May 08, 2008	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 2, 1429

LONDON, May 7: By the time Wajid Shamsul Hassan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner-designate takes over his new assignment, probably in the middle of June, at 36 Lowndes Square, the London neigbourhood, already an opulent place would become even more so.

Roman Abramovich, the super-wealthy proprietor of Chelsea Football Club, a blue blood Russian oligarch — the Sunday Times Rich List puts his worth $22bn is completing an eight-storey building in Lowndes Square, a few steps from the building housing Pakistan’s High Commission and a stone’s throw from Harrods and one of the best addresses in the city.

The house will be created out of two stucco-fronted townhouses — formerly nine individual apartments which Abramovich has been buying up since the late nineties for a total value believed to be about $40m. When completed it will be worth approximately $300m.

Russian opulence is expected to dictate the style of the new development. “There will be nothing minimalist about his taste,” a media report quoted a source close to the Russian. “He wants a very plush interior in the style of high neo-classical Victoriana to match the exterior... inside will be all cornices, thick pile carpeting and heavy drapery.”

Abramovich already owns a luxury flat in London’s Battersea, a 420-acre estate in West Sussex, holiday homes in the south of France, Tuscany and Montenegro and a home in Moscow. However, the scale of this latest development is causing some to speculate the Russian is planning to settle permanently in London with his girlfriend, Russian heiress and fashion designer Daria Zhukova.