Party time as tycoon’s Ibiza pad goes up for sale… for £65m
HE LAUNCHED a claim for £ 132 million in damages against the billionaire Candy brothers in the High Court — and lost.
But now it looks as though controversial wheeler- dealer Mark Holyoake is in line for a payday amounting to tens of millions of pounds — courtesy of the party island of Ibiza.
That’s where Holyoake — who met and befriended Nick Candy at Reading University, only to fall out with him and his brother Christian over a business deal — stands to cash in on a trophy property, originally built by Thierry Roussel, final husband of tragic heiress Christina Onassis, who died aged 37.
‘It’s the most incredible house,’ an acquaintance of Holyoake tells me. So is the price — more than $80 million, or getting on for £65 million.
That’s twice the price of the most expensive house offered for sale in Ibiza last year.
Holyoake, 50, declines to comment. But the property is, I can reveal, being discreetly marketed in a sumptuous 112-page brochure, studded with mouth-watering photographs.
The Estate House boasts three ‘ primary suites’, each with bedroom, bathroom, dressing room and private terrace; plus five further bedrooms and bathrooms; a ‘ restaurant standard’ kitchen; wine cellar; gym; outdoor bar; ‘swimming lake’ with terracing and fire-pit; a separate swimming pool; a playroom and a playground. And, of course, a two-bedroom staff house and additional threebedroom staff quarters.
Intriguingly, images of the two new houses in the grounds of the 30- acre estate appear in the particulars, though not with quite the same clarity as those of the main house.
‘They’re computer-generated,’ a chum explains, adding that building has begun — though it may be left to the buyer to direct the final stages. ‘ You can’t just buy one house and not another. You buy the whole lot.’
Doubtless, prospective buyers will scrutinise all the details. Holyoake founded and ran British Seafood, which at one stage grew 40 per cent a year, propelling Holyoake to an estimated £50 million fortune by 2009. The next year, the firm went bust, with debts of £250 million.