Candy Brothers Wait Out London Commercial Property Slump

In the six months after Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008, almost no London homes were sold in the so-called super-prime market, where houses start at £10 million.

In the first seven months of 2009, 26 £10-million-plus homes sold, compared with 75 for all of 2008 and 119 in 2007, according to Savills, a property group.

The Candy Brothers weren’t spared. They backed out of a plan to build a development in London called NoHo Square that included 244 apartments. Another project to erect 552 apartments on a 5-hectare, or 13-acre, site called Chelsea Barracks also went awry.

But the Candys say they can afford to wait for the property market to revive. One reason, they say, is that they cashed out of a joint venture they formed in 2006 to buy two Kensington hotels for £69 million. They planned to build 97 apartments there, they say, until they were offered £320 million by investors from Abu Dhabi.
That deal closed in March 2008, and the Candys pocketed about half of the £251 million profit, according to Steven Smith, head of corporate finance for the CPC Group, a Guernsey-based property developer owned by Chris Candy.
Bloomberg