Circle on Cavill, Surfers Paradise price plunge for Russian billionaire

Circle on Cavill, Surfers Paradise price plunge for Russian billionaire
Jonathan ChancellorDecember 7, 2020

Even billionaires can get it wrong - especially with Gold Coast sky-high mansions.

The tobacco king Sergey Katsiev sold his 48th floor Circle on Cavill penthouse for $3.2 million to a wealthy Australian investor.

But he's $2.25 million out of pocket.

The Surfers Paradise apartment, one of the city’s largest at 669 square metres, sold to Katsiev and his wife Liudmila Katsiev for $5.45 million in mid-2006.

He has a $1.6 billion tobacco fortune, according to Forbes magazine which says Katsiev made his fortune in tobacco after the fall of the Soviet Union.

From 1991 to 1993 he worked in the government trade mission to the Netherlands.

When he returned to Russia, he headed Mercury Tobacco Corporation, an importer of tobacco products owned by billionaire Igor Kesaev. In 1998 Katsiev founded his own company, Megapolis, which also sold tobacco products.

In 2006 Katsiev and Kesaev merged their companies. Megapolis is now Russia's largest seller of tobacco products.

In 2012 the company's revenues exceeded $12 billion. In one of the biggest-ever deals in the Russian consumer market, in December 2013 Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco International (JTI) announced they would each buy a 20% stake in Megapolis for a combined $1.5 billion.

Ray White Surfers Paradise sales agent Tolemy Stevens secured the sale last week.

Circle on Cavill was developed by Sunland with around 650 apartments in 2007.

It includes two residential towers adjacent to the retail and office complex, which comprises ground-floor retail and A-grade office space, open-air restaurants and cafes.

International tourists liked the centre on its opening for its upmarket fashion labels.

Jonathan Chancellor

Jonathan Chancellor is one of Australia's most respected property journalists, having been at the top of the game since the early 1980s. Jonathan co-founded the property industry website Property Observer and has written for national and international publications.

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