Nick Candy is a British billionaire luxury property developer and politician, who has been the treasurer of Reform UK since December 2024. He was estimated to share a joint net worth of £1.5 billion in the Estates Gazette Rich List 2010 along with his brother Christian Candy, placing them at position 52 in the list of the richest property developers in the United Kingdom. He is also married to actor-turned-far-right-wing political activist Holly Valance. Platinum looks at the life of one of the UK’s richest people…
Nicholas Anthony Christopher Candy was born on January 23rd 1973 in London to a Greek-Cypriot mother and English father, he was privately educated at Priory Preparatory School and Epsom College in Surrey. He graduated from the University of Reading with a degree in human geography.
Business career
In 1995, he bought his first property with his brother Christian Candy, a one-bedroom flat in Redcliffe Square, Earl’s Court, London. Using a loan from their grandmother, the brothers renovated the £122,000 apartment while living there. Eighteen months later they sold it for £172,000, making a £50,000 profit.
In their spare time between 1995 and 1999, they began renovating flats and working their way up the property ladder. They eventually gave up their day jobs, and Nick worked in advertising for J. Walter Thompson, and Christian for investment bank Merrill Lynch and established Candy & Candy in 1999, of which he is CEO.
They formed the CPC Group in 2004 and collaborated on the prestigious One Hyde Park scheme in London, but now operate separate independent businesses. In June 2018, Candy & Candy was renamed Candy Property to reinforce Nick Candy’s sole ownership of the business and to align with his wider portfolio of companies.
Candy Ventures
In recent years, Nick Candy has diversified his interests outside of real estate and developed a portfolio of global investments (often in high-tech, leading-edge technology) through his private investment fund Candy Ventures. Candy Ventures, alongside Qualcomm Ventures, was reported to have led a $37 million funding round for a leading augmented reality and computer vision company. Candy Ventures acquired the intellectual property assets of leading augmented reality start-up Blippar in January 2019.
The website for Candy Ventures lists 18 investments within the company’s portfolio, including Blippar, UK fashion house Ralph & Russo and data processing company Hanzo Archives.
Candy Ventures acquired a stake in Blippar and another tech start-up, Crowdmix, after both companies were placed into administration. The takeovers were both facilitated by Paul Appleton, who worked as the administrator for the two companies and was appointed administrator in the Ralph & Russo bankruptcy.
Their portfolio includes mining investments in the Runruno gold mine in the Philippines, which has faced opposition from human rights groups after the demolition of local communities in 2012, which caused injuries to six local people. The development has also been blamed for causing landslides leading to deaths in the area.
In July 2022, his Luxembourg-registered investment vehicle, Candy Ventures SARL, sued Aaqua BV and its major shareholder, Robert Bonnier, for alleged fraud. He claimed that Bonnier misled him about Aaqua, a false claim that Apple and LVMH are interested in investing in Aaqua, so asked the court to freeze Bonnier’s assets and nullify the swap of his shares in Audioboom Group PLC, a podcast platform, with Aaqua.
Later, the High Court issued a freezing order against Bonnier but ordered that Candy Ventures had to obtain a £10 million bank guarantee to maintain the freezing order. In August 2022, the freezing orders were discharged. In September 2022, Bonnier demanded £150 million in damages from Candy for falsely obtaining freezing orders that turned his technology company into a credit risk.
Other ventures
In October 2018, Nick Candy refinanced his penthouse at One Hyde Park with an £80 million mortgage from Credit Suisse to pursue rental opportunities. The property is reportedly valued at £160 million.
In April 2021, Bloomberg reported that Nick had placed his penthouse on the market for £175 million. In August 2020, he also announced that his yacht, the Eleven Eleven, was up for sale for €59.5 million.
On March 9th 2022, Nick Candy, a boyhood fan, confirmed he was planning a consortium bid to take over Chelsea Football Club after owner Roman Abramovich put the club up for sale following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The sale process was halted the following day after Abramovich’s assets, including the club, were frozen to stop him from making more money from Chelsea, but the UK government was open to considering a variation to its sanctions licence to allow a sale so long as Abramovich received no funds.
Ultimately, Candy’s bid to acquire Chelsea had failed, despite support from South Korean firms Hana Financial and C&P Sports Group, and the football club was sold to American billionaire, Todd Boehly.
Lawsuit
In 2016 and 2017, Nick and Christian Candy were involved in high-profile litigation in the High Court in London which put their reputations on the line. Mark Holyoake claimed in the High Court action that the Candy Brothers had used threats against him and his family to extort total repayments of £37m against a £12m loan.
Although they were cleared of extortion, Mr Justice Nugee said in his judgment “the protagonists...have been willing to lie when they consider their commercial interests justify them doing so.” Mr Justice Nugee went on to say “he had found none of Mr Holyoake’s claims to be true, and that there had been no undue duress, influence, intimidation or unlawful interference with economic interests.”
In June 2018, following another application by Mr Holyoake, the Court of Appeal rejected Mark Holyoake’s bid challenging the high-profile high court ruling in December 2017. Lord Justice David Richards concluded that Mr Holyoake’s arguments had “no real prospect of success”, meaning Mr Justice Nugee’s original decision in 2017 was affirmed.
Political career
In December 2021, The Daily Mirror published a photograph revealing that Nick attended a party with the then Conservative Party London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey on December 14th 2020, which would have broken coronavirus restrictions at the time.
The publication of the photograph in December 2021 followed reporting by The Times in March 2021, which named Nick as the leader of fundraising for Shaun Bailey’s London mayoral campaign. In June 2020, The Guardian also reported that Candy had donated £100,000 to the Conservative Party in March 2020.
Personal life
On September 29th 2012, Nick married the Australian-British actress-musician-TV presenter Holly Valance in Beverly Hills, California. In November 2013 in London, they had their first child, a daughter, Luka Violet Toni. Their second daughter, Nova Skye Coco, was born in September 2017.
In April 2022, Candy and Valance were pictured with then-former, now US President Donald Trump and British politician Nigel Farage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, with a tweet by Farage indicating that the group had dinner together.
Valance (now Holly Candy, having been born Holly Vukadinović), an Australian of Serbian, English and Spanish descent, is a former model, pop star and actor who has made the political transition to what the Guardian referred to as ‘radical-right loyalty’. She is a keen supporter of the so-called ‘Trussonomics’.
Valance has said her top political priority was Britain leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and the establishment of a ‘British Bill of Rights’, adding that “the trickle-down effect would be a huge step in the right direction.”
Treasurer of Reform UK
In December 2024, having left the Conservative Party, Nick Candy was appointed treasurer of Reform UK by leader Nigel Farage. Shortly after taking on the role, he arranged a meeting between Farage and billionaire Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago, to secure a donation to the party from Musk.
Reform UK, established in 2018 from the embers of The Brexit Party, is not, for company structure and taxation, a political party. It is a private limited company with two shareholders, Nigel Farage (the majority shareholder) and Richard Tice. Both are now sitting MPs.
Although roles have been assigned across the party, everything is sanctioned by Nigel Farage, who has the controlling interest in the company.
Candy’s appointment as Treasurer, even though it is unusual for a private company to have such a position, comes at a time when, although Reform UK is at its most popular in terms of votes, there is an internal struggle currently underway which, if left unchecked, could have untold problems.
This is in addition to ten Reform Party councillors in Derbyshire leaving the party at what they described as Farage’s ‘autocratic behaviour’. For his part, Farage decreed that all of those members were ‘rogue’ and never passed the vetting process.
US billionaire, and unwelcome meddler in British politics, Elon Musk, recently called on Nigel Farage to stand down as leader of Reform UK, following the latter’s refusal to allow fellow far-right activist Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) membership of the party. Robinson himself is currently in prison on contempt of court charges.Musk does not believe Farage ‘has what it takes to take Reform forward.’
One wonders what Candy has let himself in for.
