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Many rich Russians were drawn to London, as were the ultra rich wherever they came from. The City was the world’s most international of financial hubs, situated in a strategic time zone, in a capital filled with history and an exceptional cultural heritage, where the quality of life in a vibrant, multi-cultural society was appreciated by the newcomers.
From Gutherie Plimpton’s point of view, London was an extraordinary source of profit for its high class real estate business. The capital was the home to fifty odd billionaires and more than four thousand multi-millionaires whose wealth was counted in the tens of millions and that was without counting a vast number of comfortably wealthy individuals who owned prime residential property in and around London.
Jonathan Plimpton, the firm’s head and surviving partner of the two founders, published a confidential report each year distributed to a selected number of high worth individuals, identified as potential buyers of prime property. These were divided in two segments: first were the billionaires, some of whom were public figures possessing their own sources of information; the second were those significantly rich individuals whose wealth exceeded one hundred million dollars, the latter were more difficult to identify, much more discrete and generally unknown to the public.
In the not too distant past such high worth individuals were for the most part Americans and Europeans, but since the beginning of the new millennium large numbers of nouveaux-riches from Asia, the Middle East and South America had joined the club. Amongst them were the Chinese with fourteen thousand multi-millionaires, whose fortunes had been made mostly by their hard work over the course of a couple of short decades.
Plimpton’s had accumulated detailed information on a certain number of these high wealth individuals via INI’s investment arm, while the Russians were identified thanks to Tarasov’s services. However, the Chinese had remained elusive at least until Angus MacPherson came onboard and Pat Kennedy had opened a new path thanks to his connection with the Wu family.
Jonathan Plimpton’s relationship with Fitzwilliams went back to the Emerald Pool development in Dominica in 2006. Malcolm Smeaton had financed the project through the Irish Netherlands and Plimpton had managed the marketing. An attractive venture, that was until the real estate market was hit by the crisis that broke in early 2008, the climax of which was the Lehman Brothers collapse.
In the ensuing rout real estate developers dropped like flies and Plimpton was not spared. Unable to raise the cash necessary to ward off collapse he appealed to Fitzwilliams, who came up with a sizeable cash injection in exchange for a large minority interest in the real estate firm.
Knightsbridge – London
Both gained from the new situation: Plimpton, a credible source of finance for his clients; and Fitzwilliams, a foot into the real estate market which he calculated would serve him well when the time came.
And come it did. Soon the rich were giving credence to the idea London’s streets were paved with gold, and they really were, for that happy band of course. It was a city where wealth, finance and politics joined together to create an extraordinary market for prime residential and commercial property.
London was a city that exuded wealth. It was built on plutonomy, where the rich, unscathed by the turbulence of the crisis, dominated the plebeian masses: their servitors. Where fortunes were accumulated almost overnight to the detriment of Britain’s hard hit middle classes. Amongst the happy winners was Britain’s former prime minister, Tony Blair, who according to some had simply collected his due for services rendered.
Cornucopia Page 20
