AMP chief Francesco De Ferrari and wife Elisabetta buy grand Woollahra mansion

AMP chief executive Francesco De Ferrari and his wife Elisabetta are settling nicely into a very Sydney way of life, buying grand Federation mansion Weeroona in Woollahra’s consular belt.

Approval for the purchase was no doubt granted by the Foreign Investment Review Board given De Ferrari is an Italian and Swiss national, lured here 18 months ago to take up AMP’s top job from Singapore where he was previously running Credit Suisse’s private bank in South-East Asia.

Of course, the six-bedroom residence isn’t the only attractive benefit to De Ferrari’s new life in Sydney: his statutory pay last year totalled $13.43 million thanks to share rights, options and restricted shares.

It remains unknown how much of that pay is set to be spent on the Woollahra real estate given no comment from either De Ferrari or Goodyer’s Pauline Goodyer and Rosalia Marasco, but the property was listed three years ago for $12 million, and sources say at least a few million of that was shaved off expectations more recently.

The purchase ends 30 years of ownership by physiotherapist Michael Ringland and his wife Karin, who bought it for the princely sum of $1.29 million in 1990 from Gary Hendler and Sharon Triguboff, daughter of billionaire “Highrise” Harry Triguboff.

De Ferrari’s plans for the residence are already in play, with a DA for $650,000 worth of alterations and additions by architect Michael Robilliard lodged with Woollahra Council earlier this week.

De Ferrari joins a well-known cast from corporate Australia among his immediate new neighbours. Property tycoon Terry Agnew paid $10.35 million for next door and techie Mike Cannon-Brookes paid more than $18 million to the German Government in March.

Kings Cross penthouse makes the cut for Miroshnik

High-profile plastic surgeon Michael Miroshnik looks to have found his new home, snapping up the penthouse of the Zenith Residences at Kings Cross for about $10 million.

The whole-floor spread atop the 33-storey tower of what was once the Hyatt Kingsgate hotel is just a shell with 360-degree views at this stage, a blank canvas fit to be moulded into something far more luxurious by the self-professed “breast master”.

Miroshnik’s last property renovation was a Vaucluse house he bought in 2014 for $7.15 million and which was resold after a redesign by Kaintoch Design Studio for $36.5 million last September to Sunny Ngai, son of the late toilet paper king Henry Ngai.

Miroshnik’s new 570-square-metre spread – complete with a 10-metre high void above the living area – has been empty for decades, having been left largely untouched since bought by Singaporean fund Kingsgate International in the early 1990s.

Darren Curtis, of Christie’s International, declined to comment on the sale price, but had a guide of $9.8 million to $10 million and it is expected to have sold for close to that.

Murrays swap the Slopes for Clifton Gardens

Mosman’s corporate heavy hitters are reshuffling their home real estate on the quiet. Chief among them is chairman of grocery wholesaler Metcash Rob Murray and his wife Alison, who have sold their Balmoral Slopes home for $8.1 million to trade over to Clifton Gardens.

Murray was the newly appointed chief of Lion Nathan when he bought the family home in 2005 for $5.4 million from financial services veteran Gary Avis and his wife Carol.

No sooner did buyer’s agent Peter Kelaher introduce a buyer to the Murrays – and posted as much on his social media – than word got out that the Murrays have headed up the hill to Ruby Street where they bought the home of former Allco Finance director Nick Bain and his wife Katherine for about $8.5 million.

The Bains bought the house for $6.2 million in 2015, and are set to remain residents of the street thanks to their $6.1 million purchase of the house next door in 2017 which they have been undertaking a major rebuild of since.

Rich lister cashes in Walsh Bay pad

Rich lister Paul Fudge has put his Walsh Bay apartment up for $4.6 million to $4.8 million.

Fudge is the low-key founder of Pangea Resources and sold a coal seam gas tenement in Queensland for $660 million in 2009 to Origin Energy, propelling him from relative obscurity to the nation’s rich list.

Fudge bought the Walsh Bay pad in 2010 for $3.2 million, but never lived in it. Instead, his Sydney base has long been his double-fronted terrace in Woollahra for when he’s not at his race horse stud in the Southern Highlands, Waratah Thoroughbreds.

Fudge’s two-storey spread hit the market this week with McGrath’s Richard Shalhoub, who is yet to return calls regarding the listing.

Incidentally, Fudge sold his former Sydney pad in the Renzo Piano-designed Macquarie Apartments in 2016 for $4.25 million to Coca-Cola Amatil boss Alison Watkins.

Berry Mountain high?

Marriage equality campaigner and head of Whitehelm Capital fund manager Tom Snow has sold his Berry Mountain holiday home for about $3 million.

This is the 43-hectare property Clouddance bought by Snow, son of Canberra billionaire Terry Snow, with his former husband Brooke Horne in 2017 for a Beaumont record of $3,025,000.

Nirvana Property Specialists David Matthew and Michael Devlin had a guide of $3.1 million before it sold, but were gagged by confidentiality orders from revealing the sale price. Settlement will reveal if Snow managed to recoup his full purchase price.