When news broke that US hedge fund manager Ken Griffin paid £95m for a London mansion, it made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.
It was not the amount the billionaire founder of Citadel paid for the home that caught the attention of property pundits — he went on to make an even pricier purchase in New York several days later — but the price he did not pay.
The 20,000 sq ft home near Buckingham Palace, remodelled by property developer Mike Spink and backed by private equity group Evans Randall, had an initial asking price of £145m and had languished on the market for two years priced at £125m.
