The billionaire owners behind some of Corby's prime property

An old Corby scrapyard owned by one of the world’s richest men, the Rothschilds’ house on the Danesholme, the Oakley Vale street owned by a viscount and the New York financier who snapped-up the derelict Weetabix site.

Until now, it has been almost impossible to trace the true owners of many UK properties that are in foreign hands. But thanks to new transparency laws, our reporters have, for the first time, been able to track down the real owners of some of Corby’s key real estate.

They include hedge funds based all over the world, as well as some high-profile financial figures including one who has been a key advisor to Donald Trump.

The real ownership of many sites was previously hidden through a network of shady offshore trusts and multiple layers of obscurely-named brass-plate shell companies that never had to declare who was actually in charge.

It was clear to our reporters that some important strategic sites in Corby had been bought up by unknown foreign investors. Our story back in 2022 showed how North Northamptonshire had become a major hotspot for foreign investment since Brexit.

But we couldn’t usually tell you exactly who owned those properties – until a recent law change.

In 2022, to try to tackle international economic crime, the Government brought in new laws forcing overseas owners of UK property to be publicly listed on the Register of Overseas Entities.

The ownership data has been transformed into an accessible format by the Tax Policy Associates. It’s from their research that we were able to view the foreign owners of each local property. Our reporters then cross-referenced the details with Land Registry, Companies House and other open source data to check the real beneficial owners.

The astonishing results are revealed here for the first time.

Donald Trump’s advisor

The two-acre Corby Metal Recycling site in Arkwright Road is owned by Luxembourg-based Sunflower UK Logistics. Until last year, because of strict transparency laws in Luxembourg, the ultimate owner of Sunflower UK Logistics would not have been known. But the register now shows that its owner is New York property tycoon Stephen Schwarzman, estimated to be the world’s 34th richest man and to have personal wealth of more than $30 billion.

The 76-year-old property magnate is the CEO and chairman of the Blackstone Group, the world’s largest alternative asset manager.

Schwarzman was briefly a member of President Donald Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum alongside the world’s richest man Elon Musk. The Corby site was purchased as part of a package for £3.157m back in 2018.

Rockingham Speedway

The new data also shows the Rockingham Speedway site was sold in 2018 for £11.1m to a company called Rockingham (CP) Limited based in Jersey, a jurisdiction which allows companies to be registered anonymously.

Now it can be revealed that the owner of that opaque firm is, in fact, BCA – the huge company that has a number of large car storage sites in Corby including the speedway itself.

This newspaper investigated the ownership of the site back in 2021 because it had been previously owned by Priors Hall developer BeLa Partnerships, a company that collapsed owing at least £40m to the taxpayer. Rockingham (CP) also took control of the unfinished Corby Northern Orbital Road, itself paid for by the taxpayer but never transferred into public ownership. The future of that road – key to the transformation of the former steelworks land in northern industrial Corby – is still under a cloud and is now in BCA’s hands.

Freehold owned by Samantha Cameron’s brother

Another firm using a brass plate address in The Esplanade, St Helier, Jersey, just three doors down from Rockingham (CP) is Steel Hill 4am Limited. Steel Hill bought the iforce building in Long Croft Road, Corby, for an eye-watering £36m in 2021. Steel Hill is itself ultimately run by the FTSE 100-listed investment firm Intermediate Capital Group.

Over at Priors Hall and Oakley Vale, investors have bought up the freeholds for almost entire streets.

Guernsey-based Adriatic Land, thought to be owned by The Honorable William Waldorf Astor, who sits in the House of Lords, has bought the freehold for nine houses in London Road and nine in Carnoustie Drive at Priors Hall. Land Registry data shows Adriatic Land paid just £47,000 for the freehold of the properties in London Road in and £46,000 for the Carnoustie Drive freeholds 2018 when Priors Hall had just been rescued by Urban & Civic.

The same firm also bought 18 freeholds in Fontwell Crescent, Oakley Vale, for £58,000 in 2015.

A company linked to Adriatic Land – Abacus Land - bought the freeholds for nineteen homes and nine garages in Robin Road, Oakley Vale, for £59,000 in 2014.

Adriatic Land lists its owners as Private Capital Trust Company Limited. By law, the beneficial owners of that company must be listed with Companies House, but they are not.

Research by the Guardian in 2017 showed that Adriatic Land has been at the centre of a scandal which saw ground rents spiralling from a couple of hundred pounds per year to thousands. They were described in the House of Commons as ‘robbers’.

The owners of Adriatic Land are still unknown but that same Guardian investigation found that one of its directors was The Honourable William Waldorf Astor, the half brother of David Cameron’s wife, Samantha. Astor owns Long Harbour which is also involved in Corby’s stalled Tresham Garden Village, a scheme that has benefited from more than £1m in public money. It’s thought Long Harbour, and William Astor, is the ultimate owner of Adriatic Land.

In 2022 the Competition and Markets Authority ordered Adriatic Land and other firms to pay back money to homeowners who had been subject to unfair ground rent rises.

Food factories

The former Solway Foods buildings and surrounding land in Godwin Road and Princewood Road were bought by a Hong Kong firm called Nice Power International Trading Limited for £2.1m in 2019. Solway went under in 2014 with the loss of 900 jobs.

Another former food factory, Orchard House in Manton Road, was sold to an Isle of Man-based firm called Parisline Limited back in 2007 for £1m. Parisline is owned by a wealth-management firm called Aston International.

The iconic Weetabix site in Earlstrees Road was bulldozed and then sold to a Jersey-based firm Block Industrial for £1.56m in 2022. Block Industrial has exactly the same postal address as St Helier-based Rockingham (CP). Its beneficial owner is New York-based Tony Yoseloff who runs the £36bn investment firm Davidson Kempner – the world’s tenth biggest hedge fund.

A large site off Hunters Road that was home to Roquette was sold to a Dutch-based firm for £9.9m in 2022. That Dutch firm is owned by a huge investment partnership called Pinebridge Benson Elliot – a North American group worth $143bn.

Rothschild family’s house on the Danesholme

The Wickes site in Courier Road, Corby, is also owned by a Jersey-run firm called LMQ Overseas Investments, which bought the former steelworks site for £3.952m in 2022 from Travis Perkins. The site was originally home to British Steel’s blast furnaces and was transferred to Corby Council in 1981 after the works closed.

Discovery House, in Courier Road, which is a secure government building used for processing passports, was sold to Guernsey-based investment firm New Street Trust for £2.4m in 2018.

The home of Solidus Solutions in Arnsley Road was bought by for £7.5m in 2018 by a firm called CC REI 3 Limited. The investors who own that firm, Christian Huot and South Korean Sonn Yung Aye, were at the centre of a dispute in China after an airport was given planning permission sending land values rocketing.

Investment firm Edmond De Rothschild owns a house in Baltic Close, on the Danesholme estate, which it bought through its Luxembourg investment firm for £236,000. The Rothschilds are Europe’s most famous, and richest, banking dynasty.

Other overseas firms have bought the ‘airspace’ above a number of properties as part of rent-a-roof schemes in Corby. These include one in Samuel Place and Culloden Court owned by Solarfair Investments, run from Jersey and owned by Swiss-based British entrepreneur Henry Sykes.

The purchase of air space allows the firm to install their own solar panels – but can make selling properties much trickier for their owners because contracts tend to be for 25 years.

It’s perfectly legal for an offshore firm to own a UK property and there’s usually nothing to indicate any form of criminality. But the sale of a UK home comes with a 15 per cent stamp duty payment – and five percent for a commercial property. This payment can be avoided if the property is owned by a company and that company is then sold, rather than the property itself.

It’s important to know who owns UK real estate because foreign ownership of property makes it easier to carry out unethical practices under the guise of anonymity and for people to conceal crimes such as tax fraud or money laundering.