Covishield vaccine maker Serum Institute of India's (SII) CEO, Adar Poonawalla, has continued the trend of Indian billionaires buying super expensive properties in foreign countries. The “vaccine prince” has reached a deal for London’s most expensive home sale of this year, agreeing to pay about £138 million (Rs 1446 crore).
Adar Poonawalla has bought a 25,000-square-foot mansion in the Mayfair district of the UK. Named Aberconway House, a vast 1920s home near Hyde Park, the mansion will change hands as the sale has been agreed upon. The impressive red-brick residence is named for Henry Duncan McLaren, Baron Aberconway, a turn-of-the-century industrialist who built the Grosvenor Square mansion.
The property will be acquired by Serum Life Sciences, a UK subsidiary of the Poonawalla family’s Serum Institute of India, people familiar with the transaction said, as per The Financial Times report.
The mammoth price tag makes Aberconway House the second-most expensive home ever sold in London and the biggest deal of the year, according to luxury property agents.
A person close to Serum Life Sciences said the Poonawalla family had “no plans” to move to the UK permanently, but that “the house will serve as a base for the company and family when they are in the UK.” The London deal follows multimillion-pound investments in vaccine research and manufacturing facilities near Oxford, the person added. In 2021, the family pledged £50 million to Oxford University for a new Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building.