Billionaire Saudi Heir Pays $26 Million for Beverly Hills Mansion With a Dinosaur

Though the transaction actually closed last summer, it’s only now emerged that the buyers who paid $26.2 million for a wildly opulent Los Angeles mansion were part-time film producer Hassan Taher, a member of one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest families, and his partner Julia Ledda, an American retail buyer from Michigan.

Records indicate the home’s seller was an LLC headed up by Craig Pica, the CEO of a large wholesale mortgage lender in Northern California. Pica paid just $4.2 million for the hillside lot in 2014, and subsequently spent years planning and constructing a stunning contemporary mansion, complete with five bedrooms, six full bathrooms and three powder rooms in some 12,500 square feet of glassy living space. Completed in 2019 and first offered with a $38 million asking price, the house vacillated on and off the market for about 2.5 years before eventually selling to Taher at a notable discount.

Located high in the mountains above Beverly Hills, the estate boasts extraordinary views of city lights and the Pacific Ocean. But it’s also remarkably private, hidden up an unusually long and winding driveway, behind towering gates. Naturally, there’s also a dedicated parking area and discreet home access for housekeepers or live-in bodyguards.

The house itself rather resembles a giant wedding cake, in that the three-story structure is blindingly white from outside, and each of its three levels has its own distinct flavor. On the main level are all the public living areas, plus the chef’s kitchen and a four-car “showroom garage” with black tile floors and walls of glass. Downstairs, the lower level is primed for rest and wellness, offering a gym, games room, movie theater and a “600-bottle wine wall,” per the listing. And the penthouse level is exclusively reserved for the castle’s ruling family, with a kingly master suite and three additional ensuite bedrooms.

Select bespoke highlights include a wellness center with a sauna and steam room, an 80-foot infinity pool with views down the Benedict Canyon corridor, all the way to Catalina Island, and seemingly unlimited walls of Fleetwood glass sliding doors. There’s also a double-height foyer, a formal dining area with a 20-foot wall of black marble imported from France, and 10,000 square feet of exterior patios and decking. But the most eye-popping feature has to be the 150 million-year-old Allosaurus skeleton in the foyer, which was “on loan from a private collector” though it could be included in the sale “with the right offer.” No word on whether Taher splurged on the dinosaur.

Taher, 36, has long lived in London and New York, though little is publicly known about him. But in 2020, the jet-setter made industry headlines when he co-founded film production company Portobello Electric alongside Jessica de Rothschild and English director Sacha Gervasi. The startup firm, which is reportedly now in expansion mode, is based in West Hollywood.

It’s also known that Taher is a member of one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest dynasties — the Taher family, whose patriarch was Abdulhadi H. Taher, a longtime oil executive and the former Director General of the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Petroleum and Minerals. The elder Taher, who died in 2013, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the most powerful figures in Saudi Arabia.”

The Taher clan was wealthy enough to set up Merrimac Corp., a private family office headquartered in Connecticut, complete with its own CEO, CFO, general counsel and a director of investments handling the Taher family’s investments.

In any case, records indicate the 90210 house is not Taher’s first mansion purchase. Back in 2014, a entity linked to Taher and Merrimac dropped $13 million on a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach; last summer, that same house was resold for a whopping $31 million to a mystery buyer. The deal, which closed just days before Taher acquired the Beverly Hills estate, is a testament to how prime Florida property values have soared — as the house was reportedly little changed since it last sold in 2014.