LilySafra

It's Official: Mikhail Prokhorov Loses $55 Million Villa Leopolda Deposit

Filed under: Estates

Poor Mikhail Prokhorov. Last month we reported that the metals magnate had been replaced as Russia's richest man by Vladimir Lisin, and now languishes in second place. Now a court in Nice has just ruled that the oligarch must forfeit the $55 million deposit he put down for the magnificent $750 million Villa Leopolda (above) on the French Riviera in 2008 before backing out of the deal, the London Daily Mail reports. Prokhorov signed a sales agreement for the Villa, and French law stipulates that purchasers lose their deposits if they pull out after such an agreement has been executed. The magistrate also ordered Prokhorov to pay the Villa's owner Lily Safra an additional $1.5 million penalty. Safra says she will donate all the money to ten charities, including almost $1.5 million for neuroscience research at King's College London and Imperial College London. "By transforming the deposit into an act of giving I would like to encourage all who can do so to support medical research and other humanitarian causes," she declared. On the plus side for Prokhorov, he's still worth a cool $17.85 billion.

Tags: France, French Riviera, FrenchRiviera, Lily Safra, LilySafra, Mikhail Prokhorov, MikhailProkhorov, Russia, Russian billionaire, Russian oligarch, RussianBillionaire, RussianOligarch, South of France, SouthOfFrance, Villa Leopolda, VillaLeopolda

Lily Safra Named As Buyer Of World's Most Expensive Sculpture

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art

Last month, an auction stunned the world when a Giacometti sculpture, L'Homme Qui Marche I, sold for an incredible £65,001,250 ($104,327,006) at the Sotheby's London Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale . It was only estimated at £12-18 million but it managed to set a world record as the most expensive piece of art ever to sell at auction. Now the name of the buyer has been revealed and it's a name we've heard before. Billionaire Lily Safra has been named by Bloomberg News as the deep-pocketed art lover. If the name sounds familiar on this blog, it's probably in connection with another name, Villa Leopolda. Safra, the widow of banker Edmond Safra who died in a fire in his apartment in 1999, owns the world's most expensive house. Villa Leopolda in the Cote d'Azur, once had a reported price tag of $750 million and was nearly sold to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. She also owns an apartment at 820 Fifth Avenue in New York City as well as a place in the Belgravia area of London which is where the statue was delivered.

The Bloomberg article on the big reveal of the Giacometti buyer has an interesting quote from Philip Hoffman, chief executive of the London-based Fine Art Fund, who calls the big sale "a freak result" and says that the sculpture is not an investment piece and not likely to rise exponentially in value over the next ten years. The article indicates that she had tried to buy a different cast of this same sculpture through a dealer but that deal was never made so the art may have more value for Lily Safra than it would for another buyer.

Tags: giacometti, lily safra, LilySafra, worlds most expensive art, WorldsMostExpensiveArt

Sunday Real Estate Round-Up, 12/27/09

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates, Celebrity Shopping

From the Real Estalker:
--George Lindemann Jr., the son of billionaire George Lindemann and brother of art maven Adam Lindemann, has put his 11,388-square-foot mansion in Miami, shown above, on the market for $29.9 million. The listing is here.
--Cher isn't just auctioning off two new homes at the Four Seasons Four Seasons Hualalai, she has also dropped the price of her Malibu mansion from $45 million to $41 million.
--Russell Brand and Katy Perry have picked a home in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles for $3.25 million.

From the LA Times Hot Property:
--Director-producer Gil Junger has sold a gated compound in the Beverly Hills Post Office area for $4.31 million.
--Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony have sold their Bel-Air property for $7.5 million.
--Former Columbia Pictures and Universal TV head Frank Price has purchased an ocean-view condominium in Santa Monica for $3.1 million.
--Patrick Dempsey has sold his Bel-Air home for $2,571,500.

Gallery: Patrick Dempsey in Los Angeles

From NY Magazine:
--U2 guitarist, The Edge, is building five houses on a ridge in Malibu but has met with opposition from locals. Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez (who was recently portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. in The Soloist) has taken on the cause and has written a skewering op-ed piece on the project.

--From Cityfile's Buyers and Sellers:
--Barbara Gutmacher Girard and her mother Rose are teaming up to sell their apartments at the Plaza. The two units on the building's 18th-floor, which Barbara and Rose bought last year for $4.74 million and $3.4 million, respectively, are listed separately for $8.995 million and $5.995 million.
----James Savage, the founder of Savage Capital, and his wife, literary agent Nancy Trichter, have put their four-bedroom co-op at 285 Central Park West on the market for $7.995 million.
--Vicki Rosen-Solomon, the widow of private equity executive Adam Solomon, has gone into contract to sell her co-op at 956 Fifth Avenue. The three-bedroom apartment was first listed this past September for $14.575 million.The listing is here.
--Stephen Rotella, the former president and chief operating officer of Washington Mutual and his wife, Esther, put down $4.1 million for a two-bedroom co-op at 101 Central Park West.
--Josh Grotstein, the CEO of the video sharing site Motionbox, and his wife Leslie sold their apartment at 300 East 77th Street for $2.75 million.
--via the Real Deal, Lily Safra is making a move at 820 Fifth Avenue. The billionaire widow of Edmond Safra has sold her 12th-floor apartment for $40 million to Ken Griffin, the CEO of Chicago-based Citadel Investment Group. She paid $33 million to buy developer Ara Hovnanian's apartment on the 4th-floor, so she'll only be moving downstairs.

From the Chicago Tribune's Elite Street:
--Chicago Bulls guard Kirk Hinrich took a major loss on the sale of his four-bedroom house in Deerfield, which just sold for $730,000. He bought the home new in the summer of 2004 for $906,500.
--Movie reviewer and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper has taken his three-bedroom, duplex penthouse condominium unit in River North off the market after most recently listing it for $1.699 million.
--A five-bedroom mansion in Lincoln Park that retired TV anchor Walter Jacobson once owned has been listed for $2.55 million. The property website is here.

Tags: lily safra, LilySafra, patrick dempsey, PatrickDempsey, the edge, TheEdge

Safra Says Villa Leopolda Not for Sale at Any Price

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates, Wealth

The other day we wrote about a report in Forbes stating that Villa Leopolda in the Cote d'Azur, once the most expensive estate in the world with a reputed pricetag of $750 million, had been put back on the market for a mere $102 million. Leopolda's owner Lily Safra now says the Forbes report was "pure fantasy". "The residence is not being sold and was never offered for sale," Safra's rep Seth Goldschlager insists. Forbes has now removed Leopolda from its list of the world's most expensive estates. Albemarle House in Charlottesville, Va., listed at $100 million, is now the 4th most expensive estate in the world according to the magazine, behind No. 1, the Spelling Manor at $150 million; No. 2, Fleur De Lys at $125 million; and No. 3, Updown Court at $117 million.

Tags: Forbes, Lily Safra, LilySafra, Villa Leopolda, VillaLeopolda

Deposit On The World's Most Expensive House To Be Donated To Charity

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates

The mystery surrounding who might have bought Villa Leopolda continues. The lavish home in Villefranche-sur-Mer, south-eastern France was on the market for a record price of 390 million euros. Last year rumors swirled about the rich Russian who bought the home. We went through a laundry list of billionaires before learning that the most likely candidate was Mikhail Prokhorov, currently Russia's richest man. He denied springing for the home but as my colleague Jared Paul Stern learned last month, Prokhorov reportedly signed a contract on the property and paid a $55 million deposit, but wanted his money back.

The villa's owner, Lily Safra, has no intention of letting that happen and she made it public last week by issuing a press release saying that she would donate money to ten charities using "all proceeds potentially available from a deposit made on the sale of Villa Leopolda, which has now been halted." King's College, London, and Imperial College, London would each receive one million euros neuroscience research. Safra doesn't name who the buyer might have been in the release. The home is no longer on the market which is probably for the best since the list of people with the funds to purchase such a home continues to dwindle.

Tags: lily safra, LilySafra, villa leopolda, VillaLeopolda

Russia's Richest Man Backs Out on $750 Million Mansion

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates, Wealth

It seems that Russia's new richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, may not have been telling the whole truth when he denied buying the world's most expensive house, the $750 million Villa Leopolda (above) on the French Riviera, last year. Back in August we reported that the metals magnate was the mysterious purchaser of the eye-popping property, but Prokhorov, who's worth $14.1 billion, protested his innocence, saying he declined to do business in France because of a mix-up with some prostitutes and the French police. Now the London Times reports that Prokhorov signed a contract on the property and paid a $55 million deposit, but wants to back out of the deal.

Prokhorov reportedly lost $7 billion in the economic crisis but has fared better than fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich. Prokhorov will likely face a legal battle over the deposit, which is non-refundable under French law, with the Villa's seller Lily Safra. "Lily is adamant that she's not handing the deposit back," a source close to the deal tells the London Daily Mail. "Mr. Prokhorov, in turn, claims that property prices have collapsed since August, and the figures originally discussed were unreasonable. He wants out, and he wants his money back." We expect Prokhorov, founder of a new magazine for snobs, will likely issue another denial this time as well.

Tags: France, French Riviera, FrenchRiviera, Lily Safra, LilySafra, Mikhail Prokhorov, MikhailProkhorov, Roman Abramovich, RomanAbramovich, Russian billionaires, RussianBillionaires, Snobs, Villa Leopolda, VillaLeopolda