Manchester City Council has has been accused of selling huge tracts of public land at discount prices to the Abu Dhabi investment fund that owns the Premier League champions.
The city’s reputation has been put at risk by the authority entering into a “bad deal for the council and its citzens” despite human rights concerns about the United Arab Emirates, according to a new report that raises questions about how the ownership of football clubs is used for political aims that are not beneficial to wider society.
The 65-page report by academics at the University of Sheffield concludes council’s sale of sites to with Manchester City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour, is “instructive” on both sportswashing and “city-washing”. The researchers said the situation should lead to scrutiny of other cities such as Newcastle, where Saudi Arabian investors have invested in Newcastle United Football Club.
One of the most common criticisms of these ownerships is such clubs are used for other purposes, not least the integration of problematic states into the infrastructure of society.
The research primarily covers the Manchester Life partnership, a joint venture that has built 1,468 private apartments in the gentrified Ancoats district. In contrast to the common counter-argument that Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) investment has regenerated east Manchester, the report was “unable to identify any income received by the council from its joint venture stakes… despite being exposed to some of the risks of the project”.
It goes on to say that, under the terms of the deal, the council allowed ADUG to hold all land leaseholds, property assets and income rights through subsidiaries registered in “the secrecy jurisdiction of Jersey”.
Most notably, it points out that the venture’s management company paid only £4,000 in corporation tax in 2021 on rental income of £10.1m.
The assessment of the researchers is that Manchester City Council “sold the family silver too cheap” in what they describe as a “sweetheart deal” that “represents a transfer of public wealth to private hands that is difficult to justify as prudent” and is tantamount to “offshoring local democracy”.
The report, Manchester Offshored, reads: “The partnership benefitted from considerable public subsidies in different forms: the below comparable leasehold rates for land transferred offshore for sites in a neighbourhood that had received prior public investment; no affordable housing requirements (whether delivered on- or off-site or negotiated via section 106 financial contributions) and a series of public loans.
“For the authors, this raises concerns about value for money and the protection of public resources, as well as key questions of transparency, accountability and local democracy.
“The researchers estimate the value of the Manchester Life property portfolio to be around £350m and the rental income approximately £10m per annum after VAT. The council does not appear to own any portion of the property assets and does not receive any rental or sales income directly from those assets.”
The research was undertaken by Dr Richard Goulding, Professor Adam Leaver, and Dr Jonathan Silver. The authors argue that, “given the contentious nature of this development, it was all the more important to be open about its economics. From the limited information available in the public domain - this looks like a bad deal for the council and its citizens. If you’re comfortable taking the reputational risk, you should be sure to get the best price.
“Longer-term, it raises questions about what values - and whose values - the city represents. The potential for the relationship to become an ethical, political and economic liability are growing against the backdrop of concerns about the foreign policy and geo-politics of authoritarian regimes. Manchester’s self-image as a vibrant, open, tolerant city may be compromised if the council is seen as aiding elites from authoritarian regimes to generate investment returns that shore up their political and economic power back home.”
The report concludes with arguments for a series of short-term actions to be undertaken by Manchester City Council to open up transparency and accountability, as well as longer-term recommendations to address wider concerns about the issue of international investment into UK cities.
A Manchester City Council spokesperson said: “We reject any suggestion that the sale of the sites involved in the Manchester Life joint venture was not a good deal for the council and the city.
“Land was valued by independent experts, using the nationally accepted ‘red book’ valuation benchmark, and we got the best overall deal we could for each site at a time when there was very little market interest in the area. The value of that deal includes not just the initial receipt for the land but also site-specific overage arrangements, and profit sharing payments. These were always envisaged as longer-term arrangements – the council is due to receive several million pounds in this financial year through the first such payments.”
The council added the Manchester Life developments had “acted as a catalyst, creating confidence and attracting further investment into the area” and had paved the way for new homes and business, generating “significantly more for the city in extra council tax and business rates income”.
Couple says they spent more than 20 hours on hold with airline trying to sort mistake
The proposed licensing of vision-sensing technology could be a national-security risk, the government says.
"We feel that it's just the interest for everyone if we can be physically secured and keep a low profile," one of the founders told Bloomberg.
As House speaker, Pelosi has access to intelligence and the power to craft policies affecting her husband's investments.
Companies enacting stock splits are all the rage on Wall Street -- but not all stock-split stocks are created equally.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Treasury issued a special waiver on Friday to allow investors with insurance against a Russian default, known as Credit Default Swaps, to receive their payouts. The normally straightforward process of CDS payouts was thrown into chaos in June when Washington said its sanctions on Russia represented a total ban on buying Moscow's debt. "OFAC has issued two General Licenses (waivers) to help U.S. and other global investors more cleanly exit their exposures to Russia," a Treasury spokesperson said, referring to the Office of Foreign Assets Control which enforces U.S. sanctions.
The IRS recently made changes to the amount of money that can be withdrawn each year from retirement accounts before age 59 1/2. As with the increase in overall inflation, the reasonable interest rate...
MarketWatch Picks has highlighted these products and services because we think readers will find them useful; the MarketWatch News staff is not involved in creating this content. For years, the rates paid out on savings accounts were abysmal, but we are finally seeing rates going up. Indeed, the Fed has now raised rates numerous times this year, and that’s helped boost rates on savings accounts and certificates of deposit (CDs), as MarketWatch Picks recently reported.
The Roth IRA five-year rule is often misunderstood as an ironclad edict that locks your money away, out of your reach. In reality, it’s not the scary impediment that investors might fear.
In this article, we discuss the 10 stocks that Jim Cramer is talking about. If you want to read about some more stocks that Jim Cramer is talking about, go directly to Jim Cramer Is Talking About These 5 Stocks. Recession fears in the United States have reached fever pitch as even veteran stock market […]
Stock-market bulls are poking their heads above the parapet, but skeptics see little more than a bear-market bounce.
Dallas-Fort Worth homebuilders are seeing more cancelations of contracts on new homes, triggering a sharp drop in sales and pending sales. Resale cancelations are also rising.
(Bloomberg) -- Pakistan will meet its elevated funding needs comfortably with the International Monetary Fund bailout remaining on track, the central bank said, even as the rupee completed its biggest weekly plunge since 1998.Most Read from BloombergThree Arrows Founders Break Silence Over Collapse of Crypto Hedge FundTrump Insiders Recall How He Spurned Pleas to Act as Riot RagedAmericans Who Can’t Afford Homes Are Moving to Europe InsteadMusk Lieutenant Scrutinized in Internal Tesla Purchasing
(Bloomberg) -- AT&T Inc. fell the most in 20 years after saying some customers are starting to put off paying their phone bills, which contributed to the wireless carrier cutting its forecast for free cash flow this year by $2 billion.Most Read from BloombergAmericans Who Can’t Afford Homes Are Moving to Europe InsteadThese Are the World’s Most (and Least) Powerful Passports in 2022Biden Contracts Covid as Pandemic Shows Its Staying PowerECB Rushes to Tighten as Half-Point Hike Matched by Crisis
Investment giant JPMorgan’s chief global market strategist Marko Kolanovic notes that the first quarter of this year saw an incredible $429 billion in total buyback activity. This represents a faster pace than both of the previous two years, and reflected a combination of healthy margins and strong corporate cash flows. That fundamental strength allowed corporations to step up and start buying even as the Federal Reserve stepped back by tightening up on monetary policy. Kolanovic notes that not
The biggest story in markets today is that mortgage demand is at its lowest point since George W. Bush was just starting his first term as president.
It's better to think about a sine curve when looking at stocks, as businesses typically shift from good periods to difficult ones and back again to good periods. If you can step in when times are tough, you can pick up some great companies at relatively cheap prices and hold them forever. Since yields move in the opposite direction as stock prices, I'm effectively looking for companies with strong dividend histories that are trading with dividend yields at the high side of their historical range.
Anthony Scaramucci, the short-lived White House communications director under Donald Trump, is a bitcoin evangelist.
As has been the case for about six years, gold-mining stock SSR Mining (NASDAQ: SSRM) is my largest holding by a significant amount. Originally, I owned shares of Canadian gold-mining company Claude Resources, but Claude was acquired by SSR in a cash-and-stock deal in 2016. Like most precious-metal mining companies, SSR has had its challenges.
The euphoria showed by North Carolina economic development officials when it landed its first EV manufacturing plant may have been justified. But a deeper look reveals a company betting the farm that those EVs will be a hit.