Meanwhile, Low was becoming known on the New York club scene as a fixer for the global super-rich – snapped by paparazzi swigging magnums of Cristal with R&B singers and Hollywood stars.
Newly rich smugglers snap up the bargains, fronting the homes of once well-to-do academics with garish neo-Babylonian columns.
Smart, rich undergraduates snapped up loans made under these conditions and invested the money for profit.
Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, sees his new rich neighbours snapping up parcels of land from destitute nobles, and knows that his own inheritance is going to ruin.
Perhaps most important, from Beijing to Bangalore the new Asian rich are snapping them up.In this section The final frontier Round three Trade winds The new high Rollers Free bed and board Games lessons One party, two tribes Of magic and daylight ReprintsGrowth in America, still the company's biggest market, was buoyant, but easily outpaced in China.
The things that are driving the Chinese car market are cheap, quality cars that the emerging middle class can get their hands on, and luxury cars that the growing number of Chinese rich are snapping up.
Adding to its long list of London trophies, the gas-rich emirate snapped up the Mayfair building (for a sum thought to be about £500m) and plans to transform it into a luxury hotel, while the US joins a wider exodus of missions from Mayfair, as many countries realise the property goldmines they're sitting on.
The Premier League brought about a sea change in English football, with fans becoming consumers or customers, and the clubs themselves assets for rich businessmen to snap up.
Savills predicts that as the property market bottoms out it will become increasingly polarised between the equity rich, able to snap up bargains, and those in negative equity, unable to participate and left further behind when prices take off again.
