Mainland billionaire can’t get enough UK real estate as record-breaking London mansion adds to collection
- Poker-playing property tycoon Cheung Chung Kiu and C C Land have been adding UK assets to their books since 2017
Even for London’s ultra-luxury real estate market, the price is sensational: more than US$262 million (HK$2.04 billion) for a 45-room mansion in Knightsbridge.
For the buyer, Cheung Chung Kiu, it is not even his most expensive purchase. The chairman of C C Land Holdings bought a plot on The Peak in Hong Kong for HK$5.1 billion in 2015, a record at the time.
C C Land has already made significant purchases of trophy assets in London after decades in China, part of a rarefied group of Asia real estate firms with a team on the ground in the UK to vet and manage deals.
The company has pushed into London since 2017, investing more than £2 billion (HK$20.4 billion) in the UK capital. Best known as the owner of the “Cheesegrater,” the skyscraper with a distinct wedge shape, the group also owns a Central London office block, half of a project called Nine Elms Square and has a stake in Whiteleys, a former mall near Hyde Park.
But for all his investments, very little is known about Cheung outside ultra-rich circles in China and Hong Kong, where local press have reported that he is part of a private poker circle – the Big Two Club – that includes property tycoons Joseph Lau of Chinese Estates Holdings, China Evergrande’s Hui Ka Yan and New World Development’s Henry Cheng. Details of how he accumulated and spends his wealth are hard to come by, exactly the way he likes it.