Highlights:
- Reliance Industries buys British icon Stoke Park for a whopping $ 79 million
- Stoke Park has 49 luxury bedrooms and suites, 27-hole championship golf course, 13 tennis courts and 14 acres of private gardens
- Stoke Park attracts wealthy tourists from across the world
- Mukesh Ambani is looking to pivot his oil-reliant business toward consumer offerings
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) which is led by one of the riches billionaire Mukesh Ambani has bought Stoke Park for $79 million, adding an iconic locale that has been the setting for two James Bond films to its portfolio of tourism properties.
One of the owned units of Reliance Industries will be buying Stoke Park, which owns and manages a hotel, sports and leisure facilities in Buckinghamshire, for 57 million pounds ($79 million), said an exchange filing late Thursday.
The acquisition will add to Reliance’s consumer and hospitality assets, the filing said.
The rolling golf course of the iconic property, Stoke Park, has been famous since James Bond played a game with Auric Goldfinger there in the 1964 blockbuster. Ever since, the estate with the Georgian-era mansion set amidst of 300 acres of parkland has also been a backdrop in productions like “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and Netflix’s British Royal Family drama “The Crown”.
In real-world, the property boasts 49 luxury bedrooms and suites, a 27-hole championship golf course, along with 13 tennis courts and 14 acres of private gardens which attracts wealthy tourists – including the Ambani family themselves – from across the world.
The latest acquisition for Mukesh Ambani’s retail-to-refining conglomerate marks its pivot toward consumer offerings and yet another high-profile British brand purchase.
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Earlier in 2019, Reliance also bought UK-based, struggling, toy store chain Hamleys and now works to revive it.
As the company did see a surge of fresh capital of $ 27 billion after it sold stakes in Reliance’s retail and digital units in 202, Mukesh Ambani is helming a transformation as he seeks to build consumer services into an equal-sized pillar for Reliance Industries, paring dependence on profits from its traditional oil refining business.
Acquiring marquee global brands underscores that strategy.
Even though the Stoke Park estate has a recorded history of more than 900 years. Until the year 1908, it was used as a private residence, as per the estate’s official website. It offers 49 luxury bedrooms and suites, a 27-hole championship golf course, 13 tennis courts and 14 acres of private gardens.
As per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mukesh Ambani has a net worth of $ 71.5 billion, which ranks him 13th on the list of richest persons in the world.
In the filing, Reliance said that the group “will look to enhance the sports and leisure facilities at this heritage site”.
Mukesh Ambani’s conglomerate has equity holding in EIH Ltd (formerly known as East India Hotels Limited), which runs the chain of five star Oberoi Hotels.
The UK is coming up as a real estate hotspot for the wealthy Indians.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Serum Instiutute of India (the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world by volume), Adar Poonawalla agreed to rent a property in Mayfair for about 50,000 pounds ($69,300) a week, which is a record for the exclusive London neighborhood, reported Bloomberg, last month.
