(SOUTHAMPTON, NEW YORK)— Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, Founder and Chief Executive of Citadel, has purchased an off-market listing from Calvin Klein in Southampton for an estimated $100 million, The Wall Street Journal reports. Last January, Griffin purchased a Manhattan penthouse on Billionaire’s Row for $238 million, setting records in the US. For context, the second most expensive home was a 10-acre estate that sold for $195 million.
Klein built the home in 2009, demolishing a sprawling, decaying structure on the site known as the Dragon Head. The eccentric, fortress-like home was much resented by many of its neighbors for its unusual design, including a custom turret. For all those that were happy for its demise, some locals also lamented the loss of a lodestar, distinctive if bizarre, and its replacement with a just another tasteful but generic redesign. Griffin’s purchase will be one of the few reviving the Southampton’s super-luxury market, where the over $5 million market has been slumping in recent years, much like Manhattan’s over-saturated luxury market.
Griffin, it seems, has been applying the same aggressive expansion tactic to his personal investments as he used as manager at Citadel. According to The Wall Street Journal, in 2018 to 2019, Griffin also purchased a multi-floor Chicago condo worth $58.75 million and a $122 million home in London near Buckingham Palace, which he purchased at another record-setting price. Later that same year, he also bought a $99.13 million home in Palm Beach. Additional Florida investments include an oceanfront, five-bedroom penthouse and the 3-bedroom condo directly below it in Miami, which he purchased in 2015 for $60 million, breaking records in the city, in addition to the Miami mansion-in-progress into which he has allegedly invested $250 million since 2012.
With a net worth of around $13.1 billion, he can certainly afford it. For context, the median net worth of an American in Griffin’s age bracket (51) is around $187,300. To match Griffin’s estimated $700 million of recent investments percentage wise, the same American would only have to spend a little over $10,000. To match Griffin’s much-lauded lifetime charitable donations of over $900 million, the same 51-year old American would have to give around $12,867 over the course of a life time.
Griffin’s wealth has been an object of both admiration and recently, outrage, especially in the most recent years after the recession. His company Citadel famously almost collapsed in the 2008 recession, and was the beneficiary of a $200 million bailout. In 2018, Griffin took home a $870 million salary—much to the chagrin and outrage of those same taxpayers.
