Sanjeev Gupta’s business troubles hit his property portfolio
British steel industrialist Sanjeev Gupta has spent years amassing a glittery collection of trophy homes around the world, from the UK to the United Arab Emirates to Australia. Now he’s turning out the lights at one of them.
Gupta last month sold his four-bedroom, 683-square-metre villa on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah to an unknown buyer for Dh43.5mn ($11.8mn), according to the FT. (A spokesperson for Gupta declined to comment.)
He’s plugging that money into his UK business, which has gone through some trying times recently.
Last month, part of his Liberty Steel business was declared insolvent, with the UK government preparing to fund its operations and pay the salaries of its nearly 1,500 employees across several sites in the north of England.
Gupta built his property empire even as his businesses faced severe financial difficulties. He’s lost control of several of the businesses over the past year, the FT has reported, encountering troubles in Singapore and Australia.
The industrialist has been trying to offload other assets in Dubai, said people familiar with the matter, including a much larger house on the tip of one of the Palm’s fronds.
The 16 palatial villas at the end of these fronds are some of the most sought-after and expensive properties in Dubai, offering unobstructed seafront views.
Gupta renovated that home at substantial cost in recent years. The house also has a dedicated whisky room, said one person who has visited.
Gupta still has other places to rest his head: he’s got a £42mn mansion in London’s exclusive Belgrave Square, which he bought in 2020 around the time his UK businesses began drawing hundreds of millions of pounds in government-guaranteed Covid-19 loans, and an estate in Wales. Quite the portfolio.