years.
The privacy that owning 11 acres close to central London allows is a big pull
– Michael Cherney, 56, a Russian-Israeli oligarch, is thought to have
expressed an early interest in the property. For Usmanov, another bonus is
its proximity to Arsenal’s Emirates stadium, a short drive away.
Usmanov was born in 1953 in Chust, a small spa town in the former Soviet
Central Asian republic. His father was a deputy state prosecutor in the
capital, Tashkent, and he enjoyed a relatively privileged upbringing. In
1980, during the Communist years,he was sentenced to eight years in a penal
colony forfraud and embezzlement on trumped-up charges. He was released
early in 1986 and the convictions were later overturned by Uzbekistan’s
supreme court.
In the 20 years since, Usmanov has married his childhood sweetheart, Irina,
and built a huge business empire, based largely on gas and steel. He is now
a senior adviser to Gazprom, the world’s biggest extractor of natural gas,
and the president of one of its subsidiaries, and is on good personal terms
with Vladimir Putin, the former Russian president, and his successor Dmitry
Medvedev.
The tycoon sits on the board of trustees of the Bolshoi Theatre, is president
of the European Fencing Confederation (in his youth, he was a keen fencer)
and recently paid about £30m for the art collection of the late cellist
Mstislav Rostropovich, pouncing just before it was due to go under the
hammer at Sotheby’s in London. He donated the collection to the Russian
state.
He also clearly has a liking for fine English houses. Sutton Place, which has
10 reception rooms and six bedrooms, was built in 1524 and given by Henry
VIII to a courtier, Sir Richard Weston, in return for condemning Lord
Buckingham to death. Jean Paul Getty, the eccentric philanthropist, lived
there from the late 1950s until his death in 1976. The house, which changed
hands twice thereafter, was in a poor state when Usmanov bought it. He has
told friends he plans to restore it to its former splendour.
While Beechwood has been snapped up, several other hugely expensive London
houses remain on sale – among them Witanhurst, a magnificent Grade II-listed
25-bedroom mansion, also in Hampstead, which, at 40,000 sq ft, is said to be
the largest house in the capital after Buckingham Palace. The property,
which has a guide price of £75m, is being marketed by Trevor Abrahamson,
managing director of Glentree Estates, who so far this year has sold two
properties – Toprak Mansion for £50m and Palladio for £35m.
Agents say the owners of London’s most expensive houses frequently receive
unsolicited offers from people wanting to buy, even though they are not on
the market. As reported in The Sunday Times this month, Jon Hunt, 54, the
multimillionaire founder of Foxtons estate agency, recently rejected an
approach from Mittal’s son Aditya, 32, to buy his mansion at 10 Kensington
Palace Gardens for a sum believed to have been more than £100m.
“London is the capital of capitals,” Abrahamson says. “Prime ministers,
monarchs, sultans and international business-men see it as a second home.
For that reason, they all want a property here that reflects their machismo
and success.
“It used to be that a 100ft boat was big, but today even 200ft is not so
large. These people spend £30-£50m on a boat, so why wouldn’t they spend
£50m on a house?” Lakshmi Mittal paid a record £57m for his home on
Kensington Palace Gardens
Premier piles
Many of Britain’s home-grown millionaires are being battered by the credit
crunch, but the growing legion of the foreign super-rich based here has
helped boost prices at the top end of the market.
Top of The Sunday Times Rich List is Lakshmi Mittal, 57, whose family fortune
is estimated at £27.7 billion. Four years ago, the Indian-born steel magnate
paid a world-record £57m to Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One supremo, for
a house in London’s exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens. He has since
renovated the 12-bedroom house, and his son Aditya, 32, has reportedly tried
to buy a house on the street. Mittal Sr also owns the Summer Palace, a
25,000 sq ft property on the Bishops Avenue, north London.
Mittal, who has a stake in Queens Park Rangers, shares a passion for property
and football with Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea boss, who is number two on
the Rich List. The Russian oligarch, 41, has submitted plans to convert the
two terraced houses he owns on Lowndes Square, on Knightsbridge, into a
single 30,000 sq ft house with a pool. Local agents say the final value
could be £150m. This is on top of a £20m country estate in Sussex, villas on
the Med and a mansion in Moscow. His latest investments include a ski chalet
with a 200-acre estate in Colorado.
The Duke
of Westminster, third on the list and the richest property developer in
Britain, owns vast estates in Scotland, Lancashire and central London, but
home is Eaton Hall, in Cheshire.
In fourth place – just above Usmanov – are Sri
and Gopi Hinduja. The Indian-born brothers, worth £6.2 billion, are
creating a 62,000 sq ft palace in Carlton House Terrace, on the Mall.
Click here for the full Rich List
Beechwood used to belong to my great-grandfather, Walter Tibbitt. I have a photograph taken outside on my great-grandparents' golden wedding anniverary. My grandma used to keep a copy of Harper's Bazaar with an article celebrating its sale in the 60s to a Sheikh for £1m.
Sarah Beattie, Ste Dode,