Report: Billionaire Irishman Bought the Millennium Tower’s $33 Million Penthouse

Photo by Lesleee_atFlickr on Flickr/Creative Commons

At last, we may finally know the proud owner of the Millennium Tower’s 13,000-square-foot, multimillion penthouse, the priciest Boston’s ever seen.

John Grayken, a Cohasset-born billionaire now claiming Irish citizenship, purchased the expansive pad on the tower’s 60th floor for around $33 million, according to a Boston Business Journal report citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the deal. The penthouse was previously listed for $37.5 million, and in February, developer Millennium Partners said it was under contract.

In 1995, Grayken founded the Dallas-based private equity firm Lone Star Funds, which specializes in gobbling up distressed home mortgages. Four years later, he renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of an Irish one, in order to avoid paying taxes on this side of the Atlantic. This year, Forbes placed Grayken’s net worth around $6.3 billion, making him the world’s second-wealthiest private equity manager.

And boy, does he sound like a swell guy! From Forbes‘ feature on the “robber baron of the new millennium,” titled  “The Billionaire Banker In The Shadows”:

Since the Great Recession Grayken has made a specialty of buying up distressed and delinquent home mortgages from government agencies and banks worldwide. He’s also picked up a major payday lender, a Spanish home builder and an Irish hotel chain. Regulators hassle him, and the homeowners whose mortgages he owns or services despise his tactics. In fact, he has become accustomed to taking shots from detractors and has been the subject of protests from New York to Berlin to Seoul. Last year New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman reportedly opened an investigation into Grayken’s heavy-handed mortgage-servicing tactics, including aggressive foreclosures, which have unleashed widespread outcries from homeowners, housing advocates and trade unions.

Welcome to Boston!

Grayken previously purchased one of the most expensive homes in the United Kingdom: a nine-bedroom, nine-bathroom, 17,500-square-foot brick mansion in London’s Chelsea district. He’s also the owner of the manor house where The Omen was shot in 1976, as well as a sprawling Swiss estate overlooking Lake Geneva, Forbes reported.