TheCPC Group is aluxury property development company headquartered inGuernsey, founded by brothersNick Candy andChristian Candy.[1][2][3]
The Candy brothers bought their first property, a one-bedroom flat inRedcliffe Square,Earl's Court, London. Using a £6,000 loan from their grandmother, the brothers renovated the £122,000 apartment while living in it. Eighteen months later they sold it for £172,000, making a £50,000 profit.[4]
In their spare time between 1995 and 1999, the brothers began renovating flats and working their way up the property ladder.[5] Eventually they were able to give up their day jobs where Nick worked in advertising forJ. Walter Thompson and Christian for investment bankMerrill Lynch and established Candy & Candy in 1999, of which Nick is CEO.[6] In June 2018, Candy & Candy was renamed Candy Property in order to reinforce Nick Candy's sole ownership of the business and to align with his wider portfolio of companies.[7]
In 2004, Christian established CPC Group inGuernsey, to specialise in high-end residential developments around the world. Some of their more high-profile developments, however, have been in London.[8]
In 2004, the Candy brothers sought an investment partner to help them buy the site ofBowater House inKnightsbridge, with plans to demolish it and construct 86 luxury apartments.[9]
After setting up a joint venture with Waterknights – a private company owned by thePrime Minister of Qatar – they purchased the site fromLand Securities in 2005 for £150m.[10] One Hyde Park was also financed by a £1.15 billion development loan from the German bank,Eurohypo, a successor to the defunctDresdner Bank, which was led byMatthias Warnig, a long-term associate of Russian PresidentVladimir Putin.[11][12]
They then hired the architectRichard Rogers to design the exterior, and used their own Candy & Candy to handle interior design. One Hyde Park: The Residences of Mandarin Oriental, London, was constructed in four years after obtaining planning permission in 2006, with the finished development housing three commercial units:Rolex,McLaren Automotive andAbu Dhabi Islamic Bank.[13][14] Despite its name, the building's address is located at 68-114 Knightsbridge, London.[4] In 2015,The Guardian obtained a leaked recording of a 2010 promotional video for One Hyde Park, which features Richard Rogers, Nick Candy and Christian Candy, and Stephen Smith, atax advisor for the Candy Brothers, who demanded changes to the video to "improve the tax profile" to avoid an enquiry byHer Majesty's Revenue & Customs, which at the time was led by Ian Barlow, a former director of a Candy brothers company in theBritish Virgin Islands.[15][16]
The One Hyde Park development officially launched in January 2011[17] and had a profound effect on the global real estate market, breaking a number of industry records as the most expensive residential development in the world.[18] It was reported that the penthouse apartments alone fetched some of the highest prices on record.[19] Since the development opened, apartments at the complex have been purchased by the superrich, includingViktor Kharitonin, a Russian billionaire and business partner ofRoman Abramovich, Ukrainian oligarchRinat Akhmetov, who bought a triplex penthouse in 2010 for £136 million, Anar Aitzhanova, a Kazakh singer whose husband was shot dead in 2004, and Ekaterina Fedun, the daughter of Russian billionaire and Lukoil shareholderLeonid Fedun.[20] Other owners of flats in the bloc include Temur Akhmedov, the son of sanctioned Russian-Azeri oligarchFarkhad Akhmedov, whose $460 million superyacht is now frozen in Germany due to EU sanctions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.[21][22] On 18 June 2022,The Telegraph reported thatAlexander Ponomarenko, a sanctioned Russian oligarch accused of purchasing a palace on behalf of PresidentVladimir Putin, is the owner of an apartment at One Hyde Park valued at £60 million.[23]
In 2006, the site of the formerMiddlesex Hospital was purchased for £175m by Project Abbey (Guernsey) Holdings Ltd – an investment consortium which includedKaupthing Bank, the now defunct Icelandic bank, and was led by the CPC Group.[24] In February 2007, the brothers applied toWestminster City Council for planning permission to redevelop the 1.2 hectare (3 acre) site into a mixed use development of several hundred new residential units and office space.[25][26] The plans were met with strong criticism from local residents over the Candy's choice of NoHo Square as the name for the new development.[27]
Planning permission for NoHo Square was granted in November 2007; however, the completion of demolition of the hospital in 2008 coincided with the collapse of Kaupthing due to the2008 financial crisis.[28] Kaupthing was the largest shareholder in the Guernsey-based consortium which bought the Middlesex site fromUniversity College Hospital in 2006, and with the bank in administration, the NoHo Square development stalled. As a result of CPC Group being partners with Kaupthing in another property development over in the US, the Candy brothers were able to transfer their equity stake in NoHo Square to the bank and in exchange take full control of the US development.[24][29]
In April 2007, the CPC Group acquired theChelsea Barracks in a joint venture withQatari Diar, part of the Qatar government's investment arm.[30] In what is believed to be Britain's costliest residential property deal, the Candy brothers and the Qatari government bought the 12.8-acre site from the Ministry of Defence for £959m.
In 2010, the CPC Group brought an £81 million lawsuit against the Qatar Diar after the latter pulled out of the project, which was later settled out of court.[31] Qatari Diar's decision to abandon the project came after pressure fromPrince Charles, who criticised the plans and Qatar's Prime Minister and Chairman of Qatari Diar,Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al-Thani, calling the plans "brutish".[32] Specifically, Charles was quoted as saying the Chelsea Barracks project would be “a gigantic experiment with the very soul of our capital city” and went on saying “it should be scrapped in favour of something more “old-fashioned”. High Court judge Mr. Justice Vos ruled that Charles’ intervention in the design of the project was immediately recognized and raised serious political issues that needed to be dealt with at the highest level, implying that Charles had intervened unlawfully.[33]
In April 2007, the CPC Group purchased an eight-acre site inBeverly Hills, California, known as 9900 Wilshire, with their equity partners Kaupthing for a reported £250m.[34]
CPC Group hired architectRichard Meier to design a condominium and retail complex in place of the formerRobinsons-May department store. Victor Bardack of the Beverly Hills North Homeowners Association said: "To put two huge projects on the already-impacted intersection of Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards is grossly detrimental to the community,[...] It'll be gridlock forever."[35] The controversy stemmed from the Sheikh being part owner of a Middle Eastern newspaper that has been accused of being anti-Semitic and anti-American.[36]
CPC Group served a written notice of default on Kaupthing shortly after. In the same month, the situation was made worse when the acquisition loan to the project fromCredit Suisse became past due, and, additionally, it became increasingly difficult to get financing on the 250 condominiums that the original plans catered for. This was due to the collapse of the property market and banks pulling their funding.[37][38] It was later reported that CPC Group – after negotiating full control of the development from Kaupthing – defaulted on a US$365.5 million bank loan.[24][29]
