Citing property market sources, the Evening Standard reported on Friday that Wang, 61, “took a long lease from the Crown Estate on the residence at 15A Kensington Palace Gardens”.
The report said the road was next to Kensington Palace, home to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and was considered among the most secure in the capital, with “an around-the-clock armed police presence at both ends”.
The neighbourhood was also home to Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich and the Norwegian embassy, the report said.
The 20,000 sq ft home had 10 bedrooms and was previously occupied by Ukraine-born businessman Leonid Blavatnik, it said.
It was also occupied by the Nigerian High Commission in the sixties and seventies, the report said.
Wang, the chairman of Dalian Wanda, topped Forbes’ mainland rich list this year with his personal wealth ballooning nearly US$17 billion – equivalent to the GDP of Iceland.
He saw his personal wealth jump from US$13.2 billion to US$30 billion.
He has denied his firm has political ties with people close to President Xi Jinping, and attributes his business success to the company’s competence.
He admitted that Xi’s elder sister, and her husband Deng Jiagui had once invested in Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties, but said they sold their stake before it went public in Hong Kong in December last year.
In another media interview earlier this month, Wang said the “money-squandering” business model of mainland e-commerce companies that aimed to attract customers by continuously “subsidising” them was wrong.
Wang joined the People’s Liberation Army at 15.
He left the army after 17 years and became a civil servant in Dalian.
In 1988 he quit his job and founded a real estate company that specialised in revamping slum areas.
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