The founder of London taxi company Addison Lee has sold his London mansion for just over half the price he paid 13 years ago.
John Griffin has sold the six-bedroom house, which overlooks the western edge of Regent’s Park, for £11.5 million, according to Bloomberg.
Mr Griffin, who sold his business to the Carlyle Group for about £300 million in 2013, paid £20.7 million for the property on Hanover Terrace in 2013, filings show.
It comes a month after he lost a drawn-out battle with UK tax authorities.
The mansion is part of a Regency-era terrace designed by architect John Nash, and has been on sale before in recent years.
In 2021, the property was listed with an asking price of a staggering £32 million. with the listing describing the home as among the grandest and most prestigious in London.
It was withdrawn from the market following a number of price cuts, before being re-listed this year at £13.5 million.
John Griffin
Mr Griffin has been in a long-running dispute with HMRC over his tax residency, with the entrepreneur arguing he should qualify for non-domiciled status between 2013 and 2020 that would have exempted income earned abroad.
A person familiar with the process said that the sale of the mansion was provisionally agreed ahead of the tribunal ruling in September, which went against Mr Griffin.
The sale then closed less than a month after that verdict, and it is not clear whether the decision to accept the cut-price offer was linked to the ruling.
Earlier this year, The Holme in Regent’s Park sold for a profit of about £56 million, less than two years after it was brought out of receivership for £139 million.
According to a forecast by Savills, the recovery of nominal price growth for London’s most expensive properties is not expected to take place until 2028.
London’s Hanover Terrace
JLL’s residential research data showed that 457 homes worth more than £5 million were sold in central London between July and September, 11% fewer than in the previous quarter.
Nick Gregori, head of research at LonRes, said: “Adding a new prime minister and continuing global uncertainty to the mix has resulted in a subdued prime London market, with the super-prime segment particularly affected.
“The key indicator is simply the number of transactions relative to new instructions, under offers and existing stock – it remains stubbornly low. Uncertainty and a lack of urgency, driven in part by low expectations of future price growth, continue to hinder any potential recovery.
“At the top end of the market fewer people need to buy or sell so the issues are amplified. Last year we saw a prolonged slowdown as pre-budget tax speculation started in the summer and carried on all the way to the end of the year.”