Kazakh billionaire offloads Mayfair property for £35m

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LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 01: A general view of a house along Kensington Palace Gardens, which has been named as Britain's most expensive street on June 1, 2011 in London, England. Many of the mansions are occupied by billionaire businessmen, embassies and ambassadorial residences. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 01: A general view of a house along Kensington Palace Gardens, which has been named as Britain's most expensive street on June 1, 2011 in London, England. Many of the mansions are occupied by billionaire businessmen, embassies and ambassadorial residences. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

A Kazakh oligarch worth an estimated £5bn has sold his London mansion for just shy of £35m to the property investment firm North Wind Capital in yet another sign capital’s “super-prime” property market has steadied after a wobbly few months.

Timur Kulibayev, whose father-in-law is Kazakhstan’s former dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev, sold his palatial home on Mayfair’s Upper Grosvenor Street in late March.

The billionaire is also looking to offload 42 Upper Grosvenor St, an adjacent property that remains on the market.

The buyer, North Wind Capital, is a new property investment firm founded by the ex-Deutsche Bank director Ben Williams, who plans to redevelop the home.

The transaction suggests that jitters around London’s “super-prime” market might be coming to an end after a volatile few years.

Brexit had a major dampening effect on the market, spooking the world’s super-rich from laying down their foundations in London.

In March, the billionaire founder of the discount retailer B&M had to stomach a £10m loss when he sold his Belgravia mansion for £23.5m.

Meanwhile the ex-Arsenal defender Sol Campbell was forced to drop the asking price for his Cheyne Walk townhouse from £25m £15m.

However, there have also been some green shoots. At the end of April, Morning Wire reported the most expensive pad in London hit the market at a cool £175m.

At the end of last year there was also a spate of large deals. These included the Qatari prime minister, who sold his Mayfair mansion to a fellow member of the Gulf state’s royal family for £39m, in what was one of London’s biggest property deals of 2023.

While Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, paid £65m for a property.

Nazarbayev was in power in the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan for nearly three decades. Kulibayev was at one stage viewed as a likely successor to his father-in-law, before focussing on chairing its sovereign wealth fund.

He has owned the next-door mansions, which are directly opposite the Monegasque embassy and just a short walk from Buckingham Palace, for nearly two decades. During this time, the home he has managed to sell has remained largely vacant.

North Wind was approached for comment.