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Holiday home matchmaking

Hoping to reinvent the way we view holiday homes, a new breed of co-ownership companies now offers the benefits of flexibility, variety and hassle-free fractional ownership within a freehold basis. August has more than 500 homeowners and manages 80 renovated properties across Europe. Its CEO Mélie Dunod claims that the average holiday home is used for just 35 days every year.

“Why own 100 per cent of an asset that you visit just 10 per cent of the time?” she asks. August’s co-ownership model gives you a choice of shared properties and locations, as well as regulated access to the calendar to pick your time away (shares from €700,000). “We’re real-estate matchmakers,” says Dunod. 

Re-branding Paris

The march of five-star branded residences continues, with a recent report from marketing agency Graham Associates indicating growth of almost 180 per cent in the past decade. It’s a sector predicted to more than double by 2031, but a lack of viable space in Paris has meant the major players have largely bypassed the capital. Until now. Among the vanguard is The Maybourne Residences Saint-Germain, a reinvention of the former Ministry of Defence across two creative streets of the Rive Gauche, which will create 23 luxury homes alongside a 101-key hotel (from €3.5mn for a one-bedroom residence at rue de l’Université).

The 17th-century buildings will be “re-concepted for the 21st century… to be the living room of Saint-Germain”, says Maybourne of the properties, which will provide owners with exclusive access to a 25m pool and hotel facilities that include six cafés and restaurants, and one of the city’s largest spas and health clubs, Surrenne, a sister to those at The Emory in London and The Maybourne Riviera.

Designs on Dumbo

One successful way to reinvent an area in need of a fillip is to designate it as a Design District. Miami is one blueprint, where real estate investor Craig Robins has transformed 18 low-level blocks of unprepossessing furniture depots into an art and architectural must-visit hub. The latest neighbourhood to get official Design District designation is Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).

An 1890s industrial area reinvented for 21st-century creatives and loft-loving tech bros, it has more than 150 design firms, showrooms and studios. When David Walentas, founder of Two Trees Management, bought two million square feet in this area in 1978 for $12mn, he had to entice early arrivals with free or heavily reduced rent. Today, penthouses sell for up to $17mn, Walentas is a billionaire and Dumbo is one of Brooklyn’s most expensive and desirable neighbourhoods. Available through Sphere Estates, this three-bedroom waterfront Dumbo apartment, for sale at $5.5mn, has views across the East River taking in Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.

Dubai, the golden visa go-to

Say what you like about the Emirate – and plenty do – but its transformation from a 1960s fishing village into a global playground is a lesson in what ambition and barrels of oil money can achieve. In a world where wealth is ever more mobile, Dubai is an undisputed winner, says Jeremy Savory, co-founder and CEO of citizenship and residency investment firm Savory & Partners, who has reported a 41 per cent rise in Golden Visa applications over the past year.

The top of the market is booming too: Savills’ figures show that transactions in the Dh10mn-plus market (about £2mn) saw a tenfold rise over the past four years. Rosewood is the latest five-star brand to arrive, announcing plans for Rosewood Residences Dubai, 63 residences alongside a 195-key hotel on Jumeirah Beach. The apartments will be priced on average at $3,000 per sq ft.

Tuscan revival

Tuscany can seem little changed since Michelangelo picked up his paintbrush, thanks to the heavily protected landscape across this central Italian region. In fact, artful reinvention has saved innumerable historic estates and farmhouses from decay, turning them into desirable rural homes. The Ricasoli family, who have produced wine on their Chianti Classico Brolio Estate for centuries, were among the first to sell rundown estate farmhouses to foreign buyers 50 years ago.

This autumn they unveiled a further six unrestored homes for sale, exclusively through Knight Frank (from €1.8mn). “These farmhouses, including one that featured in Bernardo Bertolucci’s film Stealing Beauty, offer a rare opportunity to get a foothold in prime Chianti on a world-famous estate,” says Bill Thomson, chairman of Knight Frank’s Italian Network. 

Mighty Madrid

London’s successful reimagining of some of its classical landmarks into modern branded residences has been mirrored in the Spanish capital, where new developments in historic buildings by investment firm Persepolis include Banyan Tree Padilla Madrid Residences and SLS Madrid Infantas Residences. It’s also the city that designer Patricia Urquiola has chosen for her first Spanish mainland project: Casa Lamar Cedaceros 9 will have 22 one- to five-bedroom residences with five-star wellness and concierge services (from €2.3mn).

The timing could not be more fortuitous, with estate agency Lucas Fox reporting the number of international buyers up 80 per cent between mid-2022 and mid-2025. “Madrid is where the smart money is going,” says Marco Gramaglia from Lucas Fox. “No wealth tax, a thriving cultural scene and a lifestyle to match. With names like Soho House setting up shop, and seven five-star hotels opening since 2021, Madrid is not just on the rise, it’s front and centre.”

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Gold’s recent rally has boosted the prospects of cyanide producers as they increase production to meet rising demand for chemicals to process the metal.

Two of the largest suppliers of sodium cyanide, which is used to leach gold specks from crushed rock, said they had rapidly expanded production on the back of rising gold prices and increased mining activity.

Orica, which acquired US rival Cyanco for $640mn last year, plans to accelerate production as North American operators look to restart mothballed gold mines, said Andrew Stewart, head of Orica’s speciality chemicals division.

“We’re enjoying the volatility coming out of the White House,” he said, referring to the trade uncertainty from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which has driven much of gold’s record run.

Australian Gold Reagents, another sodium cyanide producer, this year applied to the state government to boost production capacity at its Western Australia facility to 210,000 tonnes a year in the future.

The company, which supplies miners in Africa, Australia, South America and south-east Asia, has already started to raise capacity by 30 per cent to 130,000 tonnes this year.

“Within chemicals, [the sodium cyanide plant] is one of our strongest return on capital investments and will continue to be so,” said Aaron Hood, managing director of Wesfarmers’ chemicals, energy and fertiliser division, which owns AGR.

The price of gold has risen 15 per cent in the past two months and hit an all-time high of $4,381.52 a troy ounce last week before settling at about $4,000 this week.

The sharp rally, partly driven by a dash to safer assets amid geopolitical uncertainty, comes as the mining sector undergoes consolidation and has spurred more mining activity.

Gold groups Newcrest, Northern Star and Gold Fields have acquired smaller rivals in the past two years, while smaller miners have begun to look at gold deposits previously deemed unviable.

Ramoun Lazar, an analyst with Jefferies, said the rally “incentivises gold exploration and, in turn, increases the demand for . . . sodium cyanide given ore bodies become deeper and harder to mine”.

Orica’s history dates to the Victorian gold rush of the 1870s when it supplied explosives to miners. It later became part of UK chemicals group ICI before being spun out in the 1990s. “We started in gold and we’ve gone back there,” said Stewart.

Wesfarmers, which started as a farmers’ co-operative and owns several Australian retail chains, has invested in a wide array of minerals and chemicals, including lithium.

But the sodium cyanide business, which it has owned alongside Coogee Chemicals since 1988, has been a “quiet achiever”, said Hood. “It’s one of our largest export businesses.”

The Australian companies compete with Czech chemicals group Draslovka and Chinese rivals, which make it as a byproduct of nylon manufacturing.

A longer-term threat to cyanide producers could be less toxic alternatives, said Paul Breuer, a scientist at the government research institute CSIRO, who has led a research team to develop an alternative gold leaching product called thiosulphate.

Breuer said government regulations on cyanide use were becoming more stringent — especially around the risk of the chemical entering water supplies — but it has been a struggle to convince the conservative gold industry to switch from a chemical considered effective and robust.

Wesfarmers’ Hood said he was unconvinced that alternatives would make much of a mark given the mining industry’s cost pressures, adding: “If you’re a metallurgist, why would you take the risk?”