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According to its Arab billionaires rankings, the total wealth of the region's billionaires rose to $121.3bn from last year's figure of $117.6bn.
Topping the ranking was Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud with an estimated fortune of $18bn, although figures verified by his private office to Arabian Business said Alwaleed's fortune was estimated at $21.3bn.
Prince Alwaleed was followed in second place by Lebanese-Brazilian billionaire Joseph Safra with $13.8bn to his name.
Both Saudi Arabia and Lebanon led the way on the list with eight billionaires each.
Despite recent political turmoil, Egypt was runner up with seven billionaires, followed by the UAE with a total of four.
However, this year's major headline was newcomer to the billionaires club, Morocco, which entered the ranking with three billionaires – Miloud Chaabi, Othman Benjelloun and Anas Sefrioui.
Kuwait ranked sixth with two billionaires, Bassam and Kutayba Alghanim, although the wealthy Al-Kharafi family was removed from the ranking following a formal request from the Kharafi Group.
Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Sudan also featured in the ranking with one billionaire each.
One of the success stories this year was Sulaiman Al-Rajhi & family, ranked in fifth place with a family net worth of $5.9bn.
The Saudi banking tycoon-turned-philanthropist made headlines last year with an unprecedented decision to relinquish much of his fortune; distributing his wealth among family and donating a significant proportion to charity.
Also highlighted was Moroccan frontrunner Miloud Chaabi, ranked 10th with a fortune of $2.9bn.
Following a religious education, he started working at the age of 15 as a shepherd, then as a farmer, before moving into the construction industry. Today, he leads the Moroccan billionaires as head of Ynna Holding, a company specialising in real estate development, hotels, retail and industry.
Ever wanted to have dinner with the Dalai Lama? Easy. Or a romantic meal on an iceberg? Simple. Want to know where to get your hands on a real-life camel for an Arabian-themed party? No problem. If you've got the cash, and it's legal, there's a whole industry ready and willing to satisfy your every whim. Despite financial turmoil, business is booming for the people known as "lifestyle fixers".
The highest-profiling business in the sector is Quintessentially. Co-founded by the Duchess of Cornwall's nephew Ben Elliot in 2000, it is now firmly established, with offices in more than 60 cities around the world.
"Quintessentially can offer access to the inaccessible and make the seemingly impossible, possible," says spokesman Alex Pakenham, who adds that despite ongoing economic woes the service is increasingly in demand. "Sales rates have continued to climb, and our renewal rates are stronger than ever," he says.
Of Quintessentially's three founders, one worked in the film industry, another was a well-connected entrepreneur and a third brought an exceptional legal background to the mix. They saw the need for a "proactive and personalised" concierge service, being delivered to those wanting the best in life but without the time or the contacts to achieve it. Quintessentially's more famous members include Jemima Khan, Sophie Dahl, Sir Tom Hunter, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and various members of Coldplay.
The first tier of membership costs £1,000 (€1,148) a year, while the most exclusive Elite membership costs up to £24,000 a year, and includes your own team of dedicated personal account managers in multiple cities around the world. While potential "elites" might be referred by existing members, the final decision over whether to take them on comes from the three founders, depending on "the compatibility of the potential member with the brand, their net worth, their location, and whether they would add value to the membership base", says Pakenham.
Quintessentially has also launched 32 luxury sister businesses focused on property, travel, luxury retail, wine, art, flowers and private aviation, to name but a few. For example, through Quintessentially Music, you can book a performer for your own event, or get backstage meet and greet opportunities with your favourite artist.
Of course, there have been some particularly elaborate requests. One member asked the company to recreate Batman's Batcave in his house, and then there was the time when it was asked to source a pet jelly fish. It was also Quintessentially who organised the Dalai Lama date and the dinner a deux on the iceberg. One member called the company from the Amazon, saying he couldn't find any of the area's rare pink dolphins despite having a guide with him, and a helicopter was duly sent to take him to where they were.
For many people with the spare capital, being a member of a concierge service is seen as a necessity to make their lives run more smoothly, whether they're in need of a last-minute babysitter or tickets for the most sought-after seats at the best sports events.
Concetto Marletta, head of client relations at the Dorchester hotel in London, is also founder of Totally Indispensable, an exclusive private members' concierge service. While he deals with everyday requests in the Dorchester, as a private concierge his tasks may include, for example, getting someone into a fully booked hotel – Cocoa Island in the Maldives, over Christmas. However, sometimes he is forced to decline his clients' requests; for instance, when asked to source two white tiger cubs – research showed they are an endangered species, and it's illegal to trade them.
Alongside private concierges and "fixing" services, some high-end retailers are jumping on the bandwagon by offering a concierge service to their customers that will tie in with their luxury image. For example, while Harrods has a personal shopping service, By Appointment, it also offers By Appointment Beyond, which arranges "unique experiences" for clients.
These range from tickets to glamorous film launches in London's West End, Broadway productions in New York, or, perhaps, a St Petersburg ballet or Argentinian polo match. It can also arrange the "party of a lifetime", whether that's an opulent English garden party on a private estate or a ladies lunch at home. "No idea is too big, too small, too mad or too much trouble," claims the company. Perhaps you fancy a trip to one of the most secluded and untouched locations on Earth? This could be, say, a private island, or jungle – stopping off at a five-star igloo on the way.
Luxury phone company Vertu offers three levels of concierge service to its customers, with the basic level free for the first year and £1,850 afterwards. Such a service is, for many, part of the appeal of having a Vertu phone, and what sets them apart. With the top level of membership, customers have a dedicated concierge who takes all their calls, but even with the entry-level Classic Vertu service, a customer's preferences are visible on screen to whoever is dealing with them. This has proved handy for its customers. One Vertu client and his family were in an airport departure lounge when they heard that the hotel they were flying to had cancelled their booking. By the time they landed, Vertu had found another hotel and a car to take them there.
However, while most of a concierge service's day-to-day calls revolve around booking restaurants, theatre tickets, or finding the right place to take business clients for dinner in a foreign city, it is the quirky requests that stand out. Ten Group, for example, has hired an elephant for a wedding for £10,000. Other examples it gives include the member who bought a designer glass bathtub that couldn't be manoeuvred up the spiral staircase in his Grade II listed house; Ten Group arranged for the street below to close while a crane was brought in to lift the bath through a window.
Another member became stuck in sand while driving through the desert in the United Arab Emirates. He didn't know his location, but using Google Earth, Ten Group found the road and "large mosque" the member remembered seeing en route; finally, using his rough location they informed the UAE's breakdown service to rescue him. On the appeal of Ten Group's services, Alex Cheatle, chief executive, says: "In an age when anyone can source information online, it's all about maintaining personal contacts to gain access to things that are not on offer to the general public such as advance tasting menus at top restaurants, access to VIP areas, and complimentary upgrades on flights and in hotels."
David Thomas runs Marleymanor, another service which he says handles a range of "highly confidential and sensitive assignments for individuals and corporate clients". To help him in his role, he draws on over nine years of experience in the SAS Reserve Regiment, saying that this training has prepared him for the most "intense and challenging assignments".
After leaving the service to provide close protection to the Kuwaiti Ambassador in the run-up to the first Gulf War, David established Marleymanor in 1993. Initially, the company specialised in providing close protection and surveillance for blue-chip clients. However, Thomas says: "When I was dealing with issues for people from an investigative point of view I found they also wanted somebody to arrange, for instance, a chauffeur, which perhaps has no link or association to them as a discreet service – or to find a diamond for a mistress."
More and more clients were seeking a concierge service as a bolt-on option. "A lot of wealthy people who do not have the time or don't want to make effort to ring lots of people to arrange, say, a concert, or other event, or they might have an issue to solve in terms of a fraud – they can turn to us for help."
At any one time, he adds, Marleymanor might be dealing with two or three client requests, and they have 20 to 30 clients on their books. Fees are charged on a case-by-case basis, but are usually 10 to 15% of the overall cost of the case, or a daily management fee of £750 to £1,250 plus expenses, depending on location and duration. The Marleymanor website gives a range of example cases, including the client who asked Marleymanor to source an iPhone for their female friend, with absolute discretion assured.
But this was no ordinary iPhone; it was to incorporate a solid gold casing with the main external controls formed from cut diamonds. A jeweller was sourced in London's Hatton Garden, before Marleymanor hand delivered the bespoke iPhone to the client in Dubai.
Ifzaal Khan runs Perfect Knowledge, a private fixer for the secretly wealthy, carrying out tasks from delivering two antiques clocks worth more than £330,000 each to a palace belonging to a Middle Eastern royal family member, to sourcing medical treatment for a child who had only 24 hours to live. "We managed to get the medicine to the client's child, even though it wasn't available in the country they were in. This was done through contacting the sheikh there, and asking him to instruct his royal family office to source the medicine," says Khan. "A private jet was sent to pick up the medicine, and it was delivered to the child – so you see it's a serious business."
Most of Perfect Knowledge's clients have been referred through another client. "This means our network of contacts between all our clients is very strong," says Khan. He adds that the company can deal with cases in most countries through its client network, and works on behalf of a number of Middle Eastern royal family members as well as private family offices, private banks and trusts.
Khan says: "The financial crisis has changed the environment as our private clients are becoming more discreet about their financial status thus using our confidential services more often." Khan is all about building relationships. www.perfect-knowledge.com email:- email@example.com
Article | By Harriet Meyer
Buyers from the UAE capital account for 37 of the top 50 most expensive plates ever sold. The 37 Abu Dhabi buyers listed in the rankings collectively spent AED222.9m ($60.6m), or an average of AED6 ($1.6m) for their car plates.
Here is the countdown to the top 20 plates ever sold.
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED3.2m ($871,174m)
Plate: 33
Buyer: Hong Kong
Cost: HKD7m ($900,977)
Plate: 19
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED3.35m ($912,010)
Bought: September 2010
Plate: 66
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED3.35m ($912,010)
Plate: 42
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED2.4m ($925,622)
Bought: June 2009
Plate: 88
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED4.2m ($1,143,416)
Plate: 2
Buyer: Hong Kong
Cost: HKD9.5m ($1,222,754)
Plate: 10
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED4.5m ($1,225,089)
Plate: 45
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED5m ($1,361,210)
Plate: 16
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED6m ($1,633,452)
Plate: 9
Buyer: Hong Kong
Cost: HKD13m ($1,673,243)
Bought: June 1994
Plate: 99
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED6.5m ($1,769,573)
Plate: 55
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED6.5m ($1,769,573)
Plate: 18
Buyer: Hong Kong
Cost: HKD16m ($2,059,376)
Bought: February 2008
Plate: 11
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED8m ($2,177,936)
Plate: 12
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED8.9m ($2,422,953)
Plate: 9
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED10m ($2,722,420)
Bought: September 2010
Plate: 7
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED16.5m ($4,491,993)
Bought: February 2010
Plate: 5
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED25.2m ($6,860,498)
Plate: 1
Buyer: Abu Dhabi
Cost: AED52.2m ($14,211,032)
Bought: February 2008
The world's most expensive row of terraced houses has gone on sale for a staggering collective price of £400million. Cornwall Terrace, in London's Regent's Park, consists of eight double-fronted mansions, each with a value of between £29 and £60million. Estate agents have described the street as: 'A rare convergence of provenance, history and grandeur.'
Street value: One of the vast mansions on Cornwall Terrace in London's Regent's Park, where every property is for sale with a collective value of £400m. The row of properties was designed by architect Sir John Nash as part of the Prince Regent's – later King George IV – plans for the 19th century masterpiece Regent's Park. Overlooking the park's rowing lake, the mansions belonged to the British nobility for 150 years before becoming the headquarters for British Land. The whole terrace was then purchased by developers Oakmayne two-and-a-half years ago.
The company employed a group of renowned interior designers, supervised by English Heritage and The Crown Estate, to give the properties a tasteful makeover. Each Grade 1-listed mansion took 83,000 man-hours to renovate, with a whole year spent digging beneath the original basement to create two extra floors. The properties have 8,000 to 14,000 square feet each, and five to seven bedrooms. The interiors make the most of the buildings' rich architectural heritage, while boasting state-of-the-art technology.
Tasteful makeover: A group of renowned interior designers, supervised by English Heritage and The Crown Estate, renovated the properties. Each master bedroom alone is the size of the average London apartment, while entrance halls are described by agents as being of 'embassy proportions.' All properties boast a silent hydraulic elevator and multi-room iPad-controllable audiovisual and lighting systems.
Each even comes with an accompanying two-bedroom mews house for staff, and a 'Bentley-sized garage', as well as a spa and gym. The largest property, to be sold next year, also has its own ballroom and swimming pool complex. The first two properties have been put on the market for £29 and £39million. The remaining six properties will be marketed next year with one unidentified mansion expected to cost £60 million.
Prospective buyers have already made enquiries into the possibility of purchasing two properties and converting them into a single home.
Source: Daily Mail
1. Carlos Slim Helu and family. Mexico. Telecoms. 53.5 billion dollars.
2. Bill Gates. US. Microsoft. 53 billion dollars.
3. Warren Buffett. US. Berkshire Hathaway. 47 billion dollars.
4. Mukesh Ambani. India. Oil, gas. 29 billion dollars.
5. Lakshmi Mittal. India. Steel. 28.7 billion dollars.
6. Lawrence Ellison. US. Oracle. 28 billion dollars.
7. Bernard Arnault. France. LVMH luxury goods. 27.5 billion dollars.
8. Eike Batista. Brazil. Mining, oil. 27 billion dollars.
9. Amancio Ortega. Spain. Clothing retail. 25 billion dollars.
10. Karl Albrecht. Germany. Supermarkets. 23.5 billion dollars.
11. Ingvar Kamprad and family. Sweden. Ikea. 23 billion dollars.
12. Christy Walton and family. US. Walmart. 22.5 billion dollars.
13. Stefan Persson. Sweden. Hennes and Mauritz. 22.4 billion dollars.
14. Li Ka-shing. Hong Kong. Diversified. 21 billion dollars.
15. Jim Walton. US. Walmart. 20.7 billion dollars.
16. Alice Walton. US. Walmart. 20.6 billion dollars.
17. Liliane Bettencourt. France. L'Oreal. 20 billion dollars.
18. S. Robson Walton. Walmart. 19.8 billion dollars.
19. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud. Saudi Arabia. Investments. 19.4 billion dollars.
20. David Thomson and family. Canada. Inheritance. 19 billion dollars.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>For the super-rich, those for whom the financial industry has coined the acronym UHNWI (ultra-high-net-worth individuals). the goalposts in the world of Luxury are forever moving. Where once you could rest assured that access to the finest goods was the prerogative of the privileged few, thanks to rising wealth and fractional ownership schemes, even private jets and super yachts have been placed within the affordability bracket of many a healthy bank balance.
For the wealthy elite it has meant that the pursuit of exclusivity has become the kingpin of luxury and obtaining the unattainable has become the ultimate prize. Thankfully, a plethora of modern-day miracle workers are on hand and teams of advisers and private fixers for whom catering to the whims and desires of the ubber rich has become a full—time role.
The hotel concierge has, and always will he, the keeper of an infinite number of contacts able to secure a table in London's most difficult to book restaurants or deliver money-can't-buy experiences. But this style of personal service is extending well beyond the confines of the concierge desk, spawning a generation of lifestyle managers keen to facilitate the seemingly impossible for those with money to burn.
Ifzaal Khan is one such entrepreneur a private fixer who caters to the demands of international high society, working either privately or publicly on their behalf. "We represent an elite range of clients, including foreign rulers, billionaires, royalty, ultra-high-net-worth individuals, trusts and private families," reveals Khan. 'We are fully committed to protecting the privacy of our clients and their families at all times and our services are based on complete trust and discretion," he adds. Indeed, such is the confidential nature of Khan's role, that even those working for his company, Perfect Knowledge, only know the highest profile clients by a pin code.
Khan can act as a client's agent or broker in any situation, and with contacts in establishments and companies around the world, he is able to facilitate whatever a client's brief demands — be that finding a £20 million property or selling a Picasso. Our services include representing a family's private interests, the growth and confidentiality of their personal life, seeking solutions to problems, as well as obtaining expert guidance and acting as a private third party." Perhaps one of the most interesting services available at Perfect Knowledge is the personal courtier and private family office.
As a private courtier, Khan's private fixers act as trusted advisors, Royal Family Management, guardians and chaperones on a short or long-term basis to international clients visiting the UK. The personal courier service meanwhile ensures the safe transit and hand-delivery of sensitive documents or very expensive pieces of jewellery, wherever the client is in the world. For the privileged, total peace of mind is guaranteed.
"I once had a request from a Qatari prince who wanted me to take two antiques clocks he had just bought from Harrods to his palace in Qatar The two clocks cost £350,000 each and money was no object in ensuring I could take them to Qatar for him that day, (Tel: ++44 (0) 207 471 4885) www.perfect-knowledge.com or email@example.com.
For press inquires please email James Marsh on firstname.lastname@example.com
]]>The most expensive three bedroom flat in history has been sold for almost £200m – despite a dark history involving a murder in its main reception room. Reclusive British property developers Christian and Nick Candy are thought to have made a profit of at least £190m from La Belle Epoque penthouse in Monaco, on the French Riviera. They bought the 17,500 sq ft flat from Englishwoman Lily Safra in the early 2000s, soon after her banker husband Edmond infamously died in a mysterious fire inside the property.
Billionaire standard: The vast roof terraces come complete with mature 15 foot trees and infinity pool
Unrivaled: The views across Monte Carlo's marina and the sea beyond are breathtaking
Fit for a prince: Despite the staggering price, the property is thought to have been snapped up by a wealthy Arab sheik. The British Candy brothers bought the flat from Lily Safra in the early 2000s, soon after her husband Edmond died in a mysterious fire inside the property. It cost a mere £10million. It has now been snapped up on a 97 year lease at an asking price of €240 million (£199m) by an unnamed Middle Eastern investor, thought to be an Arab sheik. Early theories back in 1999 were that Mr Safra had been killed by Russians in retaliation for supporting an FBI clampdown on money laundering in the Mediterranean principality. But then Ted Maher, a former American Green Beret medical auxiliary who was caring for the ageing Mr Safra, suddenly confessed to starting the fire, which also killed another nurse.
Despite a double murder charge, Maher spent just five years in prison – increasing speculation that he was a 'patsy' set up to take responsibility for the crime by powerful interests who were really responsible. Whatever the truth, it enabled Christian Candy, 36, and his brother Nick, 37, to make a fortune out of the then blighted flat. Mrs Safra, who inherited her husband's £3bn fortune thanks to him cutting his two brothers out of his will two months before his death, was happy to offload it for less than £10m. In an interview last year Christian Candy admitted he had spent some £26m doing the flat up, turning it into one of the most desirable properties in the world. With unspoiled views across Monte Carlo's marina and the sea beyond, the two floor penthouse includes a double height library and vast roof terraces complete with mature 15 foot trees and infinity pool.
Terms: Leasehold 97 years
Condition: recently refurbished to billionaire standards
Description: Two-floor penthouse in six-storey building overlooking Monte Carlo marina. Well placed for local restaurants and world famous casino. With lift
Bedrooms: Three, all ensuite with walk-in wardrobes and dressing rooms
Features: Double-height library and office, aquarium, revolving wardrobes, sliding paintings and TV screens
Outside space: Circular roof terrace complete with mature plants and trees
Leisure facilities: Spa, gym, cinema, media room, pools
Security: To oligarch standard
Underground car parking available
There is a leisure room complete with billiard tables and arcade video games, Jacuzzi and spa, and even a media room which includes executive chairs which convert into beds in case of over-work. Other James Bond touches include old master paintings and cinema screens which emerge from walls at the touch of a button, and numerous walk-in wardrobes and dressing rooms. Security is also state-of-the art, with a panic room, reinforced glass, and surveillance cameras everywhere.
The Candys, who were brought up in Surrey and started their career borrowing £6000 to do up their grandmother's house in Earl's Court, are believed to now be living between another of their Monaco flats and Candyscape II, their multi-million pound yacht. The area where they live is one of the most expensive in France. In 2008, Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov was poised to spend more than £450m buying the nearby Villa Leopolda. Mrs Safra was again the seller, but the deal fell through.
Luxurious: Christian Candy admitted he had spent some £26m doing the flat up, turning it into one of the most desirable properties in the world
Mysterious past: Early theories back in 1999 were that Mr Safra had been killed by Russians in retaliation for supporting an FBI clampdown on money laundering in the Mediterranean principality. No expense spared: The property includes includes a double height library, billiard tables, arcade video games, Jacuzzi and spa, and even a media room
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
Rupert married Anna in the 1960s, with the pair remaining together for 32 years, having three children. They split amicably in 1998. The divorce was finalised in June 1999 when he agreed to let her leave with $1.7 billion. 17 days later he married Wendi Deng.
2. Adnan and Soraya Khashoggi – $874 million
Saudi businessman Adnan made his money as an international arms dealer. He then launched his company Triad, based in Switzerland, owning banks hotels and real estate across the world. He married Soraya in 1961. Their 1982 divorce resulted in an estimated $874 million settlement.
3. Craig and Wendy McCaw - $460 million
Craig made his money turning a failing TV cable service into a successful business, eventually selling for $755 million. In 1981 he then acquired cellular phone licenses, eventually selling to phone company AT&T for approximately $12 billion, becoming its largest single shareholder.
The pair met at Stanford University when she tutored him, with them marrying in 1974. In 1995 divorce proceedings were initiated with Wendy wanting her share to support a $200,000 a month lifestyle.
4. Roman and Irina Abramovich - $300 million
It had been speculated that the settlement could have left her the world's richest ever divorcee. But according to Russian news sources, Mrs Abramovich settled for $300m (£155m).
The figure included the value of homes in Britain and Moscow, as well as a yacht and private plane. At one point it was thought he would have to pay a settlement of at least $1 billion.
5. Michael and Maya Polsky - $184 million
According to court records, the couple married in the Ukraine in 1975, coming to the US in 1976 with "only four suitcases and $500 in cash.
After sighting irreconcilable difference in 2003, Maya Polsky filed for divorce from energy magnate Michael Polsky. In October 2006 a Chicago judge said Mrs Polsky was entitled to at least half of the couple's assets.
6. John 'Jack' Welch and Jane Beasley - $180 million
Welch is the former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, the technology and service conglomerate in New York, now ranked as the world's largest company.
The couple married in April 1989, divorcing in 2003. While Welch had reportedly written a prenuptial agreement, there was a 10-year time limit. Beasley reportedly left with amount to be in the range of $180 million.
7. Michael and Juanita Jordan - $168million
The most expensive celebrity divorce in history. The former Chicago Bulls basketball superstar married Juanita Vanoy in 1989. They divorced in 2007. It is thought negotiations between the couple added £20 million to the final deal from an initial settlement.
The marriage had shown signs of trouble in the past with Juanita filing for divorce in 2002, although they announced a reconciliation.
8. Neil Diamond and Marcia Murphey - $150 million
When Diamond met Marcia Murphey, he was already married to his first wife. In 1994, they separated, she citing "irreconcilable difference". The singer claims he willingly gave her the money.
9. Steven Spielberg and Amy Irving – $100 million
Amy Irving shot to fame in 1976 when she played the lone teen survivor in Carrie. Spielberg began to make a name for himself in Hollywood, following Jaws. The pair married in 1985, but the pair broke up four years later. He gave Irving, the mother of their son Max $100 million.
10. John and Beverly Charman - $95 million
The pair met in 1969 at school. When they married in 1976 neither had significant resources. In November 2003, Mr Charman, nicknamed "King of the London Insurance Market", told his wife he was setting up residence in Bermuda and their marriage was over.
He initially offered her £6 million cash, but she argued that the sum was not enough. The judge decreed a fair settlement would involve him giving 37 per cent of his assets. Mr Charman had a subsequent appeal dismissed. It is thought to be Britain's highest divorce settlement.
Luxury hotel chain Raffles - one of the Singapore's top hotel and resort chain – has opened its seventh property in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The 213-room hotel is Raffles' second property in the Middle East, following the opening of its Dubai property in 2007. Looking over the Grand Mosque and the Kaaba, the Raffles Makkah Palace offers round-the-clock butler service for guests, along with a "coffee sommelier," a four-storey mall in the basement, and four restaurants.
Dining options include the Creamery ice cream parlor, the Narjes tea salon, Middle Eastern restaurant Al Majilis and a fusion restaurant named Al Qasr. However, Raffles' hotel will soon be overshadowed — literally — by the Makkah Clock Royal Tower hotel from Fairmont right next door. Situated in a 76-storey building and set to be opened within months, the 858-room hotel has been built inside the new Makkah Clock Tower, the centerpiece of the enormous Abraj Al Bait Complex which will eventually house the Raffles, the Fairmont and a Swissotel.
The clock tower features four faces that are 43 meters in diameter, visible from 17 kilometers away, to announce daily prayers to the Muslim world and establish "Makkah Time" as an alternative to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the global time standard. According to hotel analysts STR Global, Saudi Arabia was the second fastest-growing market in the Middle East after the United Arab Emirates in June, with 16,680 rooms in the pipeline, compared to 54,814 in the UAE. Last week, Hilton announced that it had signed a deal to open two properties in Riyadh in 2012, describing the country as its "number one development market in the Middle East."
Source: Luxxo
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>Avenue Princesse Grace is the most expensive street in the world to buy property, where $120,000 (€84,985) will purchase just one square metre of prime real estate, according to a survey by Wealth Bulletin. Prime residential property on the top 10 most expensive streets in the world saw their overall value fall by 12% in the last year, the survey found, with European streets faring better than their US and emerging markets counterparts. That compares with price falls of between 20% to 30% in mainstream property prices in London and New York over the same period.
Avenue Princesse Grace might have been the most expensive street on the list, but prices for prime property there have fallen from a staggeringly high $190,000 per sq/m a year ago. Via Suvretta in the Swiss ski resort of St Moritz was the only street on the list that saw prices rise for top properties in the last year. The street ranked sixth on the list, where property costs at least $45,000 per sq/m, an 18% rise on the 2008 price.
The second most expensive street was Chemin de Saint-Hospice on Cap Ferrat in the south of France, where prime property sells for $100,000 per sq/m. Ostozhenka in Moscow, at $35,000 per sq/m, was the only street from an emerging market on this year's list.
The addresses that are streets ahead
• Avenue Princesse Grace, Monaco, $120,000 per sq/m
Still the most expensive street in the world, expect to pay at least $120,000 per sq/m on the iconic Avenue Princesse Grace for a modest apartment with one of the most spectacular views in the world. But that looks like a bargain from a year ago, when top end residential properties on the street were $190,000 per sq/m.
A 334 sq/m four-bedroom penthouse on Avenue Princesse Grace is on the market at $50m around $149,000 per sq/m – not including a 220 sq/m terrace. Local agents reckon asking prices are being discounted by as much as 20% and the above property will probably sell for closer to $40m. Monaco-based independent agent Pieter van Naeltwijck said transactions had fallen 25% since last year. But he said super-rich Russians were beginning to come back into the market, fuelling renewed demand.
• Chemin de Saint-Hospice, Cap Ferrat, South of France, $100,000 per sq/m
Less than 30 miles down the road from Avenue Princesse Grace, Chemin de Saint-Hospice is the second most expensive street in the world, where the top properties sell for $100,000 per sq/m. Chemin de Saint-Hospice snakes through Cap Ferrat with its 15 houses commanding beautiful Mediterranean views. Local estate agents say there is one property for sale on Chemin de Saint Hospice, but it is being sold privately and its price a closely guarded secret.
• Fifth Avenue, New York, $72,000 per sq/m
Fifth Avenue, New York City, has the most iconic status of all the streets on the list and retains third place this year. But prices on the best parts of Fifth Avenue have come off the boil in the past 12 months. A 400 sq/m apartment with terraces overlooking Central Park on the Upper East Side of Fifth Avenue sold for $29m in June. Local estate agents say the market has been affected by the lack of supply, with residents reluctant to sell because of perceived price discounts.
• Kensington Palace Gardens, London, $65,000 per sq/m
Kensington Palace Gardens, the private road that abuts Kensington Palace and houses several embassies, including the Russian delegation, is still the fourth most expensive street in the world. Prices on KPG, as estate agents call it, have come off no more than 15% to 20%. Two properties have been sold privately on KPG this year, according to estate agent Savills, which indicates demand is still strong for London's most exclusive address.
• Avenue Montaigne, Paris, $54,000 per sq/m
Avenue Montaigne in the 8th arrondisement – which includes the Élysée Palace, official residence of President Nicolas Sarkozy, maintains its fifth place on Wealth Bulletin's list, proving the eternal allure of Paris among the world's wealthiest. Estate agents say there have been little changes in the prices paid for top properties on the street in the last year. The strong euro also makes the dollar prices for residential property in the city higher than they have been for some time. Avenue Montaigne is part of the city's Golden Triangle, which includes the Avenue Champs-Elysees and Avenue Georges V.
• Via Suvretta, St Moritz, Switzerland, $45,000 per sq/m
The winding Via Suvretta in the exclusive ski resort of St Mortiz gets promoted to sixth place in this year's survey and is the only street that saw prices rise by 18%. Expect to pay at least $45,000 per sq/m for a top-end property on Via Suvretta. Local agents reckon the rising prices are due to buoyant demand from the super wealthy looking to relocate to Switzerland, especially from countries, like the UK, where governments are increasing tax rates for the wealthy. Residential prices in the top neighbourhoods of Geneva and Zurich are also experiencing a mini price boom. The strong Swiss franc is also inflating dollar prices for property in Switzerland.
• Via Romazzino, Porto Cervo, Sardinia,$42,000 per sq/m
Via Romazzino makes this year's list for the first time. Top prices on Italy's most expensive street, in the exclusive resort of Porto Cervo, are at least $42,000 per sq/m. Holiday homes of many of Italy's wealthiest individuals are located on the Via Romazzino, which is also popular with Russian billionaires. Alisher Usmanov, the Russian oligarch and owner of Arsenal football club, likes the street so much that he's allegedly bought eight houses located on it, or near to it.
• Severn Road, The Peak, Hong Kong, $40,000 per sq/m
The Hong Kong residential property market is among the most volatile in the world – just how volatile was illustrated by the big falls in top-end property prices in the past year. Number two on last year's list, with prices of $121,000 per sq/m, Severn Road has plummeted to $40,000 per sq/m. Local estate agents say the global recession has hit Hong Kong property hard and demand to top properties has fallen sharply since October last year.
• Ostozhenka Street, Moscow, $35,000 per sq/m
Ostozhenka Street falls to ninth position in this year's survey, down from sixth place last year. Local estate agents say top properties on the street will achieve at least $35,000 a sq/m, but that's down by around $5,000 from last year. Many of Russia's wealthiest people have apartments on Ostozhenka, which makes up part of the city's so-called Golden Mile.
• Wolseley Road, Point Piper, Australia, $28,000 per sq/m
Properties on Wolseley Road have maintained their value, due to the robustness of the Australian economy and the strength of the local currency. Local agents believe prices for the best properties remain high, but say the market has been affected by the lack of supply. Apart from last year's sale of Craig-y-Mor, a non-waterfront house, for $32.4m, making it Australia's most expensive residential property at the time, there have few sales of note on the street.
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]]>A new report has revealed that Beijing has the maximum number of rich people in China. The latest Hurun Report on China's wealthiest people said that there are 143,000 (yuan-)multimillionaires and 8,800 billionaires in Beijing. In Shanghai, there are 116,000 multimillionaires and 7,000 billionaires, reports the China Daily. The report also sheds light on how the super-rich in Beijing want to live their lives. A wealthy Beijing resident for example would have to spend at least RMB87 million on property, cars and other luxury goods to get into the report's good books.
They have at least three dwellings of their own, including a villa, like the 400-sq-m Ziyu Shanzhuang villa costing 24 million yuan, a luxury apartment in the downtown area for work purposes, and a Siheyuan courtyard house probably in Houhai. In terms of brands, the Hurun Report notes that Beijing's rich prefer Cartier to Louis Vuitton.
"During the past several years, the complexion of the rich in China has changed in many aspects. Many of them say they want to be a sort of upper class, rather than only being rich," said Rupert Hoogewerf, founder and publisher of the Hurun Report. The Hurun Report also defined the upper class in five other cities: Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Shenyang. China has 825,000 individuals worth more than 10 million yuan and 51,000 individuals with more than 100 million yuan, according to the report. 1 Chinese yuan (RMB) = 0.146 U.S. dollars
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>The host of this champagne-fuelled bacchanal was Trevor Abrahmsohn, 55, managing director of Glentree Estates, a smooth-talking networker renowned as the billionaires' estate agent, who brokered the sale. His guest of honour was Mikhail Gorbachev (they both support 31 leukaemia charities and have lost family to the disease). Speaking through an interpreter, Gorbachev delivered a moving speech but concluded: 'Many Russians bring their money to your country. Be careful, they might buy everything!' This was January 2008, when financial markets were showing signs of instability and house prices started to tumble. Yet the party-goers were still buying. Many super-rich foreigners pay in cash and they use offshore companies and anonymous agents to nail property deals. Royal Mansion was a case in point. Its new owner was 'property mogul' Hourieh Peramam who bought through a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. When she was 17, Peramam, now 77, fled Kazakhstan on foot for Iran, where she married a doctor and started her property empire. Two years ago she threw open her new home for the party accompanied by her son, an Iranian investor named Hossein Ghandehari, who owns several houses on the same street as the 28,000sq ft Royal Mansion (formerly Toprak Mansion but rather grandly renamed), and his 6ft wife Yassmin.
Foreign rulers and the international moneyed set have not been immune to the recession but recently they have returned to buy up London's grandest properties at startling prices. 'We've presided over the sale of £150 million worth of trophy properties over the past six months,' Abrahmsohn says. 'The oligarchs are back with a vengeance, because international markets have stabilised and the pound-dollar exchange rate is more favourable. The rate of sales is unheard of, even back in 2007, and for the first time we have a shortage of stock.'
New clients come through a network of lawyers, accountants and intermediaries. 'I am really in the information business,' says Abrahmsohn. 'Before we buy and sell any property I gather intelligence. We work like an investment bank.' Agents like him operate in what he calls 'a nocturnal world' where houses are not publicly advertised. 'Sellers and buyers at the top end crave privacy and secrecy,' he says, 'so these properties are offmarket. We operate on a covert basis, nothing is in writing and there are no brochures. It is also known as the "grey market".' 'London is a safe haven for them,' says Jazmin Atkins, an expert on foreign buyers, who will join Prime Purchase, the property acquisition arm of Savills plc shortly, explaining the huge sums that change hands so readily. The tax laws are friendly, the government is stable, the banks compliant, the judiciary is fair and the city unobtrusive. They like the schools and security is paramount. They are prepared to pay a serious premium for a slice of the London lifestyle. It's not just about the house.'
On the 'grey market' last month, a Middle Eastern buyer paid over £50 million for a house, and other London properties have recently been sold for £20 million each to a Nigerian, Russian and Ukrainian, while a home in Belgrave Square went for £68 million. In 2008, Lakshmi Mittal, the steel billionaire, bought a house on Kensington Palace Gardens for £117 million. And now the Chinese have arrived. A Chinese company, Fong Fun Investments, now owns a historic property in Belgrave Square and earlier this year Hong Kong businessman Joseph Lau paid £33 million for a six storey house on Eaton Square. Three months ago Abrahmsohn received a phone call from a different Chinese billionaire who wants a house in London for his family. Negotiations are ongoing.
The prices these buyers are prepared to pay are startling. In 2008 Brett Palos, stepson of Sir Philip Green and a former private equity boss, sold a house on Avenue Road in St John's Wood which he had bought in 2006for £7 million. After renovation he expected to then double his money. But he received an offer of £36.2 million from Rinat Akhmetov, a Ukrainian metals billionaire. The deal was completed in September 2008 – at the height of the crunch. Another Ukrainian, metals magnate Andrey Doroshenko, followed suit just two months ago by purchasing the property developer Anthony Lyons' townhouse on Lyndhurst Road, Hampstead, for an estimated £43 million. And Timur Kulibayev, Prince Andrew's billionaire friend, and the son-in-law of Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev, spent more than £70 million on houses on Upper Grosvenor Street and Green Street, in Mayfair and Holland Park, as well as being linked to paying £15 million for Prince Andrew's Sunninghill folly, notoriously £3 million more than the asking price.
The estate agent who has prospered most from this super-rich spree is Abrahmsohn. He was one of the agents who brokered the sale of Bernie Ecclestone's home to Lakshmi Mittal on Kensington Palace Gardens for a record £57.1 million in 2004. His clients include the Saudi royal family, Gerald Ronson, Lebanese businessman Ely Calil, Sir Martin Sorrell, Brunei's ruling family, Kazakhs and now Chinese billionaires. He also works for Richard Caring, who owns a house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, in the area where Abrahmsohn lives with I his wife Lisa, who runs the contemporary jewellery firm Trellis Jewellery, and his two daughters Lauren, 26, and Olivia, 22.
But when Abrahmsohn collects me for a tour of his North London fiefdom, he arrives in a Smart car. 'I don't like to be predictable,' he shrugs. 'I like to keep people offguard.' Abrahmsohn is a classic salesman, charming and attentive but he's also a cunning, tenacious and unconventional operator. He specialises in assessing potential clients psychologically as well as financially. 'Death is not the end of the game,'he jokes about his approach to negotiations as we sweep through his terrain, from Kensington to The Bishops Avenue, some of whose houses he has sold several times. 'This area is a honey pot to which the rich bees fly.' In northwest London, Glentree International has a virtual monopoly, but in Kensington, Chelsea and Belgravia the market leader is Aylesford, which is in intense competition with Knight Frank and Savills. In Mayfair, Beauchamp Estates dominates the field.
A former dentist, Abrahmsohn was brought up in South Africa and started dealing in property deep in the recession of 1974. He set up shop in a bedroom of a hotel in Golders Green, without even a telephone. But he was bold, brash and his brochures were cheeky and colourful, full of extravagant promises. The tactic worked. He was retained by Greek tycoons who fled after the monarchy was overthrown by a military junta in 1974. He lost some clients – one, Aristos Constantinou, was shot dead by his wife while praying in the chapel of his house (the silver bullet remained embedded in the wall). But Abrahmsohn found the Greeks lucrative.Then came the oil-rich Saudi royals who paid vast amounts for houses such as Beechwood on Hampstead Heath, but preferred to allow their agent, or even their secretary or chauffeur, to conduct negotiations. After the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, exiled Iranians moved to London and Abrahmsohn was waiting for them (a very prominent Iranian property investor is Ghandehari, who paid £39.5 million for a house in September 2008).
In the early 1980s one Nigerian chief arrived in Abrahmsohn's office announcing that he wanted to buy the whole of Winnington Road, Hampstead. After being told that not all the houses on the street were available, he settled for four, because his mistress needed looking after. By 1986, Glentree was making serious money and Abrahmsohn celebrated floating the company by driving to the Stock Exchange in a £150,000 Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible decorated with tinsel and balloons. The agency had increased 30 times in value in six months, and was valued at £65 million. It had become 'a parable of Thatcherite enterprise', said one commentator, and duly Lady Thatcher was a guest at Abrahmsohn's house. The crash and consequent recession of the late 1980s that forced Glentree back into private ownership also brought dollar rich Far Eastern businessmen to town. One Bangladeshi wanted a house on The Bishops Avenue but Abrahmsohn told him: 'You can't stop at one. It's like having one stamp in a collection.' So he bought seven, over a traditional bowl of Bangladeshi rice pudding. In recent years it has been the Eastern Europeans. Russians choose his area because, says Abrahmsohn, 'Northwest London properties remind them of their dachas just outside Moscow.
You can buy properties with three acres of land, 15 minutes from the centre of town. And owning a London home is a statement of their wealth and a way of parking their money.' Many properties are rarely lived in. For 35 years Abrahmsohn has been acting for foreign billionaires and he has become wary of chancers and rogues. He used to represent Asil Nadir, former CEO of Polly Peck, who absconded to the Turkish republic of Cyprus after facing 66 charges of fraud amounting to £34 million in the early 1990s. His forensic vetting system now weeds out the conmen: 'The key question is whether they have a UK solicitor and a UK bank. If they bank on some obscure island and protest about banking covenants, I become suspicious. My clients crave security and confidentiality and appreciate the need for vetting.' Abrahmsohn's negotiating technique is also legendary. 'It's a unique style,' says Richan Caring. 'He sort of creeps up on you. It's about relationships. He knows the marketplace well. 'He is pathologically tenacious,' one rival told ES. 'Yes,' Abrahmsohn confirms. 'The ninth "No" is a precursor to a "Yes".' Today, Abrahmsohn is busy researching the foibles of the newest super rich influx – the Chinese. He is informing himself of the idiosyncrasies, prejudices, eccentricities and negotiating styles. Because now that stock in short supply, prices for trophy houses will increase and it may be that soon only the Chinese will be able to afford them.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>Welcome to Knightsbridge — or, as it is better known to locals, 'Little Kuwait'. For British residents, the summer is all about anescape to the sun; a fortnight in the South of France, the Italian Riviera or Spain. We Brits want sand, sangria, heat and a swimming pool. Anywhere but the sticky, filthy city. For the mega-wealthy billionaire families of the Gulf states over here this summer will tell you that they come to London because, unlike in the U.S. or France, they are made to feel welcome,' says Hussam Baramo, the Syria-born features editor at Al Quds newspaper, a daily paper widely-read by Middle Eastern people in London. 'They like London because they think it's safe and friendly.'
And here, they can bring their cars with them. Around the corner from Harrods, I saw one Veyron with every inch of its bodywork coated in gold; another, chromed all over. Behind it, I watched a Veyron in pearlised white with shiny chromium wings making a noise like a scalded Rottweiler. The Saudi number plate on this car was '999'. I watched the driver get out. He was around 25 and dressed like an off-duty Lewis Hamilton. I complimented him on his car and asked how he got it over to London. 'In my plane,' he said, grinning. The car was parked in a pay-and-display' bay, but its driver did neither. The auto show continued with a Rolls-Royce Phantom customised with a stainless steel bonnet. The number plate on this car is simply '1'. Later that day I Googled this vehicle and discovered that a couple of years ago its Dubai-based owner paid £9 million for the registration number alone.
A long Maybach limousine, painted in distinct orange and matt black, purred through the melee. The letters 'RRR' are picked out on the vehicle's boot in a diamond-studded font. A handsome young man and his friend, both dressed like aspirant R&B pop stars (faded jeans, Hermes belt, one of those Ralph Lauren polo shirts with the over-sized horse logo, pastel suede Hermes driving shoes, and bronze tint sunglasses) got out. This is Crown Prince Sheikh Ammar bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, the incredibly glamorous and fun-loving son of the multi-billionaire HRH Sheikh Rashid Bin Humid Al Nuaimi of Ajman. Ajman, in case you didn't know, is the smallest emirate in the United Arab Emirates, but has grand plans to become a mini Dubai. RRR is the banner for the Crown Prince's vast portfolio of orange and black super cars — the letters stand for Rich in Real Estate Resources.
'How do you go about writing tickets to these guys?' I asked a traffic warden in Basil Street. 'It's impossible,' he shrugs, showing me the computerised ticket machine he wears around his neck. 'My machine only has numbers and letters on it. Their number plates are just . . .' He tailed off, struggling for the right word. 'Squiggles?' I suggested. 'Yes. There are no keys on my machine for those.' Last week, the wardens seemed to arrive at a solution to the problem of ticketing cars with squiggles for number plates; they started clamping them instead. Early victims were a£1.2 million Koenigsegg CCXR (one of only six ever made) and a £350,000 Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SuperVeloce which were illegally parked outside Harrods. But the traffic wardens aren't the only ones ruffled by the fleet of supercars flooding the area.
Residents living near the Knightsbridge store say their night-time peace is being shattered by the owners racing their sports cars through the streets, describing it as being 'like the starting grid at Le Mans'. They have now forged a campaign group and aired their grievances to Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, claiming that police and council have failed to act. Some of the Middle Eastern visitors keep summer-houses in London — there are said to be more than 100 billionaire Saudi families with second homes in the Knightsbridge area alone— while others prefer out-of-town locations such as Bishops Avenue in North London (also known as 'Millionaires Row'), Coombe Hill in Kingston and St George's Hill in Weybridge, Surrey.
Next summer, many of them will take up residence at the new Knightsbridge development One Hyde Park that occupies a plum position opposite Harvey Nichols and next to the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where appartments cost up to £100 million. Here, Arab summertime residents will be able to enjoy the super-luxe environment of heated floors and chilled ceilings, personalised entry systems that can include six levels of access, and a secure underground car park for their Rolls-Royces and Ferraris.
'Our Middle Eastern customers are usually looking for flats with between three to five bedrooms and a 24-hour porter service, usually with a view of Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens,' says Paul Hyman, sales manager at Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward's Bayswater branch. 'Properties of this type are hard to come by, but wealthy Arab businessmen can generally pay over the asking price.' During August, whole floors of hotels around Hyde Park are block-booked for Middle Eastern oligarchs, while staff up their game by flying in topnotch Arabic entertainers for private shows in the biggest suites, adapting restaurant menus and parking the guests' flashest cars out in front.
During the days, the men sleep in, while the women have their drivers drop them in Hyde Park where they walk in giggly groups, stopping to soak up the coolness and cloudy skies on the benches or lying on the grass in large circles with their friends. To them, London is a welcome vacation from the restrictive, repetitive, stultifyingly predictable drudge of blandly luxurious life back home. Many of the younger, more frustrated Saudi girls strip themselves free of the restrictive burka altogether, whooping and shrieking with delight as they change into tight jeans and vertiginous heels on the plane, as soon as Gulf state airspace is cleared.
Once in London, the girls go round either in large groups or chaperoned by Mum, who is normally clad in a headscarf and big shades — think Joan Collins does Jumierah Beach (one of the most exclusive resorts in Dubai). The boys like to sit outside Knightsbridge cafes all gussied up in Arabpreppy finery, two or three mobile phones each, keys to Ferraris and Lamborghinis chucked down next to their napkins. The young females from the more liberated countries, such as Bahrain and Dubai, are dolled up like big-eyed, honey-skinned Jennifer Lopez lookalikes. The girls who choose to keep wearing their burkas — mostly Saudi Arabians — I am told often sport the kind of make-up that hasn't been in fashion in the West since the end of the silent movie era. Bright red lipstick, generous helpings of cranberry rouge, eyes kohl-lined in the style of Dusty Springfield.
A spokesperson for luxury concierge service Quintessentially says: 'About 20 per cent of our clients are from the Middle East. 'One member requested Quintessentially Travel arrange a weekend break to Ibiza on a private jet, with a fully chartered yacht waiting for their use. Another wanted a personal shopping experience requesting that two designer stores be closed for their private viewing.' Many others prefer to shop at home. 'During August, we will often be asked to take a selection of our most expensive diamond necklaces, rings and bracelets to a suite at a hotel in Knightsbridge,' says jeweller Stephen Webster, whose shop is on Mount Street, in nearby Mayfair.
'Arab customers like to shop late, but our store isn't permitted to have late-night opening . . . so we are happy to take the store to them.' Another famous London jeweller, who would not be named, said: 'They like big pieces and coloured stones. The sums they are prepared to pay for them are incredible. It is not unusual for Middle Eastern customers to spend £20 million in a single visit.' When they are not shopping or tearing around in their cars, the Arab billionaires go to the Derby, Royal Ascot and the Berkshire Festival of Falconry, sponsored by the Abu Dhabi based Emirates Falconers' Club and attended by His Highness Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan.
Of course, London — especially during these credit-crunched times — falls over itself to court Arab business. Middle-Eastern shoppers are expected to spend £250 million in London this summer, an increase of 11 per cent on last year. When the people at Harvey Nichols discovered that the amount of money Middle Eastern people in London were spending was rising so dramatically, the department store decided to start using Arabic advertisements in-store. Summer opening hours were extended to 9pm all week, and all cafe menus were modified to include Arabic translations and a Halal food offering.
Harvey Nichols' Fifth Floor food hall now even offers a smoking terrace for customers that comes with the shisha pipes so beloved of Middle Eastern people. One Harvey Nichols advert showed a picture of a single Lanvin shoe. The words, written in Arabic, read, 'The English are known for having bad teeth, that is why they need beautiful shoes'. It doesn't matter. Very few Londoners can read Arabic, and very few Middle Eastern people fraternise with British people anyway. They're just here for August, then they disappear, like ghosts.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
Source: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/
]]>Trevor Abrahamson, of estate agent Glentree Estates, said: "This is a huge price but it's not surprising. In the last six months we have sold more trophy properties than we have in the last two years. One minute there was an over supply and then there was a shortage. Prices are high. "London has recovered much better than other prime markets around the world. It draws buyers from the most eclectic range of destinations and it will always be seen as the capital of capitals financially and culturally." One Hyde Park, next door to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, features more than 80 flats in four linked towers designed by architect Lord Rogers.
The complex includes spas, squash courts and a private wine-tasting facility. Everyone on site will have access to a private underground passage to the hotel and 24-hour room service from the hotel, where Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal is opening his first London restaurant. It is understood that SAS-trained guards and iris scanners provide extra security to the apartments, which are due to be completed in October. Surrey-born property tycoons, brothers Christian and Nick Candy, manage the development through their company Candy & Candy. Christian Candy's CPC Group bought the One Hyde Park site for £150 million in 2004. It used to be occupied by a rundown Fifties office block called Bowater House.
The highest proportion of buyers of the flats so far are from Europe, making up a third of all buyers. A quarter of buyers are Middle Eastern. The average price of a flat is £20 million. Once One Hyde Park is completed and all the buyers have paid up, the whole block will be one of the most expensive residential locations in the world. Houses rather than flats tend to achieve the highest prices in London. Lakshmi Mittal bought his first property in Kensington Park Gardens in 2004 for around £60 million but is now worth over £150 million. Next to London, the most expensive flats are to be found in New York, where before the 2007 crash a triplex penthouse in The Pierre hotel, overlooking Fifth Avenue and Central Park, was on the market for $70 million.
Asia's most expensive apartment was sold in June 2008 for $28.8 million, an 80th floor penthouse minutes from Hong Kong's central business district. In Sydney a penthouse with views of the harbour and Opera House sold for 20 million US dollars.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>Mark Skipp, a former SAS officer, oversees Abramovich's protection and recently hired a new City security firm, Fusion. Like many of the super-rich, Abramovich, who split from his wife Irina this year, is said to enjoy the cachet of being protected by former SAS soldiers. "He loves having them around and does not mind that they charge a premium," said a source close to the Chelsea owner.
Russian exiles have always feared that the Kremlin would try to silence them, wherever they were living and the fears are growing. The tycoon is said to have 10 bodyguards based at his home in Belgravia, London, and his country estate in Sussex. Another three are based at his Knightsbridge apartment. Outside the UK, the billionaire's security is even tighter. In the south of France, he has a team of four armed operatives who carry 9mm Glock pistols while guarding his vast villa. Another six protect his three yachts. One of his yachts, the Pelorus, is fitted with bullet-proof glass and a missile detection system. If there is a threat, Abramovich can choose between a helicopter and private submarine in which to escape. It is in Russia that Abramovich probably feels most threatened. During his business trips, he uses Russian-trained troops, including serving soldiers, for protection. Boris Berezovsky, another Russian businessman living in London, survived an assassination attempt in Moscow in 1994. His car was blown up and his driver killed in the attempt on his life.
Abramovich has always been one of the best-guarded businessmen in the country. Soon after buying Chelsea in 2003, his UK company Millhouse Capital, which manages his assets, hired Kroll Security International to provide bodyguards and close protection for himself and his family. A threat assessment stated the Russian billionaire was most vulnerable after Chelsea's matches, when his car could get caught in traffic. Although his convoy of cars is armour-plated and his drivers specially trained to deal with assassination attacks, it was recommended that he travelled by air instead. Kroll commissioned Skipp to manage the security contract and in 2004 he joined Abramovich's private asset management company on a £200,000-a-year salary. David Beckham has three bodyguards and a martial arts specialist, while the American actress and singer Jennifer Lopez has hired former CIA and FBI agents.
The annual security budget of Eric Schmidt, the Google chief executive, is £266,000. However, Larry Ellison, the billionaire head of Oracle, the American software giant, almost matches Abramovich's spending on security – with an annual outlay of £900,000 on gates, guns and guards. Some celebrities are seen out with a significantly bigger number of bodyguards than Abramovich, but they are often untrained. One security expert said: "50 Cent [the American rapper] has lots of really big guys with him, sometimes more than 30, but often they're just his friends." A spokesman for Abramovich said: "Mr Abramovich's personal security is not something we would comment about."
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>McLaren has confirmed its flagship London dealership will be based at One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge. Strategically located between Harvey Nichols and Harrods, the landmark development is due to be completed at the end of the year. Jardine Motors Group, McLaren Automotive's London dealer, has secured the largest ground floor retail unit for a high-profile showroom.
It is planned to open in early 2011, prior to the spring launch of the MP4-12C, the first in McLaren Automotive's new range of high-performance sports cars. Since the launch of McLaren Automotive in March 2010, more than 2700 potential customers have shown interest in the company's first sport car, which will cost upwards of £125,000. McLaren London is anticipated to be McLaren Automotive's leading European retailer and, potentially, the busiest in the global network
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]]>This Rolls Royce Phantom Coupe is reported to be owned by the Sultan of Brunei's family.
The Sultan has a sizable private fortune derived from his total control over the national economy's finances and the appropriation of the state's sizeable oil revenues to bankroll his extravagant lifestyle.
The Sultan's fortunes, in line with oil prices, have fluctuated since an estimated high of $55.63 billion in 1997, which made him the richest man in the world at the time.
Sultan of Brunei's family is reported to own around 5000 vehicles that are all logged into a central computer system. If not driven by immediate members of the family, then they are used by government officials and members of the royal household.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>The Sultan of Brunei's collection of over 7,000 cars includes some of the fastest, most expensive and rarest motors on the planet.
According to the Daily Mirror, he owns 604 Rolls Royces, 574 Mercedes-Benzes, 452 Ferraris, 382 Bentleys, 209 BMWs, 179 Jaguars, 134 Koenigseggs, 21 Lamborghinis, 11 Aston Martins, and 1 SSC.
The complete collection is stored and serviced in five secret aircraft hangars, where specialist teams from the various manufacturers maintain it.
Total price of the collection containing 7,000 high performance cars is $ 5,000,000,000.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a bespoke service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>List of Swiss Banks
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount. www.perfect-knowledge.com
Zhen Low – the younger brother of big-spending Malaysian billionaire Jho Low – squared off against Winston Fisher of the prominent New York real-estate family Thursday night at Les Caves du Roy nightclub in St. Tropez.
The bill? A staggering 2 million euros, or $2.6 million, according to an announcement made at the club.
Guests included Paris Hilton, the socialite, who helped the cherubic Jho celebrate his 28th birthday with a four-day party in Las Vegas last year.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a bespoke service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>The Hurun Report released the names of the Top Two Richest Individuals from the 2009 Hurun Rich List, a ranking of the 1000 richest individuals in China.
Wang Chuanfu of BYD is the richest man in China with wealth of US$5.1 billion, followed by Zhang Yin of Nine Dragons Paper with wealth of US$4.9 billion. The number of known US Dollar billionaires in China has grown to 130, up from 101 in 2008. The full list is to be released later in October.
"It seems ironic to me that China's richest person could come from the car industry, especially considering the crisis this industry is facing across the world," says Rupert Hoogewerf, founder and compiler of the Hurun Rich List.
"Wang Chuanfu is leading the foray into the next generation of cars using clean technology."
43-year old Wang Chuanfu saw his wealth shoot up five-fold to take top spot on the 2009 Hurun Rich List with wealth of US$ 5.1 billion.
Last year Wang was ranked 103 with wealth of US$880 million. Wang's 27.8% of HK-listed BYD hit the big-time shortly after Warren Buffett bought 10% of the company one year ago.
BYD is highly regarded for its technology and innovation, and is considered a leader of the new generation of "green cars".
Zhang Yin, the first woman to take top spot on the 2006 Hurun Rich List, has seen her stock double over the past year.
The 'Paper Queen' owns 72.25% of HK-listed Nine Dragons Paper together with husband Liu Mingzhong and brother Zhang Chengfei.
Nine Dragons Paper imports recycled paper and processes it into packaging and paper materials primarily targeted at China's export industry.
"I estimate there to be the same number again of US Dollar billionaires that we have not yet found," says Rupert Hoogewerf, founder and compiler of the Hurun Rich List.
The cut-off date for valuation of listed companies was 15 September 2009. The exchange rate used for US$ was RMB 6.8. The Hurun Rich List relates to Mainland Chinese only, defined as someone born and brought up in Mainland China, no matter what passport they might hold today.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>Of all the services available to the super-rich, that which is uttered by a Private Fixer of www.perfect-knowledge.com is perhaps the most intriguing. Even the job title carries an aura of mystery. I am reminded of the John Travolta character in the movie Pulp Fiction, or a Philip Marlowe-like figure skulking about in the shadows in classic film noir. But there is no cigar or bowler hat in sight as Ifzaal Khan, an articulate and charismatic thirty-something, settles in front of me in a luxury hotel in Chelsea.
"My clients are high net worth individuals," explains Khan, from Perfect Knowledge Ltd "Mostly CEOs. MDs, titles and aristocracy. Yes, I look after a few celebrities too, but they tend to be too high profile, so normally I deal with people from the international high society. Most are English, but some are American, Arab, Russian, and a few are Asian. Many are not even listed in the Sunday Times Rich lists because they might have most of their money held in trusts or assets. They come to me because I'm not part of their staff, I'm on the outside, and they may not want their staff to know everything. They could just be visiting for three or four weeks, and there are often financial incentives in asking an outsider to do things."
Khan explains that his job is part of a long tradition of private secretaries, PAs and courtiers, but it is not a concierge service. So what does a Private Fixer actually do? "It depends on what a client wants, really," says Khan. "For example, I might help somebody source and buy a properties off market. One person asked me to find him an off-market property for £20 million, and I knew somebody who wanted to sell, so I liaised between the two. Another asked me to find a £4 million house in Chelsea for his daughter. Somebody has also asked me to set up a property company, so I'm currently in the process of doing that, Commercial property is where the money is, so I've been trying to get more involved in that and it's really taken off in the last few months."
The job isn't only to do with property though; it also involves providing a personal courier service. Khan relays this wonderful anecdote: "A client left his rare 1930s £200,000 Rolex in the penthouse of a five star hotel in London, It had been in his wife's family for generations and she had given it to him, so it had sentimental value. He asked me to pick it up and take it to Luton Airport. When I got there, I was directed to Harrods Aviation, which is a private aviation service for businesses. As! arrived, I was told to board a plane and was flown to Geneva, where a chauffer-drivcn car 'vas wailing to take me to the client's house. There I had dinner with him and handed over the watch personally." So, not just a typical day in the office then.
Other jobs have involved picking up several expensive pieces of jewellery and watches to be repaired at Harrods; establishing a finance company; setting up a warehouse from scratch for a client who wanted to store high value goods; negotiating with yacht brokers, and chaperoning an extremely rich hut ill client to see her sister. "One gentleman has asked me to sell three Picassos. which he doesn't want to do through the auction houses. I don't know anything about art," smiles Khan, "but I'm a fast learner."
Khan offers these services through his Chelsea-based company, www.perfect-knowledge.com which he set up over a year and a half ago. Asked how long he has been a fixer for, he says mischievously, "Since I was 16 and growing up in Oxford. I was always fixing things for people — whether fellow students or visiting aunties." Before setting up his company, he researched the job for two years and built up an enormous contacts book. Having a clear vision of what you want to achieve is imperative, he says, as preparation met with opportunity is the key to success.
Khan works with six colleagues, who between them are based in London. Oxford, Geneva and Dubai. They are all childhood friends whom he trusts implicitly. "I would never reveal my clients' names, not even to family or friends, and as each person is given a unique code even my colleagues don't find out who they are. Privacy, confidentiality and discretion are key to this job. Many of my clients came to me via word of mouth recommendations, a few I approached myself when circumstances were right. It takes a long time to build up trust. We don't want people selling stories to the papers."
Other qualities needed for a job like this are diplomacy, the ability to get on with a wide range of people and, as Khan puts it, "Knowing when to listen and when to talk, These are highly successful individuals who know the industry they're working in inside out. They don't want unsolicited advice." Indeed so important is the client-fixer relationship that Khan. who combines a deep knowledge of the super-rich lifestyle with street savvy and common sense, says he's turned down projects from those who he believes would be demanding and make his job difficult in the long run.
So whether accompanying multi-millionaires to top venues like Cipriani's, Scott's, Mark's Club, or Harry's Bar — or indeed 'summer season' events like Ascot or Wimbledon – there is plenty of variety. "I juggle many things, sometimes working up to 20 hours a day, and I admit the job encroaches on my private life," says Khan, who previously worked at the Home Office for seven years, "but I could never work nine to five again. This is a unique job in a small. niche market. It brings me lots of opportunities. .~ and I'm always learning something new. No two days are ever the same."
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Victoria Beckham is well known for her extravagant taste in fashion, but news that she owns 100 Hermès Birkin bags is likely to be seen as nothing less than excessive.
A US financial website worked out that the sometime pop star's collection of the coveted bag alone is worth £1.5million.
Thebigmoney.com revealed that the 35-year-old owns around 100 of the style, which start at £4,200 for the basic model.
Bag of the month: In the last couple of weeks Victoria Beckham has shown off three of her 100 Hermès Birkin handbags. Seen at Heathrow airport, arriving in Milan and at a New York restaurant
Of course, La Beckham is not one to settle for basic. As countless photographs will testify, she regularly carries luxurious versions in pink ostrich skin and glossy black crocodile, worth up to £42,000 each, as well as the rare 'Silver Himalayan' style, which, at £80,000, comes complete with three-carat diamond.
As long as it's a Birkin: Starting at a staggering £4,200 Victoria Beckham accessorises with a baby blue version on a shopping trip in LA in April; plumps for plum on yet another airport dash in March; and chooses a bright red bag for a trip to New York last summer
The bag, which was designed in 1984 by French fashion house Hermès and named after the actress Jane Birkin, is seen as a fashion classic.
It follows in the footsteps of the 1935 Kelly bag – named after Princess Grace of Monaco because of her many appearances with it.
The Birkin was allegedly created after the company's CEO Jean Louis Dumas sat next to the actress on a Paris to London flight.
Hermès habit: Victoria with her red Birkin at a children's party in March last year; at JFK airport with her pink ostrich bag in September 2007; in Dubai with the £80,000 Silver Himalayan version in January this year
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1184169/Bag-lady-Victoria-Beckhams-100-strong-Birkin-bag-collection-thats-worth-1-5m.html#ixzz0uFC8hwIm
The new tribe of Indian billionaires has its capital in London. Clive Aslet profiles 20 of these Bollygarchs who love nothing more than prime Kensington property and weekends in the country
1. LAKSHMI MITTAL $28.7bn
Lakshmi Mittal does not court publicity, but neither – being among the handful of richest people on the planet – can he escape it. Born into a business family from the Indian state of Rajasthan in 1950, he founded the Mittal Steel Company in 1976, and it's now the largest steelmaker in the world. Mittal's $28.7bn fortune makes him not only the richest man in the UK but in Europe. His London house in Kensington Palace Gardens is nothing short of a palace, setting a property record when it was bought for £70m in 2003.
2. SRICHAND AND GOPICHAND HINDUJA $12.4bn
There are four Hinduja brothers, two of them, Srichand and Gopichand, based in London. They moved here in 1979, to develop their father's trading business. They are now the second richest Asians in Britain, after Lakshmi Mittal, with 25,000 people employed by the Hinduja Group round the world. Extremely retiring, they have given little away about their personal lives, beyond the contribution that they have made to the building of two Hindu temples in the south-east, not to mention the £1.5m that they contributed to the Millennium Dome. Their home is in Carlton House Terrace.
3. SUNIL MITTAL $12bn
The son of a politician, 52-year-old Sunil Mittal began his business life, after Punjab University, as a bicycle parts dealer in New Delhi. His Bharti Group is now the largest mobile phone operator in India, with over 121m subscribers. He is also reorganising the way India shops through a joint venture with WalMart. The Times of India puts his net worth at $12bn.
Born on 23 October, Mittal was also married on the 23rd of the month and has made 23 his lucky number. His wife is an Indian from Scotland. Five years ago, he said he might retire at 50 but this has not happened. Instead he travels constantly, coming to London, like many of the Indian community, in late Spring and early summer.
3. SHASHI AND RAVI RUIA $12bn
Later this year, JP Morgan Cazenove are said to be floating the shipping, steel, oil and gas, and telecoms group, Essar Holdings, on the London stock market for over £5bn. With that in mind, Shashi and Ravi Ruia, recently bought a home in Mayfair. As Essar Chairman Shashi Ruia recently joked: "I am not just an MBA, but also an MBB (Marwari by birth)." Many successful Indians in business are either Marwaris, who originate from around Jodphur, or Parsis, a Zoroastrian community distantly descended from Persians. In 2007, the Ruias were listed for the first time as one of India's ten richest families, with a net worth of $12bn.
5. SAVITRI JINDAL $12.2bn
Savitri Jindal is the richest woman in India, with a net worth of $12.2bn. A widow with nine children, she became non-executive chair of the Jindal Organisation on her late husband's death in a helicopter crash in 2005. Om Prakash Jindal (known as O.P), the son of a farmer, started his career making buckets and pipes in an Indian village in the 1950s.
The Jindal Organisation is now a multi-billion dollars business involved in all aspects of steel production, from mining iron ore to manufacturing in 20 factories. It recently acquired iron ore mines in Chile and Bolivia, as well as rights of oil exploration in Peru. In London, Mrs Jindal lives in Kensington. She is joined by her four sons, all them involved in the business, including Naveen Jindal, an 'irrepressible polo enthusiast'.
=6. KUSHAL PAL (KP) SINGH $9bn
The call centre capital of the world is Gurgaon, with its earthquake-proof office buildings. That this should be so is due to K.P.Singh, whose DLF Universal Ltd is the largest real estate company on the planet. Born in 1931, Singh studied science, including aeronautical engineering in the UK, before being commissioned as an officer in Indian Army's famous Deccan Horse and transforming DLF (Delhi Land and Finance) it into the colossus that it is today, building houses, apartments, offices towers, shopping malls, airports, hotels and cinemas across India.
His fortune is estimated at $9bn. A keen golfer, he now leaves his son Rajiv and daughter Pia to run the business, allowing him to spend more time in his Grosvenor Square house.
=6. CYRUS VANDREVALA $9bn
This visionary private equity investor Cyrus Vandrevala started investing in technology businesses his 20s and now has global investments in a multiple of public and private companies ranging from Telecom, infrastructure, energy, real estate, food and cement. He has made his mark as a man of style in London having lived at Claridge's for six months before buying a house in Holland Park with his heiress wife Priya Hiranandani-Vandrevala for £20m. He has achieved billionaire status while maintaining a discreet social presence. Look out for him in Annabel's.
8. ANIL AGARWAL $6.4bn
Born in 1954, Anil Agarwal has a house in Mayfair. Like other of India's billionaires, he likes the best and can afford it: "I have to have a Bentley, the best of chauffeurs and butlers," he says. The son of a small businessman from Bihar, in eastern India, he founded the mining group Vendanta Resources in the 1980s; it is now active on four continents, with offices in London and operations in Zambia, Australia and India.
Criticized by environmentalists including Bianca Jagger, it was nevertheless floated on the London stock exchange in 2003. In 2007, Mr Agarwal's fortune stood at over $12bn; with the decline in the demand for minerals because of the global recession, it is now nearer $6.4bn. He is developing a 'world class Vendata University at Orissa in India to 'nurture generations of global leaders'.
9. SHAPOOR MISTRY $6bn (family wealth)
Like many of the Bollygarchs, Shapoor Mistry shuns any suggestion of limelight; however, an exception is made when this keen racing man leads home a winning horse that has been bred by him. It is one of the few occasions that he can unwind from his business duties. Shapoor's London house is in Mayfair: Cyrus also, pursues his many business interests from a London base.
The foundation of the Mistry family's wealth is an 18.5% stake in Tata Sons, the motor manufacturer, acquired by Shapoor and Cyrus's father, Pallonji Mistry. Some surprise was caused when the Mistrys recently became Irish citizens: Pallonji's wife Patsy is said to have been born in Ireland, although from a well-known Parsi business family in India. The family's net worth is put at $6bn.
10. ANURAG DIKSHIT $854mn
Online gambling has a mixed reputation, particularly in the United States where, in 2008, Anurag Dikshit caused a sensation by pleading guilty to charges of breaking the laws governing it; this cost him a £185m fine. Not one to revel in the trappings of wealth, he devotes most of his time to a Trust which funds projects to further medicine, education and the community in India, Gibraltar and the UK.
Born in Jharkhand, India, 37 years ago, Mr Dikshit's first break came in the dotcom boom, when he was working in the US as a software developer. In his mid twenties, Dikshit wrote the new companies betting software.
11. VIJAY MALLYA $1.6bn
Kingfishers are usually seen in a flash of iridescent colour, and so it is with Vijay Mallya, whose property portfolio includes – as well as residences in California, New York, Monaco and all the main cities in India – a castle in Scotland, a country house in Berkshire and a London house. Catch him when you can.
The boss of Kingfisher Beer and Kingfisher Airlines spends most of his time in one of his four planes, amid a décor of luxurious sofas, granite-topped bars and Impressionist paintings, the wardrobe in his bedroom at the back allowing him to emerge immaculately dressed for whichever of the many roles he is about to play. This astonishingly energetic man likes yachting, racehorses and African game lodges, as well as classic cars.
A former racing driver, Dr Mallya speaks eight languages, is a qualified scuba diver and pilot, loves music and collects art. A member of the upper house of the Indian parliament, he has championed the plight of street sweepers and the need for better drinking water, rather than business and industry. Happy to be known as the King of the Good Times, he exhausts his entourage with his zest for all aspects of life. The money keeps piling up. He is a modern Maharajah whose dynamism personifies the entrepreneurship of the subcontinent.
12. NARESH GOYAL $1.55bn
As a boy growing up in India, Naresh Goyal, now in his early 60s, had to walk to school every day, because his parents could not afford a bicycle. Now he has triumphed in another area of transportation, as the owner of Jet Airways, India's largest domestic airline. He established it in 1992, after an aviation career which began as public relations manager of Iraqui Airlines.
A naturally hospitable man, he is said to like London so much that he more or less commutes to India from his town house overlooking Regent's Park, where his family are based. In his spare time he enjoys watching Bollywood movies, saying, on one occasion, that you don't have to remember what you saw last time.
13. SIR ANWAR PERVEZ $1.1bn
Convenience stores are stereotypically associated with businessmen from the subcontinent: beginning with one in Earl's Court, Sir Anwar Pervez built up the cash-and-carry empire of Bestway, with 50 warehouses across the country. It now employs 4,500 people and is worth £230m.
14. MIKE JATANIA AND BROTHERS $1bn
Mike Jatania and his three brothers were among the Asians expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in 1969. Their cosmetics company Lornamead acquires underperforming companies and product lines and revitalizes them; this, together with a property portfolio in London, has created a family fortune of £1bn.
15. SWRAJ PAUL $760m
Lord Paul, born in 1931, grew up in the Punjab, where his father had a small foundry making steel buckets, tubs, trunks and farm equipment. The family lived frugally, following the Hindu ideal of 'simple living and high thinking'. He and his brother transformed the modest enterprise at home into an industrial group with interests in steel, engineering, pharmaceuticals, hotels, shipping and tea.
Lord Paul (he became a peer in 1996) moved to Britain in 1966, needing medical care for his daughter Ambika, who had leukemia. Sadly Ambika died two years later, but Paul remained in the UK, dedicating his development of the Caparo Group to her memory. In 1994, he rebuilt the London Children's Zoo in her name: when under treatment the Zoo had been a favourite outing.
16. FELIX GROVIT $660m
Felix Grovit is the man behind Chequepoint, the bureaux de change empire, founded in 1974. From London it spread out to other tourist hotspots in 70 countries across the world. Aged 65, he also has interesting in Berkeley Credit and biotechnology. Like others in the world of the Indian super rich, Mr Grovit is generally described as shy and elusive. The industry was astounded when he launched his own website www.felixgrovit.com, although at present there is nothing on it.
17. JASMINDER SINGH $500m
In 1979 Jasminder Singh is a hotelier, who formed the Edwardian Group with an uncle in 1979, which now has a dozen luxury hotels in the UK and runs Radisson Hotels (as Radisson Edwardian) under franchise. Of Punjabi descent, Mr Singh was born in Dar es Salaam in 1951. He came to the UK, qualifying as an accountant before entering the hotel business in 1975. He insists that his top people have studied at Oxford or Harvard. His holidays are of the busman type, sizing up the competition's hotels. The rest of the time he lives quietly at Ascot with his wife and four children.
18. VIKRANT BHARGAVA $350m
Vikrant Bhargava was the former marketing director of PartyGaming, having been a classmate of Anurag Dikshit (see above) when studying electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. From Delhi he obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management. At the gaming group he helped attract attention to the site by staging online poker tournament with a $1 million prize. He said that 70,000 people were playping Party Poker simultaneously at peak hours. However, Bhargava left PartyGaming in 2006 to devote himself to media and real estate businesses, as well as philanthropy.
19. VIJAY AND BIKHU PATEL ?$300m
Vijay and Bikhu Patel, who founded Waymade Healthcare, came, like many British Asians, via Kenya: from a poor background in the western highlands, they arrived in Britain with just £5 in the early 1970s. From a single chemist's shop, they have built a business turning over £300m each year. They say that the desire to escape poverty gave a keen edge appetite for business.
20. TOM SINGH $230m
Tom Singh, graduate of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, founded the fashion chain New Look in Weymouth 1969, borrowing £5000 with his wife Kuljit to open the first shop. Mr Singh still lives in Weymouth, even though the company now has over 1000 stores in different countries, including 543 in the UK.
Clive Aslet is editor-at-large of Country Life and a contributing editor to Spear's
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a bespoke service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>A Qatari prince's plan to restore a 17th-century mansion in Paris was blocked last week by a French court, after a campaign by residents who fear the plans would destroy an architectural gem.
Locals obtained a court order to stop the work by Prince Abdullah Bin Abdullah Al-Thani, brother of Qatar's emir, who bought the Hotel Lambert on Ile Saint Louis, an island on the River Seine and a UNESCO heritage site, in 2007. However, the Prince – who paid a rumored 60 million Euros for the property two years ago – insists his proposed plans will restore the building to its former glory.
It also involves digging an underground car park and machinery room under the central courtyard and part of the gardens, raising an external wall facing onto the banks of the Seine and an overhaul of the entire west wing.
Built in the 1640s at the eastern tip of Ile Saint Louis, the Hotel Lambert was designed for a rich financier, Nicolas Lambert, by the architect Louis Vau, who went on to oversee an expansion of the Chateau de Versailles for Louis XIV. The building, which is where Chopin composed some of his music and author Voltaire lived with his mistress, is severely dilapidated, with parts of the timber structure rotting away, paint cracked and discolored and staircases sagging.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a private fixer service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. Our services are aimed at private banks, offshore trusts, celebrities, royal family management, private families and discerning individuals where money is no object and discretion is paramount.
]]>Now Westminster council is threatening to take ownership of six of his central London homes, some valued at up to £20 million, that have lain empty for up to eight years. This is part of a drive by the council to use compulsory purchase powers to gain control of 20 luxury properties that have lain uninhabited for a decade or more to protect them from a band of rampant squatters.
Mr Halabi, a Syrian-born tycoon who formerly invested in the Shard of Glass tower planned for London Bridge, lost an estimated £120 million when the Esporta sports clubs went into administration. He owns 68 Mount Street and 14 Park Street, both valued at £20 million and empty for eight years, as well as four other central London properties worth between £6 and £12 million. Two years ago Mr Halabi was the 14th richest person in Britain, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. But he does not feature on the 2009 list.
Most of the other properties on the council's hit list are owned by offshore companies and a few by companies and private owners in the UK. It is prepared to acquire them over the next six months unless their owners begin restoration work. Paul Palmer, Westminster's empty homes officer, said: "We have been trying to encourage the owners of these lovely buildings to face up to their responsibilities and bring them back into use. "As we have met with a less than positive response, we are now considering using our powers of compulsory purchase in the near future. "Ideally we want the owners to take the initiative to refurbish and occupy these properties, but if they are not prepared to – then the City council will step in."
Mr Halabi's property empire includes the former Naval & Military Club in Piccadilly – known as the "In and Out" club – has been wound up by HM Revenue & Customs and is now managed by receivers. The council is already in talks with Mr Halabi's receivers, who have recently installed security cameras on some of the empty properties. The first at risk of being taken into council ownership include two in Park Lane, four in Upper Grosvenor Street, three in Park Street, three in Queen Street, three in Charles Street and one each in Mount Street and Waverton Street.
The problem has become more pressing after bands of squatters began moving from one empty top-end house to another, highlighting the number of luxury homes standing empty. Earlier this week, squatters moved into a three-storey house on the same road in Belgravia as Baroness Thatcher's home. The group had previously been evicted from an 80-room former Sudanese Embassy in Knightsbridge and a £4.5million house near Harrods.
Another squat group, known as the Oubliette, took over the former Mexican embassy in Mayfair and the neighbouring former Tanzanian High Commission this month. By standing empty, the properties have lost their owners a total of £1 billion in unpaid rent. They have also slashed £64 million from the value of neighbouring property. Mr Palmer said: "We have no intention of hanging on to these buildings.
"As soon as we acquire them we will sell them on. That makes us effectively estate agents, but we will insist that any buyers are required by contract to do them up within a limited period of time, so that this situation will not be repeated." Westminster has calculated that each of the empty buildings could be converted into up to 12 much-needed flats
Source: Evening Standard
Shaikh Khalifa greeted Shaikh Mohammed and King Hamad on the happy occasion. The President also greeted the bridegroom and wished him a happy and blessed marriage.
Shaikh Mohammed and King Hamad receive greetings from other Shaikhs, statesmen, ministers and distinguished guests from the UAE and Bahrain. Present at the ceremony and the luncheon were Their Highnesses and Members of the Supreme Council Shaikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi of Fujairah, Shaikh Saud bin Rashid Al Mualla of Umm Al Quwain, Shaikh Humaid bin Rashid Al Nuaimi of Ajman, Shaikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Dubai Crown Prince Shaikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Deputy Ruler and UAE Finance Minister Shaikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Deputy Ruler Shaikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Sharjah Crown Prince and Deputy Ruler Shaikh Sultan bin Mohammed bin Sultan Al Qasimi, Ras Al Khaimah Crown Prince and Deputy Ruler Shaikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Umm Al Quwain Crown Prince Shaikh Rashid bin Saud bin Rashid Al Mualla and Bahraini Prime Minister, Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa.
Others attending were Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Lt- General Shaikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential Affairs Minister Shaikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, other shaikhs from the Al Maktoum and Al Khalifa royal families, Speaker of the Federal National Council Abdul Aziz Abdullah Al Ghurair, Abu Dhabi Ruler's Representative in the Eastern Region Shaikh Tahnoun bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, ministers and senior officials.
The rare glimpse into the lives of the super rich during a candid chat with a private fixer http://bit.ly/Z9zc9
LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton to Acquire Royal van Lent, Builder of Luxury Mega-Yachts http://bit.ly/2JfPP
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a bespoke service to VIP's and ultra high net worth individuals http://bit.ly/MhZ8f
London Luxury Property Market Sees Biggest Price Reduction in History http://bit.ly/2GtWx4
World Mega Yachts v Worlds Super Yachts http://bit.ly/1ODs3R
Gang escapes with £40 million in 'biggest UK jewellery heist http://bit.ly/l4pH0
£45 milion spent on a Dalham Hall mansion by rich Sheikh http://bit.ly/x7bzP
London's most secretive service which caters for the multimillionaires, foreign royalty. http://bit.ly/12jUdI
The Bishops Avenue – London's Billionaire Row http://bit.ly/4dqPgs
Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani's http://bit.ly/eGtS6
London's most secretive service which caters for the Billionaire. Welcome to the world of the Private Fixer http://bit.ly/45b1et
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan http://bit.ly/GqjvB
Saudi Royals £50 Million Super Home in Belgravia http://bit.ly/bSGFr
10 Richest British Footballers http://bit.ly/YRxcv
Oxbridge Tops Good University Guide http://bit.ly/zXlUf
Chelsea property the richest borough where the average house cost over a million pounds http://bit.ly/diUvI
The fixer from Doncaster who became the toast of Abu Dhabi http://bit.ly/4vRzQ4
Welcome to the world of the Private Fixer http://bit.ly/12jUdI
A rare glimpse into the lives of the super rich during a candid chat with a London Private Fixer http://bit.ly/Z9zc9
Laurence Graff pays £2.5 million a record price for gemstone at auction http://bit.ly/QT8hR
One less tax haven to stash those billions in Liechtenstein http://bit.ly/10UByi
A License Plate "1D" fetches £352,411 record price at auction http://bit.ly/3ly3og
The Queen of England has fallen to 12th place on Forbes' list of the world's richest royals http://bit.ly/cMr26
Billionaire Sheikh pays £250,000 for Household Cavalry to fly to Abu Dhabi http://bit.ly/4uy89
The World's Five Longest Super Yachts http://bit.ly/tMAOb
Ultimate luxury service links for the ultra rich http://bit.ly/yL9dE
One £200 million super-yacht with three Monet paintings onboard http://bit.ly/w5Cyw
Threat to offshore accounts as taxman does deal with Liechtenstein http://bit.ly/13zohV
Ten facts on tiny principality of Liechtenstein http://bit.ly/yDDhZ
Perfect Knowledge Ltd is a private company offering a bespoke service to the super rich, and VIPs http://bit.ly/QT4et
Harrods by Appointment – Services only for the Super Rich http://bit.ly/mblGg
Argentina win the Cartier Day at Guards Polo Club for the Coronation Cup http://bit.ly/x0LC3
Sheikh Who Backed Barclays Gets Another Shot With Qatar's Money http://bit.ly/4GqAbZ
Launch of our new web site www.perfectknowledgepr.com http://bit.ly/W1ZM4
The worlds wealthiest royals http://bit.ly/96UmI
Even as police investigate £80m P/onzi scheme, some 'victims' can't believe it http://bit.ly/BtmsC
Russian billionaires oligarchs favourite fixer and English lawyer met his horrifying death http://bit.ly/oj9eA
Thieves steal £13m of jewels from cartier in Cannes http://bit.ly/pjuT1
Millionaire Fair Moscow 2009 http://bit.ly/XfALM
Abramovich Launches his new Yacht http://bit.ly/1LBkkL
Prefect Knowledge PR http://bit.ly/IVveW
Saudi princess runs up £15 million shopping bill around the world http://bit.ly/OqJem
Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai opens facebook account http://bit.ly/3Pi3WY
Press Release: Launch of new Public Relation Company – Perfect Knowledge PR http://bit.ly/hLyLJ
Filthy rich: the 10 highest paid hedge fund managers of 2008 http://bit.ly/10R61s
Perfect Knowledge Ltd is a private company offering a bespoke service to the super rich, VIPs, and Middle East Royality http://bit.ly/QT4et
The 10 richest models in the world http://bit.ly/3C9hu
How do you address the members of the House of Lords http://bit.ly/1fcqYI
The 5 most expensive hotel rooms in the world http://bit.ly/16IDhD
Oxford the unlikely rise of the private fixer in the biggest ever arms deal. Billionaire Wafic Said straddles worlds of Saudi royals and Westminster http://bit.ly/WZDp8
A fixer to the super-rich has just days to prove his claim that he has no money left http://bit.ly/tsVUH
Financier and Fixer Amanda Staveley missed a pay deal that would of made Millions. The payout would have dwarfed the £40m she earned brokering a deal for Abu Dhabi billionaire Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan to take a £3.5bn stake in Barclays last year http://bit.ly/AYDho
The fixer from Doncaster who became the toast of Abu Dhabi http://bit.ly/4vRzQ4
Chelsea property the richest borough where the average house cost over a million pounds http://bit.ly/diUvI
Tops Good University Guide http://bit.ly/zXlUf
10 Richest British Footballers http://bit.ly/YRxcv
The Rich List 2009 http://bit.ly/1gbirg
Saudi Royals £50 Million Super Home in Belgravia http://bit.ly/bSGFr
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan book an estimated £1.46bn ($2.42bn) profit on his £2bn investment in convertible notes in Barclays http://bit.ly/GqjvB
Rich Gulf individuals have long been discreet buyers of London real estate, and even now that their local markets are booming, many leading sheikhs remain big players in the British capital's red hot market http://bit.ly/eGtS6
The Bishops Avenue – London's Billionaire Row http://bit.ly/4dqPgs
London's most secretive service which caters for the multimillionaires. Welcome to the world of the Private Fixer http://bit.ly/45b1et
Rich Lloyds bank customers 'encouraged to avoid UK tax by channelling their wealth through China http://bit.ly/XlE5x
BAE could be fined 'tens of millions' over bribes claims http://bit.ly/tcaB9
Private Fixer Scot Young had amassed a £400m fortune by 2006 yet now claims he is penniless as his wife. http://bit.ly/zbZ5N
Luxury service links http://bit.ly/2G0k0W
Prefect Knowledge PR http://bit.ly/IVveW
]]>Dave Hartnett, permanent secretary at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), told the BBC that the advice was 'incredibly irresponsible'. HMRC is said to be investigating the incident after the BBC handed over its footage. An HMRC spokeswoman said: 'Dave Hartnett has agreed to look at the evidence the BBC has gathered.' The Panorama investigation into off-shore banking also looked into Northern Rock, which was bailed out with £27billion of taxpayers' money at the start of the banking crisis in 2008. A banker from Northern Rock in Guernsey told Panorama's undercover customer that he could avoid the EU tax rules by opening an account in the name of a non-trading company.
The banker said the customer should inform the Inland Revenue, but the BBC claimed the bank itself keeps the details secret from the taxman. Northern Rock denied its subsidiary is behaving inappropriately and said it informs and reminds all account holders that they are responsible for declaring the interest earned from their savings to their relevant tax authority.
Source: Dailymail
]]>The German firm Siemens recently agreed about £500million in fines to settle similar bribery allegations in America involving a £1billion slush fund. The deal is being offered under a US-style plea-bargaining system unveiled by the SFO last year, in which individuals and companies receive more lenient sentences if they admit wrongdoing. The system was brought in after criticisms of the SFO for its low conviction rate and its bruising battle over the BAE Systems bribery allegations. Its BAE inquiry started more than four years ago, and it has already spent millions on lawyers and other specialists on top of its own costs. Court documents lodged in South Africa contain claims suggesting that 'commissions' totalling £115million were paid to agents who helped BAE clinch a $1.6billion arms deal involving a 1999 contract for Hawk and Gripen aircraft. The SFO has also been examining alleged corruption relating to a Tanzanian air traffic control deal, thought to have been worth £28million, and in an abortive 2001 sale of fighter aircraft to the Czech Republic worth more than £1billion.
If the deal between BAE and the SFO goes ahead, it would be an extraordinary turnaround for the agency, which in 2006 dropped its probe into allegations that BAE paid bribes to Saudi Arabian government officials to secure lucrative arms contracts.The then Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, had claimed that any breakdown of diplomatic relations with the Saudis could damage national security. But bribery inquiries relating to BAE sales to other countries remained under investigation. Some of these – thought to include Romania, Qatar and Chile – have been dropped. But sources say that intense negotiations are under way between the SFO and BAE regarding the three remaining deals. The Serious Fraud Office declined to comment. BAE Systems said: 'The interests of the company as well as all of its stakeholders, including the general public, are best served by allowing the ongoing investigations to run their course.
]]>They travelled by private jet and were waited on by a battalion of servants. As for her weekly shopping, it was delivered to her Palladian mansion, set in 200 acres, courtesy of Harrods. There was really no limit to what I could spend. I could have anything I wanted,' she said. 'I never had fewer than three luxury cars, including a Hummer just to take my dogs to the vet.' Once, her husband bought her a Range Rover filled with tens of thousands of pounds worth of couture dresses by designer Maria Grachvogel. For her 40th birthday, he lavished her with £1 million worth of Graff diamond jewellery. But in 2006 her life fell apart with vertiginous speed. As her marriage disintegrated, so too – according to her husband, at least – did his vast fortune. In fact, he claims it simply vanished completely. Michelle, however, remains sceptical. The couple, who have two daughters, Scarlet, 16, and Sasha, 14, are now engaged in one of the most expensive divorce battles of recent times. Mr Young is due back at the High Court, where he faces jail unless he fully answers a questionnaire into his financial circumstances. At a previous hearing, his wife's lawyers claimed to have evidence that he was still worth £400million in 2006. Michelle Young 'I am not going to roll over': Michelle Young at her London home last week
For three years he has failed to explain adequately how he came to lose his fortune so quickly. No receipts, deeds or papers have yet been forthcoming. In 2007 he claimed that not only had every last penny vanished but that he was being pursued by creditors to the tune of £27million. So dire are the financial straits in which he claims to find himself that he has applied for Legal Aid. Meanwhile, his current whereabouts are unknown, though he frequently rings his daughters, who live with their mother in a rented London townhouse – paid for by his friends, says her husband. They face eviction later this month because the rent payments suddenly stopped. It goes without saying that Michelle has serious doubts about her husband's predicament, scepticism fuelled by phone calls he has made to their daughters. 'Last week he told Scarlet he would buy her a Rolls-Royce Phantom for her 17th birthday,' said Michelle. 'He said he was on the verge of a deal involving Bill Clinton that would make him one of the richest men in the world. 'He also said he wanted Scarlet to be friends with Philip Green's daughter Chloe. He told her that Philip would take the girls around Topshop and let Scarlet have anything she wanted. Thankfully, she doesn't want to take up the offer.' The extraordinary story of her life with the secretive Mr Young, and how it felt to have it all – then lose it. And, shedding new light on his business deals, she revealed for the first time the reason offered by her husband for his apparently spectacular crash. 'He said he'd ploughed everything he had into a doomed housing and shopping development in Russia called Project Moscow,' said Michelle, who now lives on the money she made from selling her Graff jewellery. She realises that many will savour the details of her descent with schadenfreude, particularly in these straitened times. But she isn't, she insists, seeking sympathy. 'I just want the marriage to come to an end and for my daughters and me to be properly looked after.'
Far from being the trophy wife of a wealthy man, Michelle played an important role in her husband's success. 'We started off together and we made it together,' she said.They met 22 years ago, and if her background as the daughter of a successful Essex businessman was comfortable, his was less so – a fact, she says, that drove him to do well. 'He was originally from Dundee and when we met he said he was in the property business,' said Michelle. 'But he didn't explain too much about it. He was always very secretive, even then.' Their first year together was spent living in Upminster with her parents, who adored the charismatic Mr Young, now 47, and treated him as a son. 'My father helped him in business, introducing him to contacts,' said Michelle, who at the time worked as a fashion buyer. 'It was through a contact of my father that Scot first met Philip Green.' Michelle gave up her career when she became pregnant with Scarlet in 1992. She gave birth to Sasha two years later and married Mr Young in 1995 at Chelsea Register Office.
By this time, with his property developing business expanding rapidly, they were living in Theydon Bois in Essex in a Tudor-style house set in a few acres, complete with swimming pool and tennis court. Michelle would put her design skills to use when they bought houses to renovate, and would often find the properties. 'I wasn't just a housewife,' she said. 'It is fair to say that I was key to his early success.' But soon after they married, Mr Young's 'darker side' began to emerge, according to his wife. She claimed he could be volatile and prone to 'bouts of aggression which seemed to come from nowhere. He could get very angry for no reason and start throwing things about'. By the mid-Nineties, Mr Young had become close to Sir Philip Green and Sir Tom Hunter, the property and sports goods tycoon. 'They made hundreds of millions from a telecoms venture,' said Michelle. 'But I didn't have much of an idea about what exactly they were doing.' By this stage the family had moved into £21 million Wood Perry House on a 200-acre estate in Oxfordshire. 'I was busy running that and looking after the girls,' said Michelle. 'Although Scot saw Philip and Tom all the time, I only met them a few times socially. When I did meet them, it was just chit-chat. People like Tom Hunter, Philip Green and my husband simply don't discuss business with their wives.' While Sir Philip relished the spotlight, Mr Young, according to his wife, preferred to operate under the radar. 'He wasn't one for throwing glitzy parties, but he was extravagant and generous,' said Michelle.
'He loved Dolce & Gabbana clothes and every time their new collection came out he would buy it all, spending around a £1million a year on clothes for himself. Every time he pulled off a deal he bought a fabulously expensive watch – he must have had more than 200. He had countless luxury cars, sometimes buying a new one every six weeks. The antiques with which I filled our house were worth £4million, and Scot was also generous with the girls. They had Arabian horses to ride around the estate and small battery-powered Jeeps. There were frequent fantastic holidays in Capri and New York and Barbados by Concorde.' Sometimes the family would dine at Raymond Blanc's celebrated Oxfordshire restaurant, Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, twice a week. It was an amazing life. But as we grew richer, so Scot became more volatile,' said Michelle. 'There were frequent rows and he humiliated me a lot. He would play the macho man and swear at me in front of workmen, for example, ordering me about and telling me to do this and do that. The family moved out of Wood Perry House in 2001, buying an equally impressive mansion on the Wentworth Park Estate in Egham, Surrey. They were there for just a few months before deciding to return to Oxfordshire because Sasha and Scarlet missed their schools. Mr Young sold the house to billionaire Russian dissident Boris Berezovsky.
'It was through this sale that the two of them became very close,' said Michelle. 'Again, I don't know what business they did together, but one of our mutual friends told me recently that whenever he sees Scot these days he is always with Boris. I met Boris on a few occasions. He took us to the Manoir to thank us for the house. Over dinner he gave me a Faberge brooch and Scot Faberge cufflinks. I also met him at a charity function at Windsor Castle but I never really got to know him. He was like the others in Scot's inner circle. It amuses me when I read how Scot was this fixer who would find cars and houses for oligarchs. If anything, he was Boris's equal. And he was far too grand simply to find cars for his rich friends. But he did give them away, and would often say thank you for a favour, for example, by buying his pals a Ferrari or a Bentley. By 2005, the marriage had grown increasingly unhappy, with one episode in particular almost bringing it to the point of collapse. Michelle recalled: 'I was at home with the girls when robbers wearing balaclavas and carrying weapons came to the house and stole three of Scot's cars – a Mercedes, a Porsche Turbo and a Porsche Cayenne. We didn't see it happen, although we later saw them on the CCTV. I called the police, who were there when Scot came home very aggressive and screaming at me, "My cars, my cars. Why didn't you f****** stop them?" The policeman told him he should be thankful that we hadn't been hurt. I found the whole thing very upsetting.'
The family decided to make a 'fresh start' in Miami, a place they had visited often. They bought a £3.5million beachfront home as 'a base' while they searched for somewhere more substantial. But, according to Michelle, within weeks of arriving Mr Young left for Britain, saying he was 'negotiating a very big Russian deal, a £2billion shopping and retail development that he called Project Moscow'. He returned to Miami for two days in January 2006 for his birthday, but in all was away for three months. What was strange was how moved he was by the fuss we made of him on his birthday,' she said. 'He had to leave the room on one occasion because he was crying. Also, a month earlier at Christmas, he made an incredible fuss of us. Even by his standards he was generous. He gave me a Damien Hirst sketch he'd bought at auction – outbidding Hugh Grant – and a diamond necklace. The girls got Cartier watches and Louis Vuitton luggage. Three months later, Michelle received a call from a solicitor saying her husband had lost all his money. 'I couldn't take it in, I couldn't believe it. He came back a week later saying he'd lost it all on Project Moscow,' she said. 'From then on things spiralled out of control. Everything, including the £4million of antiques, were repossessed.
The money had gone from all the accounts and I had nothing. Scot was getting very agitated and it seemed he spent the whole time in the garden on his mobile phone. I simply didn't believe him about Project Moscow. It was during this period that we found evidence of his wealth on a laptop. The girls wanted me to leave him and on November 5, 2006, we did just that, flying back to London with what money we had and a suitcase of clothes. We stayed at a hotel for two months and then rented a house by Regent's Park, where we are now. It is bewildering for the girls. He asked one of them last week to come to live with him in his new luxury apartment, which doesn't exactly chime with the idea that he has lost everything. In truth, we simply don't know how he has been living for the past three years.'
Michelle has now amassed a formidable team of experts, managed by consultants Temple Regulatory Service Limited, and is close to striking a third party litigation funding deal. A spokesman for Temple said: 'This is a complex case but we are confident of achieving a resolution soon. Michelle added: 'I want Scot to know that I am not going to roll over. I mean business. A friend of Mr Young said last night that the tycoon was 'very positive about reaching an out-of-court settlement with Michelle. He intends to provide for his wife and children and is furious he has been portrayed as a bad husband and father. Asked if Mr Young was not therefore penniless, the friend said: 'No comment. He is a private man and his financial affairs will forever remain his business. The friend confirmed that Mr Young had amassed his fortune through 'property transactions, high-tech investments and telecom investments', and said that he had been living in America for the past three years but was now back in London.
]]>The Eclipse is also being equipped with armor plating surrounding the bridge and Abramovich's master suite, as well as bullet-proof windows. There's also a submarine that can be launched underwater and dive to a depth of 160 ft. that doubles as an escape pod, as well as two helicopter pads. Civilian ships are not allowed to carry weapons and so have to limit themselves to defense systems, but Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz gets around this by having his 482-ft. yacht registered as a Royal Saudi Navy vessel, said to be equipped with French-made Exocet missiles. Pirate attacks on luxury craft are on the rise of late. Abramovich owns three other megayachts already: the 377 ft. Pelorus, the 282 ft. Ecstasea and the 160 ft. Sussurro.
]]>Royal van Lent's yachts target an luxury yachts and are built to the highest quality standards using specific know-how. Feadship's attributes of creativity, craftsmanship, innovation, quality and exclusive positioning are shared by all the luxury businesses operated by LVMH. Founded 160 years ago, Royal van Lent enjoys a leading market position. It designs and builds custom mega-yachts under the Feadship brand, one of the most exclusive and prestigious brands in the world for motor-yachts measuring over 50 meters. The custom-built ultra-luxury mega-yacht sector offers strong global growth prospects. By targeting exclusively ultra-high net worth individuals, Royal van Lent offers an outstanding growth opportunity that is resistant to economic cycles. Since 2000, the worldwide order book for custom-built luxury yachts measuring over 50 meters has grown by more than 20% per annum.
Things are not going well for the Oligarchs currently, with Russia's luxury goods market in tatters – and despite headlines throughout the British press claiming that foreigners are bailing out the British luxury property market – Russian buyers are pretty thin on the ground at the moment. This is certainly the biggest price drop I have ever heard of in London and some agents are calling it a "bargain." I reserve judgment on that, but it certainly will give other sellers pause for thought. The buyer was – unsurprisingly a banker. Well, a bond trader actually who was in the news some time ago for having dated Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's now ex-wife.
]]>Eclipse Length 167meters (548ft) Year expected launched 2009 Owner believed Roman Abramovich
Dubai Length 160 meters (525ft) Year launched 2006 Owner Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (State Yacht)
Al Said Length154.8 meters (508ft) Year launched 2007 Owner Sultan Sayyed Qabus bin Said (State Yacht)
Prince Abdulaziz Length 147 meters (482ft) Year launched 1984 Owner King Abdullah (State Yacht)
El Horriya Length 145 meters (482ft) Year launched 1980s Owner Presidential Yacht Egypt (State Yacht)
Al Salamah Length 139 meters (456ft) Year launched 1999 Owner Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz
Rising Sun Length 138 meters (453ft) Year launched 2004 Owner Larry Ellison (Private)
Al Mirqab Length 133 meters (436ft) Year launched 2008 Owner Hamad bin Khalifa (Emir of Quatar)
Octopus Length 126 meters (413ft) Year launched 2003 Owner Paul Allan (Private)
Savarona Length 124 meters (446ft) Year launched 1931 Refurbished 1999 Owner Republic of Turkey leased by Kahraman Sadikoglu
8th Wonder Length122.5 meters (402ft) Year launched 2008 Owner unnamed
Alexander Length122 meters (400ft) Year launched 1976 Owner Latis Family
A Length 118 meters (387ft) Year launched 2008 Andrey Melnichenko
Turama Length 116 meters (381ft) Year launched 1994 Owner Latis Family
Atlantis II Length 115 meters (377ft) Year launched 1981 Owner Niarchos Family
Issham Al Baher Length 115 meters (377ft) Year launched 1973 Owner Saudi Royal Family (State)
Luna Length 115 meters (377ft) Year launched expected 2009 Owner rumoured Roman Abramovich
Pelorus Length115 meters (377ft) Year launched 2003 Owner Roman Abramovich
Le Grand Bleu Length115 meters (377ft) Year launched 2000 Owner Eugine Shivdler (Previously owned by Roman Abramovich)
Sea Cloud Length 109.5 meters (359ft) Year launched 1931 Owner unnamed
Dilbar Length 110 meters (361ft) Year launched 2008 Owner Alisher Usmanov
Lady Moura Length 108 meters (354ft) Year launched 2000 Owner Nasser al Rashid
Fulk As-Salam (Loaloat Al Behar) Length 103.6 meters (340ft) Year launched 1982 Owner Sultan Qaboos (State)
Attessa IV Length 100 meters (325ft) Year launched 1997 Owner Dennis Washington
Christina O Length 99.1 meters (325ft) Year launched 1943 Owner John Paul Papanicolaou (Corporation)
Carinthia VII Length 98 meters (322ft) Year launched 2002 Owner Heidi Horten (Private)
Christina O Length 99.1 meters (325ft) Year launched 1943 Owner John Paul Papanicolaou (Corporation)
Limitless Length 96 meters (315ft) Year launched 1997 Owner Leslie Wexner (Private)
Indian Empress Length 95 meters (312ft) Year launched 2000 Owner Vijay Mallya (Private)
Eos Length 92.9 meters (305ft) Year launched 2006 Owner Barry Diller
Tatoosh Length 92 meters (301ft) Year launched 2000 Owner Paul Allan (Private)
Nahlin Length 91.4 meters (300ft) Year launched 1930 Refurbished 2003 Owner unamed
Ice Length 91.1 meters (299ft) Year launched 2005 Owner Suleiman Kerimov (Private)
Athena Length 90 meters (295ft) Year launched 2004 Owner – Unnamed
Constellation Length 88.5 meters (290ft) Year launched 2002 Owner – Unammed
Asean Lady Length 88 meters (289ft) Year launched 2003 Owner Brian Chang (Private)
Arctic P Length 87.6 meters (287ft) Year launched 1966 Owner James Packer (Private)
Maltese Falcon Length 87 meters (285ft) Year launched 2007 Owner Tom Perkins (Private)
Ecstasea Length 86 meters (282ft) Year launched 2004 Owner Roman Abramovich (Private)
Kingdom 5KR Length 86 meters (282ft) Year launched 1980 Owner Prince Alwaleed bin Talal
]]>Police believe this was to make sure they were not locked between the two security doors. As they left they fired a warning shot into the ground before escaping in a blue BMW, which collided with a taxi. A second shot was then fired into the ground as members of the public pursued the gang as they clambered into a silver Mercedes. The men then transferred to a third car, described as a black Ford Galaxy or VW Sharan.
The same store lost jewellery worth £23 million in a robbery in 2003 when two armed Serbians held up staff. In 2007, jewellery worth several million pounds was stolen from a branch of Graff's Diamonds in London's Sloane Street by two men posing as customers. Detectives from the Flying Squad believe they are looking for at least five men, including a motorbike rider who was given a package by the two men when they were in the BMW. Detective Chief Inspector Pam Mace from the Flying Squad said: "This was a well-planned robbery with a number of vehicles used to help the robbers escape. These men are extremely dangerous and fired at least two shots in busy London streets as they made their getaway.
It's the site of the best cash-making machine that global capitalism has ever produced, and, some say, a political force more powerful than governments. The people who work behind the brass-trim glass doors make more money than some countries do. They are the rainmakers' rainmakers, the biggest swinging dicks in the financial jungle. Their assets total $1 trillion, their annual revenues run into the tens of billions, and their profits are in the billions, which they distribute liberally among themselves. Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm. When they have finished getting "filthy rich by 40″, as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don't put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they "rule the world". Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs.
The world's most successful investment bank likes to hide behind the tidal wave of money that it generates and sends crashing over Manhattan, the City of London and most of the world's other financial capitals. But now the dark knights of banking are being forced, blinking, into the cold light of day. The public, politicians and the press blame bankers' reckless trading for the credit crunch and, as the most successful bank still standing, Goldman is their prime target. Here, politicians and commentators compete to denounce Goldman in ever more robust terms — "robber barons", "economic vandals", "vulture capitalists". Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, contrasts the bank's recent record results — profits of $3.2 billion in the last quarter alone — and its planned bumper bonus payments with what has happened to ordinary people's jobs and incomes in 2009.
It's even worse in the US. There, Rolling Stone magazine ran a story that described Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money". In his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore drives up to 85 Broad Street in an armoured Brinks money van, leaps out carrying a sack with a giant dollar sign on it, looks up at the building and yells: "We're here to get the money back for the American people!"
Goldman's reputation is suddenly as toxic as the credit default swaps and other inexplicably exotic financial instruments it used to buy with glee. That's bad for the one thing it values more than anything else: business. Being the prime target for popular and political outrage could put Goldman first in line for draconian new regulation. So it has, reluctantly, decided that the time has come to speak out, to fight its corner. That's how, on one of those bright autumnal New York mornings when anything seems possible — even an invitation to break bread with the masters of the universe — I find myself walking past the security guard who held up Michael Moore and into the building with no name.
"Aha! You catch us plotting in real time," says Lloyd Blankfein, breaking away from a cabal of senior executives discussing his trip to Washington the previous day. Blankfein, 55, Goldman's chairman and chief executive, is wearing a grey suit with a jaunty Hermès tie with little red bicycles on it. In his hand, he's carrying one of those cups of coffee that look bigger than the human stomach. Maybe it's the caffeine, maybe it's the tie — a birthday present from his daughter — but he's in a remarkably jolly mood for a man everyone seems to hate. "It's like a safari here," he jokes. "You've come in to look at the animals."
Blankfein may be Wall Street's Sun God, but, with the economic outlook stormy, he doesn't want to advertise it, so the merest hint of a status symbol or — horror! — ostentation is airbrushed out of his life, publicly, at least. Take his office on the 30th floor. The chairs are the same ones that were there when he became CEO three years ago. There are none of the $87,000 handmade rugs or $5,000 wastepaper baskets of Wall Street lore. There's no sign of irrational exuberance. Only coffee, which arrives cold. It sets just the right tone for the job in hand. The grand wizard of Wall Street is steeling himself for the hardest sell of his life: he's here to argue for good ol' capitalism, for investment banks and for Goldman Sachs.
Luckily for him and his firm, he's a damn good salesman. He starts with a little humility. He understands that "people are pissed off, mad, and bent out of shape" at bankers' actions. Goldman played its part in the meltdown that almost destroyed the global financial system. It, like most other banks, lent too much money, made its first quarterly loss for more than a decade last year and ended up taking bail-out cash from Washington. "I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer," he says. But then, he slowly begins to argue the case for modern banking. "We're very important," he says, abandoning self-flagellation. "We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It's a virtuous cycle." To drive home his point, he makes a remarkably bold claim. "We have a social purpose."
Social purpose? Those who have lost their jobs or seen their pay slashed thanks to bankers who flogged dodgy mortgages and dreamt up investments so complex not even they understood them, would gladly tell him where to stick his social purpose. But the problem is, Blankfein is a good advertisement for wealth creation. His own. He is no scion of privilege, dispensing plummy-voiced homilies to raw capitalism from his 30th-floor eyrie. Born in a tough neighbourhood in the Bronx, the son of a postal worker and a receptionist, he was the first in his family to go to college and used financial aid to go to Harvard.
Even though he proudly pays himself more in a year than most of us could ever dream of — $68m in 2007 alone, a record for any Wall Street CEO, to add to the more than $500m of Goldman stock he owns — he insists he's still "a blue-collar guy". But what about the charge sheet? Bankers brought the world to the brink of bankruptcy and instead of doing the decent thing and jumping out of the nearest window, they turned up cap in hand to governments to hoover up taxpayers' money to save their skin. Now, just one year on, they are carrying on as if nothing has happened, gambling, and winning, handsomely, with our cash. Goldman's profits in the second quarter were a record $3.4 billion. Most of the money is being made in trading in bonds, currencies and commodities.
Goldman is coining it again for two reasons. First, global markets are booming — up 50% from the credit-crunch lows, as new money, much of it from governments, has gushed into the financial system. Second, with Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns off the street, Merrill Lynch a crippled shadow of its former self, and neither Citigroup nor UBS the forces of old, Goldman has a bigger slice of a growing pie. "We didn't f*** up like the other guys. We've still got a balance sheet. So, now we've got a bigger and richer pot to piss in," is how one Goldman banker puts it. Small wonder the bank is on course to set aside over $20 billion for salaries and bonuses.
So far, so lucrative. But isn't it simply unfair? Isn't Goldman acting as the modern equivalent of war-time profiteer, taking advantage of global crisis and emergency government action to mint millions? Even the veteran financier George Soros says the big profits made by Wall Street banks are "hidden gifts" from the state.
Blankfein dismisses any suggestion that Gold-man needed to be bailed out, and, by extension, rejects any notion that the firm is now profiting from public support. Sure, he took $10 billion from Washington's Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). But the bank has since repaid the cash, with healthy interest — 23%. Goldman also bene-fited from the federal bail-out of the huge US insurance firm AIG. Goldman had bought $20 billion worth of insurance from AIG and received billions of dollars — perhaps as much as $13 billion — when Washington pumped $90 billion into the stricken giant. But Blankfein insists Goldman was "hedged" against any AIG losses, in the best possible way — with cash. So even if AIG had gone under, Goldman would not have suffered. Critics say that had AIG gone bust, the entire financial system could have collapsed, taking Goldman with it. What's more, at the height of the crisis, the Federal Reserve broke with an 80-year-old tradition and let Goldman turn itself from a pure investment bank into a bank holding company. This meant it could borrow funds at the same cheap rate as commercial banks for as long as it wanted. Blankfein says Goldman changed status not for the money, but because it had become clear, following the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman, that the market had lost faith in the ability of the US Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate investment banks. Being regulated by the central bank, the Federal Reserve, would help to restore confidence in the financial system as a whole.
Whatever the truth behind the bail-out, not even the smartest Goldmanite can deny that it is only thanks to government aid that the bank still has a financial system to work with. Washington has bolstered the US economy and banks to the tune of $12 trillion. Does Blankfein not acknowledge that it is maddening for most of us to watch Goldman gobble up so much cash while we struggle? Quite the opposite. He insists we should be celebrating his bank's success, not condemning it. "Everybody should be, frankly, happy," he says. Can he be serious? Deadly. Goldman's performance, he argues, is the firmest indication of a nascent economic recovery that will benefit not just him and his firm but all of us. "The financial system led us into the crisis and it will lead us out."
Blankfein goes on to say something equally audacious. We should welcome the return of titanic paydays at Goldman. Goldman is exempt from President Barack Obama's cap on bonuses because it has paid back bail-out cash. Paying top dollar to recruit and retain the best bankers won't sink the system, he claims, but save it. Performance-related pay is a guarantee of high-quality responsible banking. "If you examine our practices on compensation, you will see a complete correlation throughout our history of having remuneration match performance over the long term. Others made no money and still paid large bonuses. Some are not around any more. I wonder why."
Many disagree, arguing that in the new, flatter economic landscape, megabucks pay is no longer necessary. Lucian Bebchuk, professor of law, economics and finance at Harvard Law School, says: "These days, it's easier for banks to keep their employees from being raided. The outside opportunities are less attractive now than in 2007."
Okay, forget bail-outs, forget bonuses, forget all the money stuff, if you can. Surely Blankfein cannot dodge the playwright David Hare? Through his latest work, The Power of Yes, which tackles the issue of the credit crunch, Hare argues that it is "blackmail" to say that there cannot be a recovery unless we let bankers get on with what they have always done and pay themselves squillions. It's like what the miners did in the 1970s, only this time the National Union of Mineworkers is the City and Wall Street. Blankfein has no time for such soft talk. Bankers are not miners. "I've got news for you," he shoots back, eyes narrowing. "If the financial system goes down, our business is going down and, trust me, yours and everyone else's is going down, too."
Like a patient who has survived a near-death experience, for Blankfein the credit crunch has rekindled his innate passion for moneymaking. Talking to him is like talking to a man who has greenbacks, not blood, running through his veins. He believes he's good at what he does and what he does is good. He has his supporters. Vanity Fair awarded him the coveted No 1 spot in its 2009 New Establishment list, its league table of the 100 top power players in the information age, above such luminaries as the Apple boss, Steve Jobs, and the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Others, such as the New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, argue that the public "cannot have it both ways". At the height of the crisis last year, Sorkin recalls, "many crossed their fingers, hoping Goldman and the rest of Wall Street would be saved to halt the downward spiral. But now when the banks finally get back on their feet, we want them to fall flat again".
Like it or loathe it, one thing is unarguable: "Tenacious G" does seem to draw the winning hand in good times and, as we have seen recently, in bad. It begs one simple question. How? What's in the special sauce? To try to find the answer, you have to leave Blankfein's office and take the lift to the 17th floor. On the way, you hear investment bankers, traders, "strats" — strategists — and "quants", the mathematical lizard brains who dream up whizzy trading formulae, discussing "interest rate swaps", "no credit defaults", "exotic and vanilla options", "bid-ask spreads", "bunds", "bobls" and goodness knows what else. You can't see the cash whizzing around 85 Broad Street as you walk through the place, but you can feel it being shuffled 24 hours a day between central, commercial and investment banks, vast companies, Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern movers and sheikhers, Texas oilmen and secretive billionaires in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
In an office with an ink stain on the carpet, sits Liz Beshel. She's the first ingredient of Goldman's witches' brew. The firm only hires the very, very brightest and they don't come much sparkier than Beshel. The 40-year-old single mother talks so fast, and with such insight into financial markets, you practically need a degree from Harvard Business School to keep up. She was snapped up by Goldman straight from college and managed to get an executive MBA from Columbia University, New York, "on Fridays". As you do. She rose quickly though investment banking to become the firm's youngest-ever global treasurer, the keeper of the cash. Today, every pound the firm invests, every yen it borrows, every dollar that flows on and off its balance sheet, is under her watchful eye, all $1 trillion a day of it. How much cash does the bank have right now? I ask. "$164.2 billion in cash or cash equivalents," she replies without pausing for thought or breath.
It is thanks to rat-tat-tat intellects like Beshel that Goldman Sachs not only has so much money, but tends to be good at hanging onto it. Staff rigorously price — "mark to market", in the jargon — the bank's assets every day, down to the last cent, and forensically examine daily profit and loss. This helps the bank to see market trends clearly and early and, it believes, to manage risk better than most other banks. "We think we make better decisions," says Beshel. There's evidence to support the claim. Take the sub-prime mortgage sector, the ticking toxic debt bomb that detonated the economic crisis. One year before bad home loans brought down Lehman and Bear Stearns, forced shotgun marriages of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America and HBOS to Lloyds, and made Royal Bank of Scotland a national joke, Goldman's daily valuations revealed it had suffered modest losses in its mortgage holdings for just over a week. At most banks, the losses might have gone unnoticed or been dismissed as a rounding error, but Goldman convened a meeting of senior bankers to try to find out what was going on. Even though the housing and mortgage markets were still buoyant, the bank did not like what it saw and began reducing its exposure. When the credit crunch hit, its losses in the mortgage sector were only $1.7 billion, lower than any other big investment bank. UBS lost $58 billion.
Being smarter than the average bear is one thing, but to be a Goldmanite you have to work harder than the average bear too. Ask Sarah Smith, 50, a former convent schoolgirl from Bromley in Kent who left Britain to become Goldman's chief accountant. "It's a 24/7 culture," she says. "When you're needed, you're here. And if you're needed and you're not answering your phone, you won't be needed very long."
Smith, whose office is a BlackBerry throw away from the Embassy Suites hotel where Goldman staff go for an hour or two's sleep when they have been up so long that they start sleepwalking along the hallways, only had a few days' holiday last year. How many weeks off does she get a year? "I don't know. No one really knows how much holiday you get because nobody ever takes it all."
The big brains and brutal work ethic help to give Goldman the edge when it comes to snagging the best, and richest, clients. One veteran Goldman banker explains: "You are programmed at an early stage to go out more than the other guy, to see more people — clients, hedge funds or private equity guys."
Goldman staffers are also trained to "brain pick" contacts and clients harder than the other guy. "You ask what's their best trade. How do they see the market," says one. "You offer something in return, but you always come back with something. Then you feed it to colleagues who go to work trying to use the information to make money." Other banks do not get such good information, and what information individual bankers do get, they tend not to share because they regard it as power they can use to benefit individually. "Goldman is not like that," the veteran banker says. "It's a team effort." Or, as one rival banker puts it, "They're a clever gang — of thugs."
Dane Holmes, 39, Goldman's head of investor relations, is a 6ft 8in tall, 260lb former college basketball player. He looks like he could run straight through opponents — hell, through brick walls! — if he wanted to. But, he says: "That's not the way Goldman works. You can have a great career in banking as an individual, but it won't be here. The system weeds out those who can't play nicely with others."
When Goldman gets behind something, everyone in the giant hive wants a piece of the action. Take this article. Once the bank had agreed to talk, it was hard to get senior executives to shut up. One, Michael Sherwood, 44, co-boss of Europe, flew back to the firm's London headquarters from the IMF meeting in Istanbul, via Moscow, for a 40-minute interview, before jetting off again straight away to see clients in the Gulf.
The idea of teamwork goes right to the top. Goldman may not be a private partnership any more — it went public a decade ago — but the bosses work hard to foster a "we're in this together", family-style approach. Others say it feels more like a cult, but they mean it as a compliment. Some of its practices make perfect sense. Bonuses, for example, are not based on personal performance, as they are at many banks, but on the performance of the firm as a whole, and partners receive a sizable chunk of their remuneration in stock that they cannot sell until they leave the firm. It weeds out what Dina Powell, 36, the firecracker Egyptian-American boss of Goldman's philanthropic arm, calls "egomaniac jerks" who might be tempted to bet the farm on red in the hope of skewering a bigger bonus.
Other practices are distinctly creepy. Goldman-ites are forced to check their secure voicemail morning, noon and night for the latest bon mots of Blankfein and Eileen Dillon, 48, who is officially head of operations for the executive office but unofficially camp counsellor. Goldman is the biggest user of voicemail in the world. The "mind bullets" consist of anything from the latest profit and loss figures, to reports of what the chief executives of key clients have told Blankfein and his top team over lunch, to instructions to "switch off on holiday, for goodness sake". No calls to meet in the basement to club baby seals to death first thing in the morning to get in the mood for a hard day's banking? "God, no," one staffer says wryly. "We don't club baby seals. We club babies."
What makes people who are bright enough to do anything they want put up with the days-into-nights-into-days working and the dorkish corporate groupthink? There's the money, of course. Goldman Sachs isn't nicknamed "Goldmine Sachs" for nothing. There's so much of the stuff sloshing around that in an average year a good investment banking partner will make $3.5m, a good trading partner $7-10m and a management committee member $15-25m. Some 953 employees got bonuses of at least $1m in 2008. Blankfein may insist he is still a blue-collar guy, but he manages to have a $30m apartment on Central Park West and a 6,500-square-foot home in the Hamptons, the summer playground of New York's elite. One former Goldman banker describes the culture as "completely money-obsessed. I was like a donkey driven forward by the biggest, juiciest carrot I could imagine. Money is the way you define your success. There's always room — need — for more. If you are not getting a bigger house or a bigger boat, you're falling behind. It's an addiction." Addiction is a word Sherwood uses, too. He should know. He's on his second multi-million-pound super-yacht. "I like boats," he says. Not sailing, but boats. It's his way of keeping up with, and in with, his friend the BHS billionaire, Sir Philip Green, who lives for part of the year on his 208ft, £32m yacht, Lionheart, which is moored in Monaco. "How many boats have I bought?" Sherwood says. "It's not a good time to answer that. I'll take the Fifth."
But there's another powerful motivator: doubt. There may be arrogance at 85 Broad Street — behind closed doors, Blankfein likes to joke (but not really) that he has "attained perfection" — but behind the bravado, Goldmanites, curiously, question their ability. "There is a deep and constant paranoia about everything we do," says Sherwood. It applies to an individual's performance and the prospects for the firm as a whole.
Insecurity is hard-wired into the system. You feel it even before you are hired. Most applicants are interviewed at least 20 times before they are made an offer and some more than 30 times. Once hired, each staff member is constantly and confidentially reviewed by those they work with. There's a metric for every aspect of performance and each staffer is measured against their department and the firm as a whole. Every year, staff are put into one of four quartiles by the Human Capital Management department. Note the "Capital". At Goldman, people are money. The top are richly rewarded, while the fourth quartilers? Who cares? They won't be around much longer. It's up, or out. "We say goodbye to the bottom 3-5% every year [about 1,500 people]," says Richard Gnodde, 49, co-boss of the European operation, based in London.
Taking type-A people, making them feel like type-B people and moulding them into kick-ass teams that work every hour God — sorry, Goldman — sends, is important, no doubt. But it's not Goldman's killer app. That is its extraordinary networking ability. The firm is the greatest talent network in the world. Unlike at other banks, top performers are encouraged to get on, make all the money they will ever need in their thirties, then get out to "do good". The average tenure of a partner is eight years. "You don't join for the retirement programme," says one staffer. "You have your phase of the moon to make money and then f*** off." But doing good does not mean running an HIV clinic in Kinshasa, it means getting top jobs in treasuries, central banks and stock exchanges around the world. The list of former Goldman executives who have held key posts in the US administration and vital global institutions in New York and Washington alone is mind-boggling. It includes: the treasury secretary under Bill Clinton (Robert Rubin); the treasury secretary under George Bush (Hank Paulson); the current president and former chairman of the New York Federal Reserve (William Dudley and Stephen Friedman); the chief of staff to the treasury secretary Timothy Geithner (Mark Patterson); the chief of staff under President Bush (Joshua Bolten); the economic adviser to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton (Robert Hormats); the chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Gary Gensler); the under-secretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs under President Bush (Reuben Jeffery); the past and current heads of the New York Stock Exchange (John Thain and Duncan Niederauer); the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division (Adam Storch). Moreover, Goldman's new top lobbyist in Washington, Michael Paese, used to work for Barney Frank, the congressman who chairs the House Financial Services Committee. To put this in perspective, imagine that Alistair Darling, the chancellor, and his key advisers, Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, Xavier Rolet, the boss of the London Stock Exchange, and Hector Sants, head of the Financial Services Authority, all used to work at the same City firm before moving into government. Small wonder that another of Goldman's nicknames is "Government Sachs".
Critics say having friends in high places gives the firm the vital edge. Key government officials, they argue, discuss policy — privately — with Goldman chiefs more than executives from other banks. In his new book, Too Big to Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin reports one meeting. Blankfein's predecessor, Paulson, had promised not to talk to Goldman when he moved from the bank to the US treasury, but last June he happened to be in Moscow at the same time that Goldman's board of directors was having dinner there with Mikhail Gorbachev. Paulson got approval from treasury lawyers to meet his old chums, since it would be a "social event". Paulson proceeded to regale them with stories about his time in the treasury and his predictions for the global economy. Goldman's board questioned him about the possibility of another bank blowing up, like Bear Stearns. Recently released documents reveal that a few months later, at the height of the crisis when Paulson was working on the bail-out of AIG, Blankfein's name appeared on his call sheet 24 times in six days. Big banks that held AIG insurance contracts, including Goldman, were paid off in full, rather than at the 60 cents on the dollar that AIG negotiators had been pressing for, prompting allegations of a "sweetheart deal" between Paulson and Blankfein.
Goldman vigorously denies that having so many former staffers in top political posts means it receives special treatment. "These people are highly principled," says Sherwood. The Moscow meeting and the AIG deal call into question Sherwood's claim, to put it mildly.
The more time you spend in 85 Broad Street, the more you get the feeling that Goldman is the overachieving child of globalisation. It has the best, brightest and hardest-working in global finance and government in its pocket. Even the critics agree. But they add that the well-greased machine does other things that ensure its success, things that the bank is less keen to talk about. While the whizzo teams might manage risk well and get out of bull markets at just the right time, they play their part in inflating the bubbles in the first place — and pocket a fortune doing so. Goldman has benefited from the upside of all the recent booms — dot.com, commodities, housing — and, critics say, was involved in stoking them by handling share offerings for big clients and by trading securities and debt before pulling back.
Detractors also accuse the bank's trading and investment-banking arms of "playing both sides" of the market. Goldman trades securities for big firms and pension funds. It also acts as adviser to many of the companies whose securities it trades. This means the firm has a view on what everyone in the market is doing. Say an investor approaches Goldman and says it wants to buy into the oil market. Goldman can offer an accurate view of what is likely to happen in that market because it knows what its own corporate energy clients are doing on its advice and what other big investors are trading. This also means the bank can do well on its own oil trades. Critics liken this to a huge casino in which the house knows every hand at the table and uses that information to enrich itself at the expense of everyone else. Goldman dismisses charges of "casino capitalism". The more market information it has, it argues, the better it can advise companies and the better it can match buyers with sellers and get the best prices in the markets. It emphatically denies it misuses information or acts unethically. Strict "Chinese walls" between traders and advisers prevent any conflicts of interest. Regulations are so tight that if an investment banker so much as tries to enter a trading floor using their electronic office pass, not only will the pass not work, but he or she will be hauled in for questioning.
Whatever alchemy it uses, one thing is certain: Goldman has dodged the credit-crunch bullet and is emerging from the crisis stronger than ever. To the victor, the spoils. But the patient might find cheating death easier than pacifying the public. Many remain unconvinced that, while Goldman may be big and clever, it is a force for good. Vince Cable warns: "If we've learnt anything, it's that banks have too much power over consumers and governments. Goldman Sachs has never been more powerful. That should alarm all of us."
World leaders and financial regulators are trying to draw up plans to limit what bank like Goldman can do and how they can pay their staff. With his bulldog-like belief in the purity and efficiency of the free market, you would not imagine this would be a fight Blankfein would relish. But the funny thing is, he's up for it because he thinks it will make banking safer and enable Goldman to make even more money in future.
"Those government pronouncements that have come out so far are on the right track," he says. Paying staff for performance, and paying in deferred stock awards as well as cash to ensure long-term success, is "desirable and something we already do". "Greedy, but long-term greedy," is how Goldmanites describe the bank's investment and payment policies. Blankfein backs proposals to ensure banks are better capitalised. "If we didn't understand the limits of unfettered capitalism before, we sure do now. Anything that makes the system better, safer, is good for us." He might have added: just don't impose any windfall tax on pay.
For Blankfein, in the end, it all comes down to one thing: finding the best, fastest, and safest way to make money with money, then make some more money, with money on top. He's not interested in a reality check, just a bumper pay cheque for his clients, for his firm, for his staff, for his shareholders and, eventually, he believes, for us. His almost religious devotion to the dogma of finance is thrown into stark relief just before I walk out of the building with no name and find myself back in the autumn sunshine. I ask him the question that, in these troubled times, you'd think anyone — from the guy outside 85 Broad selling 99-cent chilli dogs to the gazillionaire King of Wall Street sitting 30 storeys above — would pause before answering. And then, perhaps, offer an equivocal, on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand answer, whether he means it or not. Is it possible to make too much money?
"Is it possible to have too much ambition? Is it possible to be too successful?" Blankfein shoots back. "I don't want people in this firm to think that they have accomplished as much for themselves as they can and go on vacation. As the guardian of the interests of the shareholders and, by the way, for the purposes of society, I'd like them to continue to do what they are doing. I don't want to put a cap on their ambition. It's hard for me to argue for a cap on their compensation."
So, it's business as usual, then, regardless of whether it makes most people howl at the moon with rage? Goldman Sachs, this pillar of the free market, breeder of super-citizens, object of envy and awe will go on raking it in, getting richer than God? An impish grin spreads across Blankfein's face. Call him a fat cat who mocks the public. Call him wicked. Call him what you will. He is, he says, just a banker "doing God's work"
How they make their money
Goldman Sachs's name may not be on the high street, but if you bank with HSBC, cook with gas, shop with Ocado, watch Big Brother, buy clothes at Gap, use a TomTom satellite navigation system or simply enjoy the odd cheese-and-pickle sandwich, Goldman is part of your life.
The company is split into three divisions. It's an investment bank that raises money for clients and sometimes invests its own money in businesses. In the UK, it has raised capital for HSBC, Centrica (owners of British Gas), and Ocado, the online grocery business backed by Waitrose that sells more than £400m-worth of food a year.
It helped to fund Endemol, makers of Big Brother, and is the biggest single investor in Eurotunnel. It has handled share issues for TomTom and J Crew. It is banker to Gap. It restructured Premier Foods, one of whose brands is Branston pickle. Goldman is also a trading house. It trades commodities, such as oil and gold, equities (shares in companies) and company debt. It raises money for governments by selling interest-bearing bonds to investors. The bank's third division is asset management. It manages money on behalf of pension funds, insurance companies and wealthy individuals.
It makes money by charging hefty fees to the companies and clients it advises and whose assets it manages — typically 2-4%. It also makes profits from trading using its own cash, as it has done since its inauspicious beginnings.
The bank was founded in New York in 1869 by a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria, Marcus Goldman. His son-in-law, Samuel Sachs, later joined him. Shut out of the clubby, largely Protestant world of stock and bond trading, Goldman established a profitable, if unglamorous, niche buying and selling short-term corporate IOUs, known as commercial paper. By the turn of the century, the firm was pioneering the market for initial public offerings, handling the stock-market debuts of blue-chip companies such as Sears and Ford.
As Goldman started outside the cosy Wall Street establishment, it hired the smartest, most driven people it could find, who learnt to exploit market loopholes, snatch business from rivals and win favours from friends in high places. Under Sidney Weinberg, chief executive from 1930 to 1969, the bank forged top business graduates into ad-hoc teams that would work around the clock for clients
Overworked, overpaid, over here
Goldman Sachs may be a Wall Street bank, but its role and influence in London is huge. Around 5,500 people work in its Fleet Street office, which is, in fact, two former newspaper offices joined together. Traders sit where hot-metal printers used to lay out The Daily and Sunday Telegraph and The Daily and Sunday Express.
It is the most profitable bank in the City. Profits per employee averaged £181,000 a year between 2000 and 2008. Average pay this year is expected to be £458,000. It is one of the top tax-payers in the City. The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, stands to receive more than £2 billion in corporation tax, VAT and income tax this year. Staffers enjoy lavish perks. The firm has its own chefs to make sure visiting guests can eat and drink with Goldman partners in style — and away from envious eyes. There is a company gym, a doctor's surgery and a crèche. Every staffer gets private health insurance as standard. Staff can take a taxi on the firm pretty much whenever they want. Lines of black cabs snake around the back of the building at night.
The London office is run by Michael Sherwood (above) and Richard Gnodde. Sherwood, known as Woody, is the hard man. The former trader seems to model himself on his good friend, the BHS billionaire Sir Philip Green. He talks fast, in a no-bullshit style.
Like Sir Philip, his brash deal-making can get the better of him. In 2006, British Airports Authority asked Goldman to pitch for the brief to fend off a hostile takeover bid from Ferrovial, Spain's construction giant. Goldman, whose team included Sherwood, said one tactic would be for Goldman itself to buy BAA. The move outraged BAA and prompted Goldman's then CEO, Hank Paulson, to send a stern message upbraiding the executives involved. The note became known as 'the spank from Hank'.
By contrast, Gnodde is a suave investment banker. He looks, and talks, like he has stepped out of a 1970s men's knitwear catalogue. He is the velvet — or should that be cashmere? — glove to Woody's iron fist. He is best known for advising the Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal in his £17-billion bid for the European producer Arcelor.
Sherwood and Gnodde are advised by part-time eminences grises, such as Lord (Brian) Griffiths, one-time special adviser to Margaret Thatcher who ran the prime minister's policy unit from 1985 to 1990 and is a former director of the Bank of England. He is one of the bank's international advisers and also acts as company pastor. 'I had one guy who came to see me — I thought about his career — but he wanted to talk about the morality of banking. That was a long conversation,' Griffiths recalls.
As a committed Christian and a trustee of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lambeth Fund, Griffiths is a useful PR tool. It was he, for instance, who spoke out last month to defend big bonuses. 'If we said we're not going to have as big bonuses or the same bonuses as last year, I think you'd find that lots of City firms could easily hive off their operations to Switzerland or the Far East,' he told an audience at St Paul's Cathedral.
Every year, at bonus time, Sherwood and Gnodde remind staff to keep a low profile, not to advertise their wealth. Most do. They invest their millions in property, mostly in secluded parts of Kensington, Regent's Park, Fulham, Notting Hill Gate, Chelsea, Highgate and Hampstead. For many years, one partner, Julian Metherell, proudly drove around in a beaten-up red Nissan Sunny.
Not all Goldmanites avoid the headlines. An abiding tale of the boom years is how three London executives, Jennifer Moses and her husband, Ron Beller, and Scott Mead, had so much cash they did not notice when an assistant, Joyti De-Laurey, stole more than £4m from their accounts.
Goldmanites send their children to the same private schools and if they don't like the ones in their area, they set up their own. Mead co-founded a prep school in Notting Hill, with 200 students from ages 4-14. The wives of Goldman Sachs employees also try to keep a low profile, devoting themselves to charity work and competitive grooming.
As in the US, the bank is closely linked to the government. Its former chief economist and partner, Gavyn Davies, is married to Gordon Brown's special adviser Sue Nye. Under Tony Blair, Davies became chairman of the BBC. His successor as chief economist at Goldman, the late David Walton, was handed a seat on the Bank of England's interest-rate setting Monetary Policy Committee. Paul Deighton, who is running the London Olympic Games organising committee, used to be Goldman's chief operating officer. Goldman is a key banking adviser to the government. Brown hired the bank to advise him on the sale of Northern Rock last year.
Friends in high places. Goldman's political web
US treasury secretaries, heads of the New York Stock Exchange, White House and Downing Street advisers — you name it, they've worked for Goldman Sachs. Here are just some of the Goldmanites with their fingers in the worldwide political pie
Gordon Brown's special adviser, Nye is married to Goldman's former chief economist and partner Gavyn Davies. Under Tony Blair, Davies became chairman of the BBC. He resigned in 2004 after the Hutton Report
Robert Rubin/Bill Clinton
Rubin spent 26 years at Goldman before joining the Clinton administration as an economic adviser. He served as treasury secretary for four years from 1995, and remains an adviser to President Barack Obama
Hank Paulson/George Bush
Paulson was CEO of Goldman before becoming the US treasury secretary. At the height of the credit crunch, when Paulson was working on the AIG bail-out, Blankfein's name appeared on Paulson's call sheet 24 times in six days
Larry Summers/Barack Obama
Obama's economic adviser Summers never worked directly for Goldman, but served in Clinton's government under his mentor, Robert Rubin. Goldman paid Summers $135,000 to appear at a one-day speaking event in 2008 before Barack Obama came to power
Michael Sherwood: The vice chairman and co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs International. Known as Woody, he is renowned for his trading skills. His basic salary in 2008 was £415,000.
In a good year, he can expect a bonus to take his package to around £6m. He is one of two head honchos in London. Richard Gnodde: The co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs International, Gnodde's 2008 salary was £1.3m. A large chunk of this may have been a bonus. He is believed to have been the highest-paid director in London in 2007, taking home £11.7m. He took a 90% pay cut last year.
Matthew Westerman: The global head of equity capital markets. He should take home up to £5m with a bonus in 2009. A former Rothschild banker who cut his teeth in his thirties on stock-market flotations around Europe, he was lured to Goldman Sachs in 2000 to lead the European new issues division. He has been involved in company fundraisings this year, where Goldman has reaped huge profits, so is in line for a bumper bonus. Yoel Zaoui: The head of European investment banking. He is likely to receive up to £5m in 2009.
An employee since 1988, Zaoui has had a meteoric rise. He achieved coveted partnership in just 10 years. He has often locked swords in European takeover battles with his older brother Michael, who had the same role at the rival bank Morgan Stanley.
Karen Cook: An MD of Goldman Sachs International and president of Goldman Sachs, Europe, Cook's salary with bonus in 2009 could be up to £5m. A mother of six, she was co-head of UK corporate finance at the blue-chip bank Schroders before moving to Goldman in 1999. She has been involved in multi-billion-pound takeovers, such as Kraft's £10.2 billion tilt at Cadbury.
In 2007, the Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein earned $68m, a record for any Wall Street CEO. A good investment banking partner at Goldman will make $3.5m a year, a good trading partner $7-10m a year, and a management committee member $15-25m.
Goldman is not the biggest bank in the world. ICBC, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, has 11 times the number of employees. Nor is it the richest. HSBC has assets of $2.4 trillion, against Goldman's $1 trillion. And it's not the biggest by market capitalisation. It's worth $95 billion, compared with $201 billion for HSBC. But it is the most profitable.
Goldman makes more money per employee than any other bank — $222,000 a year on average between 2000 and 2008. JP Morgan Chase, its nearest rival, made annual profits of $133,000 per employee in the same period.
Goldman's profits in the second quarter of this year were a record $3.4 billion.
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]]>Already the adjoining 3,000 acre Dalham Hall stud, near Newmarket, Suffolk is owned by Maktoum, from where he runs his global blood-stock empire. It was specified by estate agent Rupert Sweeting, "It's the highest amount fetched by a country estate this year." It has been learnt that the grounds would be used for shooting by Maktoum – whose fortune dropped to £8billion in the credit crunch.
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]]>The oval-shaped stone – about the size of a pistachio shell – fetched $1.33 million per carat, edging out a similar blue diamond that sold last year in Hong Kong for $1.32 million per carat.
The auction house identified the buyer as the London jeweller Laurence Graff, who is known in the industry as the "King of Diamonds". The Geneva auction sold more than $57 million worth of diamonds.
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Our exclusive clients can afford whatever it takes to ensure that their instruction or brief is completed. This includes facilitating meeting on our client's behalf to ensure initial introduction and contacts are made away from prying eyes. Our private fixers are fully committed to protecting your privacy at all times.
]]>Hundreds of billions of pounds, euros and dollars are thought to be squirrelled away there. If, as the Treasury claims, the deal will force 5,000 Brits to come clean on £2 billion to £3 billion of secret savings, this is a great result. The proof will be whether the threat of account closure persuades culprits to come forward.
They face relatively modest penalties. The Revenue plans to charge only 10 per cent on dodged tax, and only for the past ten years. These are rather more generous terms than will be offered to those with undeclared offshore accounts at 300 banks who are also in the Revenue's sights. This could affect an estimated 500,000 people and the Revenue thinks it could raise £500 million over the next four years. Honest taxpayers may resent the leniency being offered to dodgers.
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Our exclusive clients can afford whatever it takes to ensure that their instruction or brief is completed. This includes facilitating meeting on our client's behalf to ensure initial introduction and contacts are made away from prying eyes. Our private fixers are fully committed to protecting your privacy at all times.
]]>The winning bidder bought the plate as a birthday present for his wife and will affix it to her Bentley. After taxes and fees, it ranks as the second most expensive plate sold after "F 1″ went for 440,625 pounds last year. Car registration plates are big business in the UK, where specific plate numbers can be lost forever if they aren't transferred to a new car or if the owner does not apply to keep them, making older plates rare and extremely valuable.
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]]>Now Elizabeth II is suffering the added indignity of languishing on the rich list, as her measly $650 million fortune puts her well behind the UAE's oil-rich rulers.In the No. 1 spot for the first time is King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, with a net worth of $35 billion, who apparently shot up the list as a result of admitting he was richer than previously thought.
At No. 2 is Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE and hereditary ruler of Abu Dhabi, with a net worth of $23 billion. No. 3 is King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, worth $21 billion. And Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, ruler of Dubai, clocks in at No. 5 with $18 billion.
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The Musical Ride will travel on business-classflights and stay at one of the country's top hotels, at the sheik's expense. At their destination, the horses will be put up in air-conditioned stables, with a team of staff to take care of them. "It looks like the horses are going to get better treatment than we will," joked spokesman Captain Michael Fry. Not that the army doesn't deserve such a wonderful treatment, but the money sure could have been utilized well in charity. Anyways, who cares when you have £555 billion of wealth
Sheikh Mansoor is the richest man of United Arab Emirates at £555 billion. The British team, based at the Household Cavalry barracks in Hyde Park, perform at shows around the country, but they have never traveled outside of Europe before. DailyMail reports, "Sheik Mansoor, who is passionate about equestrianism and owns 52 racehorses as well as being an accomplished rider himself, was so taken by the Musical Ride that he offered to foot the entire bill for their stay." Reportedly, the sheik had splashed out £210million on Manchester City football club last year.
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Classifying yachts into a list of the world's most impressive vessels is not an easy task. Most people use length as the deciding factor in determining the largest and most spectacular vessels, but in technical terms, it is gross tonnage that really determines one yacht's size in relation to another. This measure of weight refers to a yacht's volume and what it can carry or accommodate.
The World's Five Longest Motor Yachts
But it is length that is more tangible for most people and is a huge determining factor in the status of a yacht. In classifying the world's privately-owned yachts into the top 5 by length, there are actually six that emerge as clear contenders. The world's largest yacht is actually yet to be launched and will be vying for the top spot by the end of 2008.
Most of the world's five longest yachts were built in Europe, with only the Platinum/Golden Star being constructed in the United Arab Emirates. Germany is currently the top yacht producing country with the esteemed Lurssen Company being behind three of the world's current longest luxury yachts. This trend of European dominance in the field of yachting is also prominent in yacht charters and brokerage. Yacht brokerage companies sell and charter some of the world's longest and most luxurious yachts, making magnificent vessels of this type more accessible.
The Golden Star
The world's biggest and most majestic yacht to date, the Golden Star is also known as the Platinum Star and is truly a sight to behold. Launched in Dubai in April 2006, the 160 metre yacht is owned by the Sheikh of Dubai. The yacht was originally commissioned by Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei in 1996, but when his funds ran out two years later, construction was halted indefinitely. The partially-finished skeleton of the yacht sat in a German dry dock until the project was taken over by Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the Crown Prince of Dubai. The name of the yacht as well as her features have been held secret, even after her launch with rumours of submarines and missile detectors neither confirmed nor denied. Originally named the Golden Star, the Sheikh of Dubai is said to prefer the more sophisticated Platinum Star while latest rumours have simply named the current world's longest yacht the Dubai.
At 155 metres, the Sunflower is the world's second largest yacht and currently one of its youngest, as it was only launched in 2007. Its design is typically Arabian, even though it was built in Germany, hinting that she may have been built for a Middle Eastern owner and her unique design includes a triple mast and a double funnel. The owner is still unknown but rumours abound that she is the next successor to the Al Said due to her similar colouring and features. The Omani Royal Yacht Al Said is now over 25 years old and was originally built in Italy.
Prince Abdul Aziz
The world's current third largest yacht was built back in 1984 and actually holds the record of being the biggest ever built in the 20th century. The Prince Abdul Aziz, built for the King of Saudi Arabia, ruled the oceans with the title of the world's largest yacht for over 20 years until it was usurped by the Platinum/Golden Star. The interior of the yacht was completely redesigned and refitted in Greece in 2002 to create a more modern and luxurious look. Sixty-five crew members are reportedly needed to keep the Prince Abdul Aziz afloat and she more resembles a cruise ship than a privately-owned yacht.
Al Salamah
The Al Salamah is one of the most mysterious yachts currently sailing our seas as very little information about its features has ever been released, leaving rumours to circulate about its incredible design and luxurious touches. Lurssen Yachts in Germany were given only two years to complete the construction of the 139 metre yacht, making its completion a remarkable feat. Owned by Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi Defence Minister and son of the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, the Al Salamah has all the expected features of a yacht of this size, including private cinemas and Jacuzzis, but it is the rumoured extra features that truly set her apart. Her indoor swimming pool covered by a glass roof is unique and her interior was designed by the famed British designer Terence Disdale.
Rising Sun
At 138 metres, the Rising Sun is the world's fifth longest yacht and encompasses five stories with 82 rooms to house its privileged guests. The yacht cost current owners Larry Ellison, CEO of the Oracle Corporation, and David Geffen over $200 million to build. Constructed by Lurssen in Germany from a Jon Bannenberg design, the Rising Sun has an estimated living space of over 8000 square metres. There are plenty of features to keep guests entertained with a basketball court, gymnasium spa and sauna as well as a giant plasma-screened cinema. The wine cellars ensure that there is always something special on hand to drink and the teak deck and onyx countertops accentuate the luxurious design.
The buzz surrounding the build of the Eclipse is keeping the yachting fraternity in frantic anticipation awaiting the world's newest and most spectacular Super Yacht. Owned by Roman Abromovich and constructed by Blohm and Voss in Germany, the Eclipse has an estimated price tag of over $300 million. Accommodating 24 people, this yacht is built for luxury and privacy, with anti-paparazzi measures and a unique design that separates the owner, guests and crew. The features on board range from two helipads to a disco, pool, and a round glass room offering panoramic views, as well its own private submarine.
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]]>This $400 million super-yacht was built for a Russian oligarch, Andrey Melnichenko, 37, who is worth $9.2 billion and was ranked 172 on the Forbes list of the world's richest people. There is a large master suite as well as six luxury cabins for up to 14 guests and enough room for 42 crew members. Designed by Philippe Stark, the 400ft long superyacht is said to have its own discotheque featuring a glass roof which is situated directly under the swimming pool.
Other details of the interior have been kept strictly secret by its German boat builders Blohm and Voss. But it is rumoured to have a helicopter hangar, as well as two 30ft speed boats kept in hatches on both sides of the hull. Yacht "A" – named after his model wife Aleksandra – is registered in Bermuda, weighs 5,900 tons and can travel at speeds of up to 27 miles per hour.
The futuristic yacht docked in Kristiansand, Norway, last week where three paintings by the French Impressionist artist Claude Monet were loaded on board, amid an impressive security operation. Mr Melnichenko was a founder of worldwide MDM Bank and went on to become its president from 1997 to 2001.
Perfect Knowledge is a private company that offers a bespoke service to VIP's, senior executives and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI). We provide a discreet service that manages private and personal affairs on behalf of our clients. Our focus is to ensure total privacy for the individual or organisation at all times. www.perfect-knowledge.com