Nigeria’s Femi Otedola buys £53m London Mansion

Nigerian businessman Femi Otedola has bought a mansion in London for £53 million ($72 million), adding to a slew of deals the UK capital’s luxury housing market has seen in recent months, reports Bloomberg.

Otedola bought the 10-bedroom house in the city’s St John’s Wood district — a short walk from Regent’s Park — late last year, according to a UK filing. A spokesperson for Otedola did not respond to requests for comment.

Built in 2016, the property comes with a cinema, spa and cigar room, according to information on the website of one of the firms involved in its construction. In 2020, it was on sale for £75 million, according to media reports.

Otedola, whose investments span finance, power generation, storage, shipping and insurance brokerage, is the single majority shareholder and chairman of First HoldCo Plc, one of Nigeria’s biggest lenders.

The high-profile transaction is the latest example that shows how London’s high-end residential real estate sector has been occasionally defying a slump caused by higher property taxes and a move by the Labour government to end some tax breaks enjoyed by resident foreigners.

While there were 28% fewer £5 million-plus sales in the first quarter compared with the same period in 2025, according to researcher LonRes, a handful of £20 million-plus deals have still gone through in 2026.

Earlier this year, in one of the biggest single-house sales in history, Suneil Setiya, co-founder of quant investing firm Quadrature Capital, bought Nick Candy’s Chelsea mansion for more than £270 million. In January, John Aylward, founder of investment firm Sona Asset Management, purchased a mansion in the neighbouring Belgravia district for £35 million, Bloomberg News reported this week.

In August last year, another Nigerian banker — Roosevelt Ogbonna, chief executive officer of Access Bank Plc — bought a house for £15 million in London’s Hampstead neighborhood nicknamed the Billionaires’ Row. (BusinessDay)