The title is explained by the fact that in December 2022 I put out a piece titled A Property Empire. (I bet you’d guessed that!) Which makes this is, unashamedly, a follow-up.

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BACKGROUND

That first piece was about a Rhyl property developer named Christopher Paul Walsh, and his company Walsh Investment Properties Ltd. I only took an interest after reading that someone had bought the hamlet of Aberllefenni, just up Afon Dulas from Corris Isaf.

When I first wrote about the company, it had taken out some 30 loans with various lenders, few of which you’d recognise. That figure is now up to a hundred. But there are other Walsh companies, and we’re starting with one of them.

It’s EMW Developments Ltd, and a project in Gronant, Flintshire, east of Prestatyn. To be specific, the Institute building and land in front of it, donated many years ago by Liverpool shipowner and local boy made good, Richard Hughes.

This report from February 2024 says the site is to be converted into “apartments and townhouses“, though it doesn’t make clear whether this involves using, or perhaps demolishing, the Institute itself.

The land in front of the building had been used by locals for parking. As shown in this Google Earth shot from April 2025. It may originally have been a bowling green.

Here’s the plan I found on the Flintshire planning website. You’ll see that the Institute building (green) is to be apartments, with much of the locals’ car park turned into town houses and parking spaces.

Before getting deeper into the Walsh saga, I’d like to tarry awhile in Gronant because, not far away, is another derelict building, the old youth club, on Pentre Lane. Which was also sold recently.

The article I’ve linked to can’t tell us the buyers, so I consulted the Land Registry. Where I learnt that it’s now owned by Golden Acre Developments Ltd, of Leeds. A company formed just a year ago, probably to buy Gronant Youth Club.

So let’s see who’s involved.

One is a Latvian living in Cambuslang, Glasgow, named Arturs Aleksejevs; the other a UK citizen named Robert(s) Opincans, who seems to have been educated in the UK, but whose surname is Latvian.

Last October Opincans started a company called Opincans Retrofit Ltd, using as its address the same Leeds flat as Golden Acre Developments. Opincans Linkedin file suggests he knows something about buildings and building work, but it’s not clear what Aleksejevs brings to the table.

For example, his Linkedin profile (probably lapsed) says he’s managing director at a company called Capsule Systems Ltd – but this outfit was put out of its misery in January 2022. And yet, despite never showing any money passing through the books this company still issued over 1.7 million shares.

How do we explain this? Misplaced optimism might be a generous interpretation. Anyway, I did a quick check on the listed shareholders.

The only Vitalii Druzhinin I found outside the Baltic states lives in New Zealand. Though I did find a few Russians with that surname mentioned on the Offshore Leaks Database. Also, an Alexander Druzhinin with a London address.

Vjaceslavs Knazevs might be in the no-questions-asked mortgage business.

Kevin Parker is too common a name to trace.

And with Vitalijs Kuznerovs I drew a blank.

Now back to Gronant Institute.

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WHO’S PUTTING UP THE MOOLAH?

Turning first to the Land Registry title document. Where we see that the owner of Gronant Institute is Walsh Investment Properties Ltd, with EMW Developments Ltd probably doing the work.

Scrolling to the bottom tells us the money to buy the Institute was put up by Livestock (UK) Ltd in December 2022. Companies House says the accounts for this outfit are long overdue, and there’s an active proposal to strike off this company. A fate it’s escaped a few times in recent years.

Yet the most recent (unaudited) accounts filed by Livestock (UK) Ltd report assets of over nine million pounds . . . but this is wiped out by (unnamed) creditors owed slightly more.

Livestock (UK) Ltd is run by the Duffell family of Cheshire. Walsh has been dealing with this family for a number of years.

We can safely assume that Livestock (UK) Ltd put up the money to buy the Stiwt. And the amount loaned was £1.2m over 24 months at the rate of 14% per annum. I know that from this document filed with Companies House.

Further loans have been taken out for the project – now named Richard Hughes Close – by Walsh Investment Properties Ltd. (Scroll down.) These loans are for the individual plots. And they’re all Buy-to-Let mortgages, from Quantum Mortgages Ltd.

So, as things stand . . . Walsh owes £2.4m, plus interest, to Livestock (UK) Ltd, and a few million more to Quantum Mortgages. He will then, presumably, own the rental properties at Richard Hughes Close.

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THE QUANTUM CONNECTION

As you might have guessed, I looked into Quantum Mortgages, tracing back the ownership to source. Quantum itself was founded as recently as September 2021 by Jason Christopher Neale.

AI tells us Quantum manages funds from AB CarVal, “an established global alternative investment manager and part of AllianceBernstein’s Private Alternatives business“.

“AllianceBernstein is primarily owned by Equitable Holdings, which holds a majority ownership stake of roughly 68% in the firm“.

Equitable Holdings entered a merger earlier this year with Corebridge Financial, with Corebridge holding 51%. The major shareholders in Corebridge are given as Nippon Life Insurance Company, Blackstone (Argon Holdco LLC), and American International Group (AIG). Other big shareholders are Vanguard and BlackRock.

(Worth remembering that BlackRock split from Blackstone in 1994 under the leadership of a man with his own key to No 10 – Larry Fink!)

So we’re dealing with foreign investment houses and asset managers funding Welsh developers with Buy-to-Let mortgages.

The first I can find was in November 2020, when Walsh took out a loan with Cynwyd Enterprises Ltd, another Duffell company, to buy the Grosvenor Social Club in Shotton. (£300,000 over 24 months.)

It was demolished for housing. Reported here in August 2022. The Cynwyd loan was cleared in December 2023, then Walsh took out a series of Buy-to-Let loans with Quantum for the individual properties.

Cynwyd Enterprises is another company with substantial assets . . . outweighed by unidentified ‘creditors’.

Another early involvement was for Bron Gwalia 7 Mountain Road, Conwy. This Google Maps capture from October 2022 suggests a substantial property containing individual flats. And EMW clearly at work.

The money to buy the building, late in 2021, came from one of the Duffells. With a loan of £205,000 over 24 months. Next, in February 2023, a Buy-to-Let mortgage was taken out with Quantum. Then, the loan was repaid in November 2024. Finally, the flats were, presumably, rented.

Just before the Gronant loans Quantum made over a dozen loans for Aberllefenni.

So we have three instances where the initial funding, to buy the property, came from the Duffell family – Shotton, Conwy, and Gronant – with Christopher Walsh then taking out Buy-to-Let mortgages with Quantum. And plenty of other recent loans from Quantum, such as the dozen or more at Aberllefenni.

But let’s focus on Gronant again, for things have taken a disturbing turn.

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LATEST NEWS

Latest news is that a deal has been done for the Gronant properties with Clearsprings, which provides accommodation for migrants; often unvetted, illegal migrants.

The Clearsprings Ready Homes website tells us:

As a provider of accommodation services to the Home Office since 2000, our contracts cover London, the South of England and Wales.

But housing ‘migrants’ is not devolved, so does Clearsprings have an  arrangement, or an understanding, with the so-called ‘Welsh Government’?

And where does Flintshire County Council fit into the picture? For this press release(?) mentions February 2024, the month the Council approved planning permission for Gronant Institute.

This information was released that month, or very soon after, according to Wayback. Does it suggest the Council has known about the plan to house ‘refugees’ at the Institute for over two years?

Whatever the answer, this is a depressing story on a number of levels.

First, it reminds us the housing market is screwed. Young people, who should be setting up home and starting families, find it difficult to buy a place of their own. And renting becomes more difficult as leftist politicians legislate private landlords out of the equation, with social housing providers giving priority to just about everyone ahead of locals.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, asset managers like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street are moving into the UK private housing market. Here’s a company called Apollo Global Management. Who do you think is a major investor in Apollo? Go on, have a guess . . . Clue – it rhymes with CockSock!)

One reason for US investors switching their attention to the UK is President Trump’s desire to stop them buying up single-family homes in the USA. (But of course leftists suffering from TDS will fight this.) We need this legislation in the UK.

And it’s no better in the ‘social housing’ sector. Yes, housing associations have stocks of rented accommodation – virtually all of it inherited from local authorities. But they’re not building many for rent anymore.

Instead they’re concentrating on ‘affordable’ housing for sale, or leasing to people who’d prefer to buy. But it’s sadly beyond the vocabulary of anyone working for a housing association, or indeed a civil servant or politician, to explain what ‘affordable’ means.

And who’s funding housing associations now? (Apart from the ‘Welsh Government’.)

Flicking through the documentation on the FCA website one name that turns up regularly linked to Welsh housing associations is M&G Investments. Here are the major shareholders:

Daiichi is of course Japanese. Kingdom Holding is owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. And there again we see BlackRock and Vanguard. (Don’t be fooled by the Union flag alongside BlackRock.)

UPDATE 12.08.2026: It seems the ‘migrants’ have arrived!

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CONCLUSION

Remember the days when an established family firm built houses in your area, and you went along to the building society where you’d been saving, to discuss a mortgage to buy one of those houses?

Now you don’t have a clue who you’re dealing with. And you’re not supposed to ask.

Because it’s not about you. It’s not about providing decent homes for people like you. The housing market in the modern era is all about profits for big corporations you’ve never heard of. With their enablers also getting their cut.

That’s what’s happening in Gronant. And everywhere else.

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© Royston Jones 2026