Sales figures struggle to match One Hyde Park hype

Sales figures struggle to match One Hyde Park hype

The launch of Nick and Christian Candy's uber-luxury One Hyde Park development has caused much excitement.

Christian Candy, pictured with his wife Emily Crompton Photo: Rex Features

By Jonathan Russell, Dashwood Editor 10:00PM GMT 22 Jan 2011

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As one property hack gasped, "plutocrats, potentates and technology billionaires" were falling over themselves to pay £6m for a one-bed flat or £135m for a penthouse. Why wouldn't you?

The Candy brothers' publicity machine has been quick to point out that 60pc of the flats, around 50 of them, have already been sold. Somehow the amount of stamp duty these sales represent, £36m, also found its way into the press.

Handy. That suggests these sales have completed. A quick glance on the Land Registry would suggest otherwise. Out of the 50 flats the boys say they've sold, only one appears on the official record. It was sold back in March last year for £31m – to a certain Christian Peter Candy. Not that he stumped up all the money. Barclays provided a mortgage.

I feed this into the Candy publicity machine. "Most purchasers will have completed by mid-February," comes the firm response.

Which leaves one question. As the only registered buyer to date is Christian Candy, pictured with his wife Emily Crompton, is he a plutocrat, potentate or tech billionaire?

Or all three?

Appiness at the touch of a smartphone

We all want to be it. The Prime Minister wants to measure it. And now there's an App for it. Happiness.

I learn Mark Mason has developed an App for a Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust that will measure your mood.

Quite how the Mubaloo App works apart from asking you if you're happy and then recording the answer I'm not entirely sure. But I'm reliably informed the programme will darken your mood by telling you "a good night's sleep and a balanced diet can help maintain your mood as well as keeping you fit and healthy".

Grrrr.

What will be the upshot of all this? Probably 7.5. As a leading economist worked out, if you measure happiness it's almost always strays from 7.5 out of 10.

Well it's a better mark than most of us got at school.

Quote of the week

“I need £1000 per month for food” – Bust banker Pierre Rolin makes a bid for income in his proposed IVA. The former Credit Suisse man also put down a request for £350 per month in personal grooming.

Beeb's band aid for redundancy

The BBC has kindly offered its staff another opportunity to venture back into the real world. In a letter to News Division staff, Auntie set out its latest voluntary redundancy scheme.

It "may be of particular interest to some people aged 55 or over", the letter stated. Odd, I thought the Beeb sacked anyone over the age of 42, well the female ones anyway.

The redundancy is open to staff in bands 2 to 11. What does that mean?

"I don't know anyone at the BBC who is band 2," my mole tells me. "They must be the people that empty the ashtrays." And band 11? "I know that. They're the ones that fill them up."

Symposium to shudder at

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Coming to a conference centre near you, the Creditflux CLO Symposium.

If that means nothing to you, allow me to spell out CLOs. They are collateralised loan obligations, the pimped-up, financial fast cars that drove the credit crisis into the heart of the economy.

And they're back.

"Structuring desks are competing aggressively, managers are pricing new deals, investors are showing renewed interest and the secondary market is booming," the blurb for the conference boasts.

More worrying still, the organisation is going to be handing out awards to the people that drove their cars – into the wall.

There will awards for best CLOs created in 2005 and 2006. Strangely no sign of a gong for anything created after 2007.

jonathan russell, publicity machine, mark mason, wife emily, hyde park, balanced diet, potentates, dashwood, potentate, foundation trust, land registry, stamp duty, launch, billionaires, grrrr, upshot, billionaire, barclays online, penthouse, gloucestershire
qtdz
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