Tuesday 16 October 2018

UPDATE: WEMBLEY STADIUM SALE OFF Big players sideline locals and Brent Council as they tussle over Quintain and Wembley Stadium

The Financial Times reported yesterday that the sale of Quintain by its owner Lone Star is at a stand-off over the price with the area of contention between £2bn and £2.3bn. The Delaney led consortium according to the article has not yet moved into formal talks with Lone Star as discussions over the price continue.

The Delaney Consortium includes Canadian, Quatari and Dutch firms as well as Delaney itself while rival bidders are based in the US and Germany, along with LRC founded by a London-based Israeli investor.

With both Quintain and Wembley Stadium up for sale to big players it feels as if it is not only Brent residents but Brent Council that have been sidelined.

UPDATE: THE FA HAS CALLED OFF THE WEMBLEY STADIUM SALE FOR NOW


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Why are we flogging Wembley to the highest bidder? Why can't we maintain some control?

Philip Grant said...

It looks as though the potential new owner of Wembley Stadium has pulled out of the deal (at least for the moment), because too many (rank and file) members of the F.A. Council were not as keen on selling off the Stadium as the F.A. bosses.

The reason that the rest of "Wembley Park" is up for sale again is that the F.A. (through Wembley National Stadium Ltd) decided to sell off the valuable land, which Arthur Elvin had acquired with the old Stadium in the 1920's, to help pay for the new Stadium. Brent didn't acquire any of it for public use, and it has since been exploited to its full potential (many would say it has been over-developed!) by Quintain.

Clearly, there are investors out there who think that even more profit can be squeezed out of Wembley Park by owning Quintain. If the company is sold, Lone Star will have made a "quick buck", and it is more likely than not that its new owners will have the same intention, with no interest in Wembley Park other than "the bottom line".