Lakshmi Mittal

London, June 24: Lakshmi Mittal has bravely bought his third property in Kensington Palace Gardens, Britain’s most expensive and exclusive street, this time paying £70 million (Rs 595 crore).

Such a raid into the heart of English England is certain to stir up jealousy since in the eyes of his critics, the rule of life is: “There is only one thing worse than failure — and that is success.”

And the steel tycoon, who is extending his ownership of grand homes partly to expand his property portfolio and partly to revert to the good old-fashioned Indian joint family system, is doing very well indeed.

Having three homes in “KPG” — as the tree lined and heavily guarded avenue is called by those who live there and those who would like to live there but cannot afford to do so — means he and his wife Usha can stay in one house, his son Aditya and his wife Megha and their two daughters can stay in the second house which the family have bought for £117 million (Rs 994.5 crore), and the third can accommodate Mittal’s son-in-law Amit Bhatia and daughter Vanisha.

This demonstrates that the joint family system, which has fallen into disrepair in India, is alive and well and successfully transplanted on to English soil.

One of the best informed property commentators in Britain, Trevor Abrahamson of Glentree Estate Agents, which has headquarters in north London — not far from the £40-million Summer Palace in the Bishops Avenue which Mittal still owns but wants to sell — told The Telegraph today: “Kensington Palace Gardens and the Bishops Avenue are very much my patch. So I know of many Indian families who want to live together.”

He described Mittal as a judicious buyer. “As far as he is concerned, Kensington Palace Gardens ticks many of the right boxes for him and he has the resources. He has excellent taste.”

Mittal has acquired his new property from the Crown Estate, which means he can only hold a lease, while the freehold will always belong to the Queen. This is also the case with the Indian high commissioner’s residence in Kensington Palace Gardens, currently occupied by Shiv Shankar Mukherjee.

Yesterday’s Evening Standard suggested that the house in which Mittal and his wife live is exceeded in size only by Buckingham Palace.

Noel de Keyzer, a director at Savills which specialises in the top end of the London market, was quoted by the Evening Standard: “The Mittals have carried substantial improvements to their main home, which is probably the largest private house in central London after Buckingham Palace. I would put its current value at close to £250 million.”

Mittal had bought the residence for £57 million. It is a little more spacious than the flat in Chitpur in Calcutta he had once occupied. It is now become a cliché for Mittal, worth an estimated £27 billion, as “the richest man in Britain”.

His new acquisition had previously belonged to the Philippines embassy and will require modernisation and refurbishment, though changes will be strictly controlled by the Crown Estate Commissioners.

The Evening Standard said that his latest purchase “comes just a month after the 58-year-old bought Britain’s most expensive home for £117 million. Hedge fund tycoon Noam Gottesman sold him a house on Palace Green, an extension of Kensington Palace Gardens, next to the Israeli embassy.

“Before that, a flat in the Candy brothers’ One Hyde Park had been the country’s priciest home when it sold for £115 million in March”.

The paper said: “The £70-million price tag for Mittal’s latest property is all the more remarkable as the former Philippine embassy is in need of modernisation. The 16,250sqft home is also not the largest in the road but it looks on to Kensington Palace.”

Perhaps, a better way to put it would be to say that members of the royal family will be able occasionally to catch glimpses of the Mittals at work, play and puja.