Manchester City Council has made just under £3m from a deal to share in the so-called "super-profits" from developments built on its land by Manchester City's owners. A deal struck in 2014 meant the council would receive payments if the profits made by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) on schemes in Ancoats and New Islington exceeded a certain level. The council said it expects another payment soon and that the regeneration has been worth £1.25bn to the city.
Prof Adam Leaver, co-author of a 2022 University of Sheffield report into the council's relationship with ADUG, said commercial secrecy around the arrangements made it hard to know whether the council got the best value it could. He said it was not possible to see how much profit had been remitted to ADUG from connected companies registered in Jersey, where there is far less transparency about companies' finances. The terms of the overage agreement were concealed from public view, so it is not possible to know how much profit ADUG needed to make before it was obliged to share with the council. In July, the council revealed that reviews of its overage deals found "weaknesses in documentation, monitoring and assurance".
In 2008, Manchester City was bought for £200m by ADUG, owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a senior member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family. In the following decade, the club won the first three of its eight Premier League titles, and ADUG and the council became partners in a company called Manchester Life. Last week, the Premier League announced the club had been found guilty of 115 charges, including some relating to a disguised funding scheme. The club denies wrongdoing and has appealed.
The council said the deals were made after the 2008 financial crash, when there was "very little market interest in the area", and that each site was valued by independent experts. Leaver argued the market had picked up from 2013 onwards, around the time the Manchester Life partnership was formed, pointing to significant investment and a growing population in Ancoats. The original plan envisioned more than 6,000 homes, but so far about 1,500 have been delivered across nine sites.
Source: BBC Sport Football · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing