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CNN REPORTED RIZA AZIZ PAID A STAGGERING US$ 33.5 MILLION (RM 100.5 MILLION) FOR A HIGHCLASS NEW YORK CITY CONDO BUT WRONGLY MENTIONED "MR AZIZ IS A SON OF TUN ABDUL RAZAK, THE MALAYSIA PRIME MINISTER FROM 1970 TO 1976".
See, even CNN can make foolish mistakes and get their facts seriously wrong!
Isn't Riza Aziz, based on his age of only 35, the son of Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak rather than his grandfather? Well, Riza is an investment banker who worked in London for the last 10 years and accumulated a vast fortune there by investing in houses and properties and the stock market. A million ringgit house ( a mere L 200,000) bought 10 years ago can now be worth a million pounds (RM 5 million) and if you had bought 10 such houses, you could have made a profit of RM 40 million!
This fabulous 15-room, 7,738 sq ft condo has fantastic views from its wraparound 1,244 sq ft balcony and is one of the most exclusive and expensive condos not only in New York City but the world. In fact, even if I am given this condo totally free, I still cannot afford to live in it?
Why?
The monthly maintenance fee is RM 60,000!
This fabulous 15-room, 7,738 sq ft condo has fantastic views from its wraparound 1,244 sq ft balcony and is one of the most exclusive and expensive condos not only in New York City but the world. In fact, even if I am given this condo totally free, I still cannot afford to live in it?
Why?
The monthly maintenance fee is RM 60,000!
Riza Aziz is also the founder owner of Red Granite, a production house which makes him a Hollywood movie producer. Riza is a close friend of Leonardo diCapracio and funded the RM 300 million movie 'The Wolf of Wall Street' which begun shooting in New York last August.
Red Granite was launched at Cannes Film Festival in 2010 in what was dubbed the 'hottest party in years' and attended by all the hottest stars attending the Cannes Film Festival.
Riza Aziz also met Kris Aquino, sister of the President of the Philippines and she tweeted she was surprised to learn "he is a Hollywood producer. Napayasosyal." Well, based on Kris's acting career, don't be surprised if she asked to be in his next movie which may star Daniel Radcliffe of 'Harry Potter' fame.
Big Ticket | Sold for $33.5 Million
By ROBIN FINN
Librado Romero/The New York Times The Park Laurel condominiumThe penthouse, No. 29A, a sprawling 15-room combination of three units designed by the architect Alan Wanzenberg for a previous owner, occupies 7,738 square feet of interior space and has a 1,244-square-foot wraparound trophy terrace that faces south and captures both park and city views. There are seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, two powder rooms and a personal elevator entrance.
Special attention was paid to soundproofing: a 2010 listing for the apartment noted that, in addition to radiant-heated tiles in the master bath, the unit had been soundproofed by JRH Acoustical Consulting, with all pipes insulated to achieve “sound elimination.” Carrying charges are around $20,000 per month.
The Park Laurel, at 15 West 63rd Street, was designed by Beyer Blinder Belle and Costas Kondylis with an eye to the Modernist architecture at Lincoln Center nearby. Previous residents include J. Michael Evans, a Goldman Sachs vice chairman and potential successor to Lloyd C. Blankfein. His 5,000-square-foot Gwathmey Siegel-designed duplex penthouse, No. 40/41, is currently listed for sale with Douglas Elliman Real Estate for $26.5 million. For $29.25 million, Mr. Evans, who decamped to 995 Fifth Avenue this summer, will throw in an auxiliary two-bedroom unit he owns on the 14th floor.
When No. 29A changed hands in 2010, the seller was the hedge-fund honcho Ephraim F. Gildor, the asking price was $28 million, and the Swiss buyers, Peter Edward Chadney and Simone Cecile Von Graffenried Simperl, paid $23.98 million. Agents from Douglas Elliman represented both parties in the deal. This time around, there was apparently no formal listing; both Janice Chang and Raphael De Niro, who were involved in the 2010 transaction, confirmed that they had no connection to the $33.5 million deal.
Mr. Chadney and Ms. Simperl used Park Laurel Ltd., a company based in Zurich, to identify themselves in city records, and the buyer, based in Los Angeles, acquired the penthouse under the shield of a limited-liability company, Park Laurel Acquisition.
The sale appeared in city records on Dec. 4 and a post that day on the Web site of The Real Deal identified the buyer as Riza Aziz, an investment banker and a founder of Red Granite Pictures, a fledgling film company in Beverly Hills, Calif. Mr. Aziz is a son of Tun Abdul Razak, the Malaysian prime minister from 1970 to 1976. His film company’s debut offering was “Friends With Kids”; it is currently producing “The Wolf of Wall Street,” a $100 million venture directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and filming in New York City. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mr. Aziz and Mr. DiCaprio are fast friends.
Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.
A version of this article appeared in print on 12/09/2012, on page RE2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: $33,500,000.
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Kris meets Murad's wife, Razak's son
Posted at 10/16/2012 7:21 PM | Updated as of 10/16/2012 7:32 PM
MANILA, Philippines – Television host and actress Kris Aquino was excited when she shared to her Twitter followers that she met the wife of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chairman Al Haj Murad at Malacañang on Monday.
President Aquino's youngest sister, Kris, attends the historic signing of the PH-MILF framework agreement at Malacañang. Photo by Rem Zamora for ABS-CBNnews.com
Aquino said she was able to talk to Murad’s wife after the signing of the Framework Agreement between the Government of the Philippines and the MILF.
“I met the wife of Chairman Murad in Malacañang. She was teary eyed telling me her grandkids will now experience peace,” she shared.
Aside from Murad’s wife, Aquino, who is the youngest sister of President Benigno Aquino III, also shared that she met Riza Aziz, the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Dato' Sri Mohd Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak.
Aquino said she was surprised to know that Aziz was a Hollywood producer.
“Interesting tidbit from today, son of the prime minister is a Hollywood producer! Their company helped finance Leonardo di Caprio's new movie under Martin Scorsese entitled ‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’ Napakasosyal,” she exclaimed.
“I Googled the company Red Granite, they'll also have a movie for Danielle Radcliffe aka Harry Potter,” Aquino added.
Razak, together with his wife and son, arrived in the Philippines on Sunday afternoon to witness the signing of a framework agreement leading to a peace pact between the Aquino government and the MILF.
BELOW IS THE INTERVIEW GIVEN BY RIZA AZIZ AND HIS PARTNER JOEY MCFARLAND TO 'THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER' ON 22 MAY 2012.
Red Granite Pictures' Riza Aziz and Joey McFarland on Scorsese's 'Wolf of Wall Street' (Q&A)
One year after launching their financing, production and sales company at Cannes, the duo open up to THR about their upcoming slate, what it's like working with Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, and their ambitions for the future.
Red Granite launched in Cannes last year with one of the hottest parties in years, not to mention news that Leonardo DiCaprio is starring in the financing, production and sales company’s $100 million Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese’s next film.
Red Granite was formed by Riza Aziz — the 35-year-old son of Malaysian Prime Minster (TYPO ERROR ON THE PART OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER!) Tun Abdul Razak (AGAIN, WRONG FACT!) and among the new generation of film financiers flocking to Hollywood — and Joey McFarland, 40.
The duo also made headlines when stealing veteran sales agents Danny Dimbort and Christian Mercuri and production executive Joe Gatta from Nu Image/Millennium.
In one of the few interviews they’ve given, Aziz and McFarland, both with a background in finance, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how they’ve spent the last year, their plans for the company and their determination to stay on budget with Wolf.
The Hollywood Reporter: Red Granite went quiet after its debut in Cannes. What has the company been doing the past 12 months?
Joey McFarland: Riza decided to form Red Granite in late 2010. In 2011, we focused on building our infrastructure and our upcoming slate. We are now prepping Wolf of Wall Street and it starts shooting in August in New York. Our first movie was a much smaller film, Friends With Kids. And we recently announced we want to make The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag with Alex Proyas.
Riza Aziz: We couldn’t move on Wolf until Marty was done with Hugo. We bided our time and we waited for him. I think it was time well spent, versus rushing things.
THR: Are you selling Wolf to foreign distributors at Cannes? Or are you trying to see if a studio will buy rights to the world?
McFarland: No, that won’t happen. We are going to sell foreign territories, but not yet. Domestically, we’re talking to Paramount, whom Marty has had a long relationship with. Warner Bros. has expressed a lot of interest as well. It’s a good problem to have.
THR: Hugo went substantially over budget. How will you make sure that doesn’t happen with Wolf?
McFarland: There’s no comparison between the two projects. We’re not over the finish line yet, but I like to think we’re blessed with having Marty in his own back yard and in his comfort zone. I am very confident that Marty is ready to make a statement to the film community that he is not an out-of-control filmmaker. We support his creative vision 100 percent and he understands our economics. We’ve talked candidly about this with him and don’t see any red flags.
THR: How did the project come about?
McFarland: Riza and Leo were friends, and we knew we wanted to work with him. Wolf is his favorite project, but he was never able to get it going, so we tackled the bear.
THR: Is Wolf, about a young New York stockbroker swept up in a large securities fraud case and based on Jordan Belfort’s autobiography, a heavy drama?
Aziz: No, and our recent decision to cast Jonah Hill was a good way of countering that notion. It’s a trippy, out-of-control story.
THR: Do you have any plans for how big you want your operation to be?
Aziz: We’d like to make three to five films a year, with one tentpole and two or three films with more modest budgets in the $20 million to $40 million range.
THR: How much money are you backed by?
McFarland: We do not talk about that.
Aziz: I will say that I have money invested in the company. It shows that I have skin in the game and am committed from a financial point of view. We also have a group of investors, mainly from the Middle East and Asia.
THR: What does your father think of your new venture?
Aziz: I have leeway, but he likes to know that the projects we do have pedigree.
THR: How did you convince Danny, Christian and Joe to leave Millennium?
McFarland: They were ready for a change.
Riza had a small party with a lot of notables and we were talking about different ideas and it evolved into something much bigger. Danny and Christian run foreign sales, and Joe is president of production.
THR: What is Red Granite selling in Cannes this year?
McFarland: Out of the Furnace, a film we are co-financing with Relativity that Leo’s Appian Way is producing. We want to do more business with Leo. The movie stars Christian Bale, Zoe Saldana, Casey Affleck and Forest Whitaker. We also are selling A Case of You, starring Justin Long.
THR: Riza, you come from a political dynasty. How did you get from Malaysia to Hollywood?
Aziz: My background is in finance and I was in London for close to 10 years. I took a sabbatical from all the chaos that was happening in 2008 and decided to travel the world. I came to the U.S. and was offered the opportunity to get involved in a lot of different things business-wise, and one of them was to be involved in a film with some friends. From that one project, more kept coming in, so we decided to have a company. We began building the team and I brought Joey in at an early stage.
THR: How did you two meet?
McFarland: My father is the prime minister of Kentucky. No, we met through friends. I have a finance background, and I’ve been in and out of the film industry in L.A. and New York for a long time.
THR: How did you come up with the name Red Granite?
Aziz: In Malaysia, granite symbolizes solidarity and dependability. You add red — which is the Asian color of prosperity — to the whole equation and you got a winner. It also sounds pretty catchy.
3 comments:
Riza Aziz, son of Malaysian Prime Minster Tun Abdul Razak?
Razak's children (all sons) are Mohamed Najib, Ahmad Johari, Mohamed Nizam, Mohamed Nazim and Mohamed Nazir.
Najib's children: with Tengku Puteri Zainah Tengku Eskandar (ex-wife) are Mohd Nizar Najib, Mohd Nazifuddin Najib and Puteri Norlisa Najib; with Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor (present wife) are Mohd Norashman Najib dan Nooryana Najwa Najib.
So, where's does Riza Aziz comes in?
And is he Najib's step son?
Najib's or Rosmah's?
If he's Najib's step son, Rosmah will definitely not be close with him. It will be just like the way she treats Najib's children with his first wife!
RAZI is Rosmah's son with her first marriage, a Raja Aziz and she has two children by him. She more or less disowned the daughter who married an UMNO HQ Officer. Now the son has appeared out of the blue.
This is what happends when you are that abdorred and hated which becomes so with her `ngada-ngada' ways of what this Malay will call `Kadok niak Junjung'.
Her obsession with bourgeois must have stemmed from some earlier beginnings lacks or wants.
I have never heard of anyone this base and unscrupulous.
So you have heard this social- climber attitude to the woman she wronged?
She would adore this so as he is so loaded!She has eyes see only for those with $, tons of it!
It is widely known that American address a person by his or her last name or family name. In this case najib's family name is tun abd razak. Same case with osama bin laden whom american address as bin laden ('bin' in this case is a mistake as it's not a part of last name).
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