Garbo Ian Malouf buys ANZ Tower penthouse for $60 million from developer John Boyd

Rich Lister garbo Ian Malouf has bought the ANZ Tower penthouse owned by property developer John Boyd for a record $60 million.

The sale of the landmark apartment sets a national high for a single, built apartment. However, construction is underway to complete James Packer’s $60 million two-storey apartment consolidation in the Crown Residences at Barangaroo and a $140 million consolidation of the top three floors of Lendlease’sTower 1 development at Barangaroo South.

Malouf, who founded Dial-a-Dump and sold the company for $578 million in 2018 to Bingo Industries, purchased the penthouse on Saturday night when it was revealed he had bought a beachfront getaway in Palm Beach for about $20 million from the McNiven family.

Mr Malouf was ranked on this year’s Australian Financial Review Rich List 200 as the 148th richest person in the country with an estimated net worth of $729 million.

The ANZ Tower “sky mansion” – set above the commercial building – was listed in 2018 with a guide of $60 million to $66 million with Bill Malouf of LJ Hooker Double Bay and Christie’s Ken Jacobs. Mr Jacobs declined to comment on the sale, and Mr Malouf confirmed only that “the number one residence in Australia” had sold.

The four-bedroom apartment atop the commercial building was only possible because Mr Boyd consolidated the site on Castlereagh and Pitt Streets over a decade. When he sold it in one line to developer Grocon, he negotiated to retain the rights to a level 43 penthouse atop the commercial building.

ANZ Tower was completed in 2013. The design by architect Richard Francis-Jones won the firm Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp the office category at the World Architecture Festival the following year.

However, the home of Boyd and his wife Marly was not completed until 2015. Its dramatic interiors by Blainey North earned it the title of the world’s finest residence of £40 million-plus at the International Design & Architecture Awards in 2017.

The 2000-square-metre abode is accessed by an express lift from a private car park totalling 400 square metres. All finishes are bespoke, and more than 200 pieces of art deco-inspired furniture were commissioned to furnish it.

The apartment’s “great” room set under the building’s distinctive crescent-shaped roof has come to epitomise high-end luxury living during its three-year sales campaign and was a location for Network Seven’s television drama series Between Two Worlds.

The vast floor plan includes an internal lift, a conference room, a club-like study, a gymnasium, a cigar room for smaller dinner parties, and on the rooftop a swimming pool, two terraces and a cabana lounge.

It is the most expensive residential sale in the country this year.