Nick Candy says friendship with Holyoake was worst decision of his life

Property developer Nick Candy has told a London court that reacquainting himself with former university friend Mark Holyoake was “the worst mistake” of his life. Entrepreneur Holyoake is suing brothers Nick and Christian Candy for more than £100m, claiming they “coerced” him out of millions of pounds after Christian Candy’s company CPC lent him £12m to buy Belgravia mansion Grosvenor Gardens House in late 2011. The Candy brothers strongly refute the allegations and say that Holyoake was an unreliable creditor who lied to them from the start. They say that Holyoake’s allegations of coercion are fabricated. Nick Candy (pictured) took the witness stand today, five weeks into the trial. His witness statement was also released to reporters. Speaking under cross examination from Holyoake’s lawyer, Roger Stewart QC, Nick Candy said that he had been a friend of Mark Holyoake, but the pair were not especially close. “The way it has been portrayed, it is as if Mark and I were childhood sweethearts,” Candy said. “That is not true.” He said they shared a student house in Reading with six others while studying for their degrees. “Then I lost contact with him for a decade.” He bumped into Holyoake again in 2006 while on holiday in the Caribbean and they became friendly again. “We were friends, I wouldn’t say best friends,” he said. “Mark Holyoake is a very charismatic man to go out with for a beer or a dinner, but I regret the day I met that man. It was the worst decision of my life.” Giving evidence earlier in the case, Holyoake said that he approached Nick Candy, a university friend, for an unsecured loan to help him with a property transaction. He alleges that soon after the loan was provided by Christian Candy’s company, he subjected him to a campaign of threats and intimidation with the intention of “stealing the asset” and getting as much money out of him as possible. He alleges that Christian Candy told him he would deliberately engineer a situation that would put Holyoake’s then pregnant wife Emma, who had previously suffered a miscarriage, under extreme stress. Nick Candy hit out at this allegation saying it made him feel “absolutely sick”. “I’ve got a three year old. If anyone threatened my family I would be absolutely appalled by it.” “It’s a terrible thing to say” Stewart said. “Yes. It’s worse to make it up,” Holyoake replied. Later in the cross examination, said that Holyoake had been “very clever” to pull off the Grosvenor Gardens House purchase without putting in any of his own money. Holyoake financed it with a loan from Investec and another loan known as Oscar 1. “Investec would have required him to put in some equity” he said. But the CPC loan was made as a personal loan that he would have used as equity for the Investec loan. “Mark Holyoake put no money into this deal”, he said. “Zero. Nothing.” “He deceived me, he deceived CPC, he deceived Investec.” He and his brother started to come to this conclusion soon after CPC paid the loan. “At this point, I’m starting to wonder if he was a friend”, he said. In his lengthy witness statement, Nick Candy speaks of the “betrayal” he has felt as a result of Holyoake’s actions following the loan agreement, and the allegations made in these proceedings.  He said: “The fact of the matter is that neither Christian nor I threatened Mr Holyoake in the manner alleged, or indeed at all.”  He also explains the nature of his business relationship with his brother Christian, denying any involvement in the running of CPC Group and saying: “The story of the Candy brothers as a pair has always been of more media interest than our individual stories. Extracts from Nicholas Candy’s witness statement:  On the Candy brothers’ business relationship Candy claims he effected an introduction between his friend, Mark Holyoake, and his brother, Christian Candy, and continued to be copied in on correspondence to keep him updated and so he could “help out when things got tough between the parties”. “When I could see that CPC was having issues with the loan (and knew as much from my regular conversations with Christian and others), not getting paid by Mr Holyoake, or being strung along by him, I would also offer views to Christian on what steps he might want to take or how I might be able to help out.” Responding to allegations from Holyoake that he was copied in because he was a de facto director of CPC, he said: “I categorically deny that this is the case.” On the brothers’ business affairs: “Christian and I have worked closely together over many years through our companies, primarily because of our family relationship, at the same time as growing our individual interests and businesses. Christian created CPC Group, the company name representing Christian’s initials (Christian Peter Candy), whilst I concentrated on project design and management, principally using Candy & Candy (C&C) which is primarily a luxury interior design and management company. Christian exited from C&C to pursue his own businesses interests in March 2011, and since then it has been ultimately owned by me alone. There was plenty of opportunity to work together on projects – C&C generally undertook the consultancy work on projects where CPC or another of Christian’s companies owned the property being developed. On occasion my brother and I have personally invested in ventures, on a joint basis and separately from CPC and C&C.” “C&C and my interests are often aligned with my brother and CPC’s, particularly as C&C is often engaged in an interior design and/or project management capacity in many of CPC’s property development projects. As such, I do sometimes express myself as if speaking collectively when that is not strictly accurate.” “My skills lie in being a networker and facilitator… I am well known and have a wide ranging set of contacts from across the globe and from industry, politics, entertainment and business communities. Many of these people are leaders in their fields and I have often used my interpersonal skills and friendships to bring people together and to create or broker opportunities. In doing this it is important to be seen as an equal or on the same level as the contact. This is why at times I ‘big myself up’ with them as regards the role that I play with my brother and his businesses (although if the media misreports a formal connection I have had to correct them). This is to create and maintain an image which will give me greater credibility and increase my network, which I believe serves both of our separate, but often aligned, interests. When I make approaches to powerful and influential people and try to get them to do business with me or Christian, giving them a perception of who I am and what I do that puts me on a level playing field and is important. The story of the Candy Brothers as a pair has always been of more media interest than our individual stories.”   On Holyoake On his relationship with his University friend, Holyoake, he said that, after they reconnected again 10 years later, “we would see each other socially every few weeks or so and became close friends again”. However, over the course of the loan, he said that their relationship deteriorated, and, by 31 January 2012, he said: “I was now firmly of the view that he [Holyoake] had blatantly lied to Christian and CPC and appeared to be trying to play them, despite all that CPC and I had done for him to arrange the loan so quickly.” But he felt that “maintaining the friendship with him would provide me with the best chance of assisting CPC in recovering the monies owed to it”. “Whilst I felt Mr Holyoake was not acting much like my best friend, I found myself somewhat ‘in the middle’ in relation to the ongoing negotiations between CPC and Mr Holyoake. CPC was understandably angry that Mr Holyoake had lied to them (as indeed was I) but Mr Holyoake had been my friend and I did not want, for either party, for this matter to end up in the courts. I also felt that I could use our long-standing friendship to appeal to Mr Holyoake to do the honourable thing and repay CPC.” In emails to Holyoake he would use phrases like “we” and “us”, but said: “Whilst I was using ‘we’ and ‘us’ in these emails, I of course meant CPC, and the use of ‘we’ and ‘us’ was simply a combination of loose language on my part and my investment on an emotional and personal level in getting this matter resolved.” He said that he would be “astonished” if his brother had made the threats alleged by Holyoake, relating to creating a stressful situation for Holyoake and his then-pregnant wife, Emma, who he was aware had suffered a miscarriage previously. He said: “I cannot now recall whether I had at the time told Christian about it although I may have done.” He claims that Holyoake continued to lie to him and CPC and failed to keep to what had been agreed: “I felt utterly betrayed by a man who still purported to be my best friend.” He denies making threats to Holyoake’s personal safety or that of his family in March or April 2012: “It is simply not true that I threatened him. I would never have done so.” He said: “I advised Mr Holyoake that he should work with Christian to avoid the whole deal ‘falling over’, rather than fighting with him. I urged Mr Holyoake to deal with Christian correctly and to stop lying. I also explained that Christian had other options available to him; he could, for example, sell the debt down and whoever purchased the debt might not be as easy to deal with as Christian. I did not threaten Mr Holyoake that Christian/CPC would sell the debt down to any Russians.” As things progressed, he said: “The more I heard about Mr Holyoake, the more convinced I became that he was fraudster and I felt very responsible for getting my brother into this mess.” At a party in Ibiza in June 2012, following threats now alleged to have been made by him and Christian, he said that he and Holyoake had a “perfectly cordial conversation”, and that their wives, Holly and Emma, also chatted: “I understand from Holly that Emma even mentioned to her that they would like us to be godparents to their unborn child.” However, in July, he confirmed to Christian that Holyoake would not be invited to his [Nick’s] wedding: “In my eyes, the friendship was over as I did not trust him.” “I just found the entire situation so incredibly frustrating and I felt deeply hurt that someone I had considered to be a good friend would completely betray me by treating my brother this way. I do not think many others would have been prepared to lend to Mr Holyoake on such short notice. I also felt very responsible that Christian and CPC had spent the best part of nine months having to deal with Mr Holyoake, his lies and his repeatedly broken promises about repayment.” He says that Holyoake reached out to him by email at the end of 2013, after a year with no contact, and that he responded: “Friendship is based on trust and loyalty and you and I have lost that. We may be able to regain it but you need to show firstly you are good for your word with CPC Group. Once all matters are resolved I am happy to meet up and chat over things with you. I miss our friendship but there are certain things you do not do in life and you broke some of those golden rules. I am not even talking about CPC Group but other things you did. We don’t need to debate those over email but I am happy to chat them through once all matters are resolved with CPC Group.” But, following subsequent correspondence, in April 2014, he said that Holyoake sent him “a nasty and vitriolic email and not one from anybody who had any shred of friendship left”. He added: “There were veiled threats to me but more than that it presented a picture which I simply did not recognise. It seemed to me that Mr Holyoake was painting a picture and drafting an email with an ulterior purpose — not to try and reach a settlement but to create a paper trial for any future litigation that he might threaten. His talk about being robbed, blackmailed and scared was in my view wholly fictitious and did not reflect either the reality of the situation or indeed Mr Holyoake’s general attitude and tenor of his correspondence throughout the life of the loan.” IMAGE: ©Ben Cawthra/REX/Shutterstock