My Travel tycoon puts Jersey mansion on the market for £19 million
David Crossland is a fine example of a “Northern lad done good”. Starting out in the 1970s he turned two small travel agencies into a package tour empire and now with the sale of his Jersey mansion, one can see how truly successful this businessman’s career has been. (more…)
James Murphy reviews ‘Thor: The Dark World’ and ‘The Fifth Estate’
Thor: The Dark World and The Fifth Estate are two movies that do not seem ripe for comparison at first glance. Their genres – one based upon fact, one in fiction – antipathetic; their motivations disparate – one aims to entertain; the other to provoke and inform. (more…)
Rupert Murdoch invests $70 million into Vice
Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. has just taken a slice of Vice. No, the billionaire’s not put his money into prostitution but instead – for those who haven’t heard of it – he’s invested in a local magazine business that has grown into an alternative media empire now valued at $1.4 billion. (more…)
Her “fat fraudster” husband called this French Hugenot Protestant “the keeper of my Jewish soul”. Of her life with him, she wrote an autobiography titled A Mind of My Own: My Life With Robert Maxwell and in it described him “as bullying, unfaithful and frequently absent as he amassed his empire”. This mother of nine children’s expertise on the Holocaust was renowned. She put up with a lot and of the media tycoon concluded: “God forbid I run into him again”.
A review of Gilpin’s Gin and a call to save juniper
This week it was reported that there’s a crisis in the world of gin. Juniper, the plant that provides the botanical essential to create this remarkable spirit, is threatened by loss of habitat and a deadly new fungus.
He’s taken action against 16 newspapers as: “If they tell lies, I sue them” and another court case resulted in Michael Winterbottom having to change the name of a film about his father, the club owner, pornographer and property tycoon Paul Raymond. Termed by some as the new “King of Soho”, Raymond launched a London dry gin of the same name in 2013.
A self-made mogul and former champion boxer who cannot read or write fluently. He thinks “differently” and built a £400 million fortune by creating and then selling a buy-to-let empire of almost 6,000 rental properties. Panayiotou takes the view that it is “moral[ly]” right to pay taxes in Britain and of those who call Heath Hall, a £65 million property he developed in North London, as “impersonally hideous as a brothel”, he rightly responds: “These guys are just jealous”. This maverick is indeed a businessman worthy of admiration rather than envy.
Of Italian-Jewish descent, Caring is of the “supermarket-sweep” school of empire building. This billionaire started out in the rag trade but now controls the majority of the top restaurants and clubs in Central London. He survived the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and viewed that to be a wakeup call. Since then he’s donated millions to charity and focused on his two passions: golf and shooting. This buccaneering businessman generally passes on breakfast and lunch and lives between a converted stable block set in 500 acres near Dulverton and a mansion on The Bishops Avenue. What will he buy next?
A Modernist masterpiece based upon simple rationalism
Two buildings were designed by architects Carlo di Carli and Antonio Carminati in 1953 – 1954 in Milan’s Via dei Giardini. Both are considered Modernist masterpieces and both stand proudly in this, the city’s only tree lined street.
Carlo di Carli (1910 – 1999) is considered to be amongst the “master[s] of Italian design” and is best known for a chair named the 683 Cassina that won him the Compasso d’Oro award in 1954. He was a leading figure at the Polytechnic of Milan and worked extensively with Longhi and Cinoca. An exhibition of his works was held at the Triennale Design Museum in 2011.
Laid out in the shape of an octagon overlapping a rectangle, one of these rationalist buildings is a five-storey 22,000 square foot single family residence. It boasts an elevator, a private garden and a roof top terrace and in last week’s Evening Standard, Lorenzo Mercolini of Sotheby’s, who is selling it for Santo Versace, president and co-CEO of Gianni Versace SpA and a Member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic, commented: “There is simply no other property in Milan like it.”
Santo Versace (born 1944), like his late brother Gianni and sister Donatella, is a colourful character. A graduate of the University of Messina, he worked first as a banker and then as an accountant. He gave this up in 1976 to support his brother in his rising career as a designer and effectively was the business brains behind the house of Versace. The company now generates over $1 billion a year in retail sales.
Married with two children, Santo Versace launched his political career in 2008 with Silvio Berlusconi’s The People of Freedom party before sensationally quitting in September 2011. His parting words to the “king of bunga bunga” were:
“I like to work. And in (Mr Berlusconi’s political party), there’s no need for people who work.”
He is now a member of the Alliance for Italy party and regularly speaks out against corruption in Italian politics. Mr Versace has not given a comment as to why he is selling his base at the heart of Milan’s shopping district.
You’d have to be Gaga about Versace to purchase this Via dei Giardini mansion though. The asking price is a staggering £40,000,000.
For more details about Santo Versace’s Via dei Giardini home, contact Ricardo Bergamo of Sotheby’s on +39 02 8707 8300 or go to: http://www.milan-sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/detail/289-l-1952-4000032335/a-one-of-a-kind-glamourous-property-in-milan-milano-mi-
“The Queen of Mean” was a chain-smoking hotelier and real estate tycoon with a reputation for tyrannical behaviour. She took the view that “only the little people pay taxes” but was investigated and convicted of federal income tax evasion in 1989. Sentenced to 16 years, she served just 19 months in prison and 2 months under house arrest. Worth some $8 billion, Helmsley left her Maltese dog, Trouble, $12 million in trust.