Billionaire investor and philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen is buying a Beverly Hills, Calif., estate once owned by William Randolph Hearst that has been tied up in bankruptcy for nearly two years, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Berggruen won a bankruptcy auction for the former Hearst estate, known as Beverly House, with a winning bid of $63.1 million, according to Hilton & Hyland and Rodeo Realty, which co-listed the property. The pending sale of Beverly House caps years of legal wrangling over the future of the property, which was featured in the horse-head scene in “The Godfather” and Beyoncé’s visual album “Black Is King.” The winning offer is up from the $47 million stalking-horse bid by Mr. Berggruen’s investment vehicle, Berggruen Holdings Ltd., that set the floor price for the property at auction, according to court papers. The final sale is still a discount over previous asking prices for the estate, the highest being $195 million in 2016. Leonard Ross, who had lived on the property since the 1970s, put a holding company he controls that owns the property into chapter 11 in November 2019 to avoid a foreclosure auction. An affiliate of Fortress Investment Group LLC extended a $40 million loan against the property in 2015, debt that it said had been in default for years. Earlier this year, a neutral bankruptcy trustee was put in charge of the estate, court papers say.
