Best to avoid any mention of Icarus. “You might not want to get too close as
it’s a bit hot,” says Nick Candy, moving me away from the floor-to-ceiling
video wall in his office. Ouch, he’s right. You could toast a crumpet on the
heat it generates.
Christian Candy, his brother, slips into the seat without a murmur. They both
dress like trendy undertakers: black suits, white shirts, shiny shoes and
tidy hair. It goes with the blokeish, black and chrome feel of their
fashionable new offices in London’s Westminster. You can bet these guys sell
to men.
And how. The Candy brothers are, by their own account, the most successful
top-end property developers in London. Big flashy developments for the
super-rich are their metier, including One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge,
backed by Arab money, and the ‘Noho’ (north Soho) redevelopment of the old
Middlesex Hospital site, where they were in partnership with the Icelandic
bank Kaupthing.
More recently there have been whispers that their empire, Candy & Candy
(interior design, development manager), and its offshore cousin CPC Group
(property development), is under pressure. Relations with their Qatari
backers are reportedly strained, and a row with Kaupthing has persuaded them
to sell out of Noho. Some feel the Candy boys have flown too close to the
sun and may be due for a soak.
Well, forget what you heard. “We are not suffering,” says Christian bluntly.
“The problem,” adds Nick tentatively, “is that we are private. We don’t like
disclosing anything, and in fact we can’t disclose many things because there
are issues of confi-dentiality and security with our clients and partners.”
Christian: “But it’s a double-edged sword . . .” And so they start. Nick, 35,
bluff and chunky, tells it slowly with whole paragraphs of explanation.
Christian, 34, thin and gloomy, throws in sharp one-liners and the odd jibe
at his brother’s love life.
They have an ease with each other, more like a married couple than brothers.
“Yeah, well, we’ve lived together since year zero,” shrugs Christian,
suddenly interested in the financial information scrolling across the video
wall. He switches on and off repeatedly like that.
They run an extraordinary empire from their shared apartment in Monaco. There
is Candy & Candy in London, with 100 staff, and CPC in Guernsey, with
another 20. These businesses oversee property developments that were worth
billions before the credit crunch, and have given them a personal wealth of
£120m.
They set up their business just nine years ago and soon after changed their
domicile to Monaco (Christian in 2002 and Nick in 2004). Before that, Nick
was an ad executive, Christian a commodities trader. It’s unprecedented for
two young, privately educated chaps to have built such a business so fast.
Now things are changing. This weekend they have confirmed they are scaling
back their involvement in the redevelopment of Chelsea barracks. Something
is up.
The purchase of the 13-acre site for £959m was the biggest single property
deal in British history and surprised experts, who felt the Candys had
overpaid. More recently there has been a suggestion that the Qatari wealth
fund backing them was impatient for progress, as initial designs for the
site – luxury flats, shops and affordable housing – stalled in planning.
“There is no falling out,” says Nick. “They simply have an option to buy our
equity. Long term, they want to control their own destiny. They always owned
over 50%; we were the minority shareholders. Candy & Candy is still in
charge of development management, planning, interior design, branding,
marketing and sales.” Christian: “And they need our brand exper-tise to
deliver real value.” Nick: “And now we are looking at other opportunities.”
Christian: “And this has nothing to do with what happened to the Noho deal.”
Ah. That £175m development, west of Tottenham Court Road, has also seen a
change. Candy & Candy is swapping its interest in Noho for Kaupthing’s
stake in another shared development in Beverly Hills, California.
At one stage they were trying to buy out the Icelandic bank’s stake, saying it
had gone bust. Have they now lost a bundle?
No, says Christian. “It’s a great transaction. They get Noho, we get 90%
control of Beverly Hills with our partner Richard Caring.”
That enables the Candys to renegotiate the loans that banks were threatening
to call in. As for losses on Noho, “about £5m”, shrugs Nick. He then
launches into a complex explanation of how he arrived at the figure – senior
debt, equity, bonuses, received fees, valuations. No wonder some are
bamboozled by the brothers’ sharp take on financials.
Nor do the Candys think they are likely to lose the Beverly Hills site, for
which many, again, think they overpaid. Christian grins. “Even my girlfriend
says ‘how can you be so relaxed?’ But we are in a phenomenal position in
terms of projects we have and projects relinquished. We are getting some
poor PR, but the fundamentals of the business are outstanding, and our cash
position is beyond outstanding.”
Anyone doubting that, he adds, can look at their accounts to June 2008, which
he promises will be filed at Companies House by this weekend. The profits
are clear. None of their projects is cross-collateralised, he adds, so there
can be no domino effect.
And remember, adds Nick, that there is a difference between developments like
One Hyde Park - apartments designed by Lord Rogers’s architecture practice -
and Noho. One Hyde Park is “world class”, with apartment prices starting at
£5m. Noho is only “best in class”, with prices starting at far less. Its
market is likely to be less robust.
So One Hyde Park is selling? “On programme, on budget; it’s phenomenal,” says
Christian. Nick: “We have sold 55% by unit numbers and 45% by capital
receipts, we have taken more than £750m . . . Everything we sell now is
profit.”
No downturn effect? No, because around One Hyde Park there is limited top-end
supply. “You can get listed buildings but then it’s no double glazing, no
airconditioning, no underground parking, restricted by the leases of Cadogan
or Grosvenor . . .”
Nick shoots Christian a look. The brothers have been tight since birth. Born
18 months apart, they inherited their father’s obsession with neatness and
design, and their Greek-Cypriot grandmother’s work ethic. The Candy name is
Italian.
They were brought up in Surrey, where their father ran his own ad production
firm, working frequently with the Saatchi brothers. “Yeah, we met them,”
says Nick. “They tried to buy him,” says Christian.
Their father now works for Candy & Candy. Their mother gets an allowance.
Later that afternoon, says Nick, he is taking her to Aston Martin to get a
new car. Property is a confidence game and the flash Candys still have it in
spades. They entertain clients in Monaco on a 45m yacht, soon to be topped
by a 63m replacement.
They built their business selling gadget-packed pads to rich Arabs, Russian
oligarchs and City playboys. But they started, like many others, taking a
small loan (£6,000 from grandma) to do up their first flat in London’s
Redcliffe Square. Then they chucked in their jobs to do it full time.
Friends who knew them then say they learnt to divide responsibilities well:
Christian runs the numbers, Nick does the marketing. Both have an eye for
style, and the obsessiveness to go further than others.
A friend remembers them moving flats every three months. “I couldn’t believe
they wanted to live in such building sites.”
Nor could the Inland Revenue. It later investigated their rise in the 1990s.
“They wanted to know if we were trading properties or living in them. We
were living in them,” sighs Nick. That case was only settled earlier this
year.
Key to their rise has been their access to capital. That stemmed from a
banking introduction to Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim, prime minister of Qatar,
and one of the richest men in the world. He funded their first substantial
development, a block of six apartments in London’s Mayfair, and has been on
board ever since.
But has that relationship now been severed? No, says Nick. “We’d do anything
for him. He has been very loyal.”
Nor will it affect their plans to develop the Candy & Candy brand with
private equity, and to pick up more sites in “global” cities: Singapore,
Hong Kong, Shanghai.
Do they care that they are controversial? “It’s just because we’re young,”
shrugs Nick. “The old school don’t like it.”
Christian giggles. “Don’t mention any names, like the Duke of Westminster . .
.”
Nick nods. “Yeah, for years people thought we were backed by Russians. We
never had a penny of Russian money.”
“It’s just a double-edged sword,” says Christian again, studying the new bank
rates on the giant screen. They both grin.
If they are scorched, they don’t show it. But how would we know? Outside,
their black Maybach with the 1CC number plate is waiting for them. Normal
life goes on.
The lives of the Candy brothers
VITAL STATISTICS
NICK CANDY CHRISTIAN CANDY
Born January 23, 1973 | July 31, 1974
Marital status not married | single with girlfriend
School Epsom College | Epsom College
University Reading | Kings College London
First job auditor at KPMG | Commodity trader at Winchester Properties
Pay package £500,000 plus dividends | £500,000 plus dividends
Home Monaco | Monaco
Car black Maybach | black Range Rover
Favourite book My Journey Back to Life, by Lance Armstrong | Jack:
Straight from the Gut, by Jack Welch
Favourite music An eclectic mix | Elton John
Favourite film American Gangster | The Shawshank Redemption
Gadget Vertu phone | Sony Alpha camera
Last holiday New York | Hong Kong
CHRISTIAN CANDY’S WORKING DAY
THE Candy & Candy founder wakes at 5am in the vast apartment in Monaco
that he shares with his elder brother Nick. For an hour Christian Candy will
jog round the principality. “I am at my desk at 6.30, then I go into
meetings at 8.30,” he says.
The Candy brothers’ 15,000 sq ft apartment includes a separate office from
where they work, and a 5,000 sq ft roof terrace. “I have five or six people
reporting to me,” says Christian, who runs internal operations and also owns
the brothers’ Guernsey-based development group, CPC. After lunch at his desk
he will work into the evening. His brother, who handles the external work,
starts and finishes later. “I do the morning shift, he does the evening,”
says Christian.
Three days out of seven he is travelling. For tax reasons he can stay only 90
nights a year in Britain.
NICK CANDY’S DOWNTIME
NICK CANDY relaxes by visiting spas and travelling. “I have friends in most of
the big cities. Lots of them are clients, and lots of clients have become
friends.” He spends his money on clothes and gadgets. “Christian and I get
our suits from Spencer Hart and Richard James, our shoes from Berluti, and
our shirts from a tailor in Hong Kong.”
They share a number of cars, including a Rolls-Royce, and two boats -
Candyscape 1 and the power boat Catchmeifyoucandy.“We bought them for
personal reasons but do lots of business on them.”
