Estate agent ordered out of her historic £19m London mansion after losing battle with bank

Independent

23-05-2025

A multimillionaire divorcee has been ordered out of her historic £19m London mansion - which was once home to Charles Dickens - by a judge, after losing a court fight with her bank.
High-end estate agent Deborah Fiorentino, 63, was sued after she failed to pay the mortgage on her Grade-I listed Regents Park home, where Dickens lived around the time he wrote 'Great Expectations,' leaving her more than £10m in debt.
Ms Fiorentino, the former wife of both Italian aristocrat Giovanni Fiorentino and celebrity British divorce lawyer Raymond "Jaws" Tooth, ran up the massive arrears after taking out a £17.85m loan on the house and other properties.
But she stopped paying her mortgage in December 2022 and, despite complaining that she had been badly treated by the bank, has now been ordered out by a judge.
Judge Nicholas Parfitt, sitting at Mayor's and City County Court, said Ms Fiorentino had made it clear that the house was her "only asset" and that she was not going to make any more installments.
The seven-bed house in Hanover Terrace, overlooking Regent's Park boating lake, is where Dickens spent the summer of 1861, around the time he wrote 'Great Expectations.'
Designed by Buckingham Palace and Marble Arch neo-classical architect John Nash, it has been recently renovated to feature its own gym and sauna, and is now home to wealthy divorcee Ms Fiorentino.
Ms Fiorentino is a former local estate agent, who after setting up her own office built a portfolio of luxury houses in some of London's richest districts.
In the early nineties, she married Italian aristocrat Giovanni Fiorentino, father of her two children, living with him between his two large family homes in Naples, while continuing to buy up more houses.
One in Hampstead belonged to pioneer plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, while her former home in Frognal, also in Hampstead, was where stars including Peter Sellers and Elizabeth Taylor enjoyed garden parties in the sixties.
In 2008, she separated from her second husband, top divorce lawyer Raymond 'Jaws' Tooth, who worked on the divorces of Roman Abramovich, Jude Law, Michael Barrymore and Colin Montgomerie.
But representing Banque Havilland in court last week, Michael Walsh KC said Ms Fiorentino - "supposedly a high net worth individual" - had now shown herself unable to pay her debts.
She took out the £17.85m five-year loan with the bank in March 2019, secured against the Hanover Terrace house and mews, and the third property in Frognal.
Although Frognal was sold, allowing the proceeds to pay down the loan, she was still left owing over £10.2m, with the debt growing by almost £2,000 per day, said the barrister.
But after December 2022, she had gone on to fail to meet interest payments, he said, telling the judge that she "patently cannot afford to repay."
"The irresistible conclusion here is that she is persistently unable to meet her obligations," he said.
"She has made no interest payment whatsoever since December 2022 on this loan.
"The reality is that she has had ample time to repay the amounts owed by her and cannot do so."
He asked the judge to make an order that she vacate the house so that it can be sold and the bank get its money back.
However, Ms Fiorentino fought the claim, arguing that because she has a separate claim against the bank alleging unfair treatment, the order should not be made.
Her barrister, Thomas Rothwell, claimed the bank had taken an "unnecessarily belligerent attitude" against her and that she had been "treated unreasonably."
She had been prevented from refinancing her loan, costing her millions in extra outgoings and interest, meaning the amount she owes should be reduced by at least £2.45m, meaning at the most she only now owes around £7.81m.
But ruling on the case, Judge Parfitt said her case against the bank could not be decided now and that, "the law is well established that the granted security rights take precedence over the cause of action."
He continued: "Under the finance documents, interest payments were payable quarterly. It is common ground that, since December 2022, the defendant has made no such payments.
"Indeed, the defendant has chosen to make no payments into the mortgage account since December 2022 and is not proposing to make any in the future.
"The defendant has made clear that her only asset is Hanover and so she has no means of making any payments to the bank other than through a sale of Hanover or refinancing Hanover."
He said she had put forward evidence about her attempts to sell the house herself, but that showed only a "repeated cycle of accepted informal offers and nothing further."
During the hearing last week, the court heard Ms Fiorentino had claimed several times to be close to selling, including once to an unnamed Premier League footballer, but a sale had not got to contract exchange.
The bank's barrister Mr Walsh said that suggested she had overpriced it, accusing her of being "incapable of properly marketing this property" and pointing to the fact that she had initially marketed the Frognal house for a "wildly over-optimistic" £19.95m, before selling for just over £11m.
In his ruling, the judge said of her near sale claims: "At best it is a sequence of hoped for sales which never come close to being a substantial likelihood.
"At worse it is generating evidence to resist the consequences of her legal position arising from the financial documents and her defaults, including at its most basic and uncontroversial failing to repay at the end of the term."
The judge however granted Ms Fiorentino a three-month stay of execution so that she can make a last ditch effort to sell her historic house before it is repossessed.
He ordered that she otherwise must give up possession of the house to the bank by 4pm on August 21.
Her claim against the bank over alleged financial losses will take place at a later date.