Campari closes in on €300m sale of villa

Gruppo Campari has received interest from buyers for an opulent French villa it acquired with the purchase of Grand Marnier and that is valued at €300 million, which if sold would make it the most expensive residential property deal ever.

Campari CEO Bob Kunze-Concewitz

According to Bloomberg, the Italian spirits company, which Wild Turkey Bourbon, Aperol and its namesake Campari, has received interest from Middle Eastern and North American buyers interested in purchasing Villa Les Cedres, which it gained as part of its $760m acquisition of the Grand Marnier Group in June.

The villa is being sold by the group along with Grand Marnier’s two wine businesses based in Chile and France – Casa Lapostolle and Château de Sancerre – Campari CEO Bob Kunze-Concewitz has said.

“We’re not used to dealing with such assets,” he said speaking to Bloomberg. “We just sell bottles; we don’t spend our time in the Riviera in multimillion-euro villas. Many people who are in the real estate industry see it above 300 million euros.”

Should the villa be sold at that price, it would become the most expensive residential property deal ever.

The only property to have come close to that figure was Chateau Louis XIV, a mansion outside Paris, that was sold for €275m euros in December.

If sold Campari is expected to keep around €80m from the sale with the remaining going to Grand Marnier shareholders. Upon the sale of Grand Marnier, shareholders received €8,050 a share in cash and the right to a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the villa.

Villa Les Cedres is a private property built around 1830 in Cape Ferrat on the Cote d’Azur, near Nice. The property once belonged to King Leopold II of Belgium, who bought it in 1904. In 1924 the villa was bought by Alexandre Marnier Lapostolle, owner of the liquor Grand Marnier and the vineyards of Château de Sancerre.

Known for its 14-hectares botanical  garden and arboretum, the villa boasts no less than 25 heated greenhouses, where 20,000 species are grown – 14,000 of which are tropical.

The villa passed into the ownership of Grand Mariner in 1976 Marnier Lapostolle, which still used ingredients take from its gardens to produce Grand Marnier liqueur.