With a permanent deployment of approximately 150 police on the hill reported for the past half year, the atmosphere is intimidating, to say the least. Since August 2022 up until the time of writing, the assembly to defend the hill has reported constant harassment of those trying to use the park, including of kids coming to play basketball or simply hang out. It has counted over forty arrests in that time, as well as other acts of violence and tear gas used against local residents who refuse to back down in the face of state intimidation. Yet the assembly has sustained resistance in myriad forms – from demos, to intergenerational festivities with traditional dancing and choirs.

Strefi Hill is more than just an inner city park. It’s a precious gathering space at the heart of a spirited neighbourhood that successive governments have sought – but failed – to subdue and assimilate. It’s a haven for anarchists, refugees and other outsiders to organise or socialise, but also a valuable community space with an open theatre, basketball courts and a playground.

And it’s a refuge for wildlife too. Wild tortoises live on the hill, and the animal has become its symbol: ancient, free, and vulnerable – but ultimately tough in its weather-beaten shell.

Since our interview, we’ve dug into the companies carving up this precious space for personal gain, hoping to inspire solidarity. We traced the financial interests back to faceless private equity firms in Northern Europe and the US – and found some wealthy Greek dynasties along the way.

Mural for Strefi Hill. Image: Open Assembly for the Defence of Strefi Hill

The investors: PRODEA

Parent companies: Invel & Castlelake

€1m (£850k) in financing for the Strefi project is provided by Prodea, with €800,000 (£687k) supplied by Athens city council.

Prodea is a property developer listed on the Athens stock exchange. Its owner describes it as “the largest Real Estate Investment Company (“REIC”) in Greece in terms of assets”, and it has at least fifty subsidiaries – mostly based in Greece and Cyprus.

The majority of Prodea’s investments are in commercial property in the form of offices. Over a third of its portfolio is rented out to the National Bank of Greece, while 10% is leased to the Greek supermarket chain Sklavenitis. It is currently in discussions about participation in the controversial Elliniko megaproject on the site of Athens’ former airport, among the world’s biggest urban redevelopment schemes.

According to company accounts, the firm appears to be doing well financially. It made just over €98m (£84m) in profit in 2022, although this was a significant drop from the previous year’s profits of around €128m (£110m).

Prodea’s chairman and president is Christophoros “Chris” Papachristophorou, who is also managing partner of the parent company, Invel. Educated at the London School of Economics, Papachristophorou cut his teeth in the world of property as global head of RREEF Opportunistic Investments, a real estate investment manager then owned by Deutsche Bank. Several other former RREEF and Deutsche Bank real estate personnel populate the Invel and Prodea management teams. This includes Papachristophorou’s wife Marianna, a London Business School graduate who owns a £5m home in Chelsea.

In an indication of the company’s potential proximity to government, another Deutsche Bank alumni and recent Invel Partner, Alexis Pipilis, happens to be Facebook friends with Sofia Mitsotakis – daughter of the current Greek Prime Minister.

Chris Papachristophorou

Invel

Prodea is owned by Invel, a Jersey-headquartered, multinational property investor and asset manager. The company specialises in “real estate and distressed debt opportunities across Europe”. It invites investment firms to contribute money alongside its own in the purchase of properties that are not considered to be profitable enough, and redevelops them.

However, Invel’s most high-profile investment isn’t a luxury hotel or a chain of supermarkets – it’s the property division of the National Bank of Greece (NBG).

Back in the early 2010s, the institutional response to the Greek debt crisis was to provide loans on the condition of massive structural changes, such as the privatisation of public assets and the implementation of austerity measures. Consequently, the real estate subsidiary of the bailed-out National Bank of Greece, then known as Pangaea, was sold off to a consortium led by Invel—a company that had been in existence for less than a year.

And Invel got a bargain. It purchased a majority share for just €653m (£566m) – however €450m was paid for by a loan provided by the bank itself (at just 2.75% interest), meaning Invel only actually paid €203m (£174m) at the time. The deal initially gave Invel access to nearly €1bn in 252 properties; as the country emerged from the worst days of the crisis, the value has since multiplied to nearly €3bn (£2.6bn) euros in 380 properties. It acquired the remaining stake in the Pangaea in 2019, renaming the business Prodea.

The Steinmetz Connection

Crisis profiteering isn’t the only unsavoury aspect of Invel’s story. It would probably like to distance itself from its most inconvenient bedfellow, disgraced diamond merchant and Israel’s former richest citizen, Beny Steinmetz.

Beny Steinmetz launched Invel back in 2013 with $400m (£343m) start-up capital provided via his firm, BSG Real Estate, part of the convoluted Beny Steinmetz Group (BSG) business empire which spans minerals, fossil fuels, property and private equity. He hired Papachristophorou as Invel’s “man on the ground” in Greece and Cyprus, and was partner at the firm until his legal woes mounted five years later. Papachristophorou remains CEO of another company in that empire, BSG Resources.

In 2020, Steinmetz was convicted of “the creation of an organized criminal group” by a Romanian court, in a case concerning the bribery of public officials for access to real estate. He was sentenced to five years’ prison in absentia.

Beny Steinmetz

A year later, Steinmetz was convicted of bribery again – this time in a case involving tens of millions of dollars worth of payments to the wife of Guinea’s then dictator, Lansana Conté, in return for mining rights. The site concerned is one of the world’s largest known deposits of iron ore in Guinea’s Simandou mountain range, home to critically endangered Western chimpanzees. In 2008, Rio Tinto – which had been given exclusive rights to the mine (and still enjoys concessions in the project) – had its license revoked. Permits were instead granted to BSG Resources, a company with no history of iron ore mining.

Steinmetz and his associates spent years trying to shut down the story through aggressive PR and legal tactics, as well as (not having quite caught on the first time) further bribery attempts.

Then in May 2022, a World Bank arbitration panel ruled that the mining rights had indeed been obtained through bribery. Yet in spite of having been sentenced to a total of ten years in prison by courts in two jurisdictions, Steinmetz appears to be walking free while he appeals his second conviction.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described Steinmetz as “the last guy you would want as an enemy”, and it no doubt helps to have family with access to power; his nephew was a partner in Jared Kushner’s property business, Kushner Companies. Steinmetz enjoys such a privileged relationship with Greece that despite the mounting evidence of corruption, a court in Athens rejected a Romanian extradition request in April 2022. He said he was “grateful to Greek justice” for this intervention.

A second figure who has been embroiled in the scandal is Shimon Menahem, another of Steinmetz’s nephews (in this case, by marriage), who invested heavily in Invel. In 2014, a Greek financial regulator noted that Papachristophorou and Menahem jointly controlled numerous companies, including exercising indirect joint control of at least one of Invel’s entities.

This map provides only a snapshot of Steinmetz’ nebulous corporate network, and many of his firms – as well as Invel’s extraordinary list of companies – are based in the tax havens Jersey, Guernsey and Luxembourg. Capitalism thrives on ambiguous corporate structures, and Steinmetz’ ability to evade the criminal justice system so far is testament to that.

Castlelake steps in

Following Steinmetz’s fall from grace, global investment firm Castlelake L.P. came to the rescue, acquiring significant shares in several Invel firms. Castlelake is now therefore the ultimate owner of Prodea, while Invel’s role in the relationship is that of a shell company – basically, a vehicle to run Prodea.

Castlelake is a multinational private equity firm specialising in planes and property. Although based in the US, the firm manages $20bn (£17bn) in assets through various funds – most of which are invested in Europe, according to financial databases.

It is headed by the founders, Rory O’Neill and Evan Carruthers. Both of them previously worked at the agribusiness conglomerate – and world’s largest private company – Cargill.

Evan Carruthers, Castlelake Co-CEO

Rory O’Neill, Castlelake Co-CEO

Engineers: Aktor

Parent company: Ellaktor

The engineering work on the hill is being carried out by Aktor. According to members of the assembly, this is being done via TOMI AVETE, an Aktor subsidiary specialising in urban developments.

Aktor is owned by Ellaktor, a major Greek construction and engineering conglomerate which operates in over thirty countries, notably in Eastern Europe and the Gulf. It works in construction, quarrying and property development, as well as building and running wind farms and wastewater treatment plants. The Group as a whole has benefited significantly from prominent public-private development projects for decades. It was, until a few years ago, led by two warring families, the Kallitsantsis clan, and the powerful Bobolas dynasty – which also owned controlling stakes in leading Greek media outlets. It is now headed by banker and private equity trader, Efthymios Bouloutas, who was convicted of corruption charges in 2018 associated with (mis)management of the now-defunct Laiki Bank. He evaded prison, walking away with a small fine.

Ellaktor has been called Greece’s second-largest producer of wind energy, running a dozen or so such farms, and now branching out into offshore wind power. Wind energy has been particularly controversial in Greece over the past couple of years, with deregulation resulting in farms being plonked on mountain tops in ecologically-sensitive habitats, and communities mobilising against the developments. Aktor also had a 5% stake in the gold mine at Skouries, Northern Greece, until this was bought by Eldorado Gold in 2020. Locals and supporters have mounted a decades-long, historic campaign of resistance to the ecologically-disastrous plan, and the mine is still not yet in production.

Efthymios Bouloutas, Ellaktor CEO

Returning to the present day, Aktor is one of several companies implicated in February’s catastrophic train collision near Tempe, Greece’s deadliest rail disaster. In 2014, Aktor was awarded the contract to upgrade the signalling system on approximately 500km of the Athens-Thessaloniki line, in a joint venture with French rail giant Alstom. But a recent report by Reporters United and Investigate Europe found that the two companies repeatedly failed to carry out their duties, and instead spent years bickering and demanding a larger contract. This was eventually approved in 2021 for an extra €13m (£11m). However, despite having been given more money, the companies were apparently still unable to get along. This led to Aktor subcontracting everything to Alstom, which had begun the work by the time of the crash.

Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis has attributed the disaster, which killed at least 57 people, to “tragic human error”; industry experts have said that an adequate signalling system would have prevented the accident from happening.

Neither trains nor joint ventures seem to be the company’s forte. Aktor was part of another joint venture that was awarded a multi-billion euro contract to extend the Doha metro. The consortium become embroiled in a dispute with a subcontractor, which took it to court resulting in a $98.5m (£79m) fine. Aktor had to pay a substantial share of the damages.

Despite its record, Ellaktor has bid to lead the consortium that would run the new Thessaloniki metro, once completed. It has been involved in the construction of the network, although the work has been hampered by delays for years, and the company again ran into dispute with a contractor.

Protracted construction projects have resulted in a significant backlog and debt for Aktor, and it made losses of €155.5m (£133m) in 2020. Despite it being the Group’s largest company, it is now being sold off to major competitor Intrakat for €100m, in a deal expected to be completed before the end of the year.

Today, Dutch private equity firm Reggeborgh is Ellaktor’s largest shareholder, with a total stake of approximately 45%. Until recently, it also had a large shareholding in another major Greek construction firm, GEK Terna. Reggeborgh has been described as the investment vehicle of the Dutch Wessels family, which is behind the conglomerate VolkerWessels.

The next largest shareholder (with roughly 30%) is Motor Oil, a Greek petrochemicals firm chaired by billionaire shipping tycoon Vardis Vardinogiannis.

Police on Strefi Hill. Image: Open Assembly for the Defence of Strefi Hill

The managers: UNISON

Parent company: ISS

According to the Open Assembly for the Defence of Strefi Hill, the installation of the CCTV cameras, tree-cutting, fencing, concreting and cleaning has been contracted to a Greek firm called Unison.

Unison describes itself as Greece’s “market leader in the facility management industry”. Set up in the late seventies as ISS Group Hellas, it was rebranded in 2021.

Unison carries out much of the same work as its parent company, the global outsourcing giant ISS. It also has a human resources subsidiary specialising in temping work, and says that it is the first company in Greece to have received a temping license.

ISS

Danish outsourcer ISS has its roots in the security business in the early 20th century, before it branched out into cleaning, catering, site and equipment maintenance. It is now a facilities management multinational, smaller than the behemoths Sodexho and Compass Group, but larger than the British outsourcing firm Mitie. It is led by CEO Jacob Aarup-Andersen, an investment banker.

Unison represents particularly marginal revenues for ISS, at less than 1% – and isn’t even included in ISS’s list of significant subsidiaries. ISS’s most important market is the UK, where the majority (15%) of its global income is generated. It is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

ISS is a publicly-traded company. Kirkbi A/S, a private holding of the Danish Kirk Kristiansen family (owner of the world’s most profitable toy company, Lego), has a 17% shareholding in the business.

British-based private equity firm Longview Partners has a smaller (7%) shareholding. Ownership of Longview can be traced back to Ernesto Bertarelli, Swiss billionaire and until recently, Switzerland’s richest person. Bertarelli recently bought a £92m home in Belgravia, London using wealth which ultimately derives from his family’s former pharmaceutical business.

Conclusion

Tugging on the threads of Strefi Hill unravels a patchwork of companies and individuals united in self-interest and corporate greed, from faceless US investors and a corrupt Israeli diamond merchant, to an LSE-educated banker and a Swiss billionaire. The cases of Aktor and Steinmetz show how proximity to power means they can keep getting the contracts, no matter how corrupt or incompetent they may be.

These corporate interests can be traced far beyond Athens, with wealth being funnelled back to countries such as the UK, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark and the US. The attack on the hill is part of a global struggle against the suppression of dissent, alternative lifestyles and free public spaces. But with collective resistance and solidarity, victory against the devastating forces of gentrification is within reach.

Click to enlarge

Appendix: Addresses

See the links for more locations

• Prodea

  Athens: Chrisospiliotissis 9, 105 60.

• InvelAthens: (same as Prodea) Chrisospiliotissis 9, 105 60.London: 1st Floor, 26 Grosvenor Gardens, London, SW1W 0GT.(See the link for more)

• Castlelake

  London: 15 Sackville Street, W1S 3DJ.

• Unison

  Athens: Andrea Siggrou 194, Kallithea 176 71.

• ISS

  UK: 1 Brooklands Drive Brooklands, Weybridge, Surrey, KT13 0SL

• Ellaktor

  Athens: Ermou 25, Kifisia 145 64.

• Aktor: As Ellaktor

The post The corporate plunder of Strefi Hill appeared first on Corporate Watch.

In recent weeks the Scottish tenants’ union Living Rent have been organising marches and protests against the rent hike, spreading tenants’ overwhelming demand for a rent freeze. In support of their campaign, we took a look at the finances of GHA’s parent company, Wheatley Group, to ask – do they really need to put up rents? The simple answer is: no.

The group’s accounts show that:

• Rents already cover the costs of repairs and building improvements twice over. There’s no sign that extra money is needed to do work on existing tenants’ homes.
• The company made a handsome surplus (profit) of £14 million in the year ending 31 March 2020, the latest year accounts are available for.
• Wheatley Group’s main expenses, rather, include management and admin costs, and paying interest to lenders who are financing new homes being built. Is the rent rise really about subsidising growing the business?
• While tenants struggle with rising rents, CEO Martin Armstrong got paid £351,000 last year. How much of the rent rise will go to keep paying high salaries to executives?

GHA and Wheatley Group

But before we get to those figures – just who is Wheatley Group? Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) is the “social landlord” set up when Glasgow’s council housing was privatised in 2003. But it is now part of a bigger company called Wheatley Group, which has numerous smaller associations and subsidiary companies across Scotland. Wheatley Group owns or manages 94,000 homes altogether. GHA is the biggest subsidiary with around 40,300 homes of these. The next biggest part is Dumfries and Galloway Housing Partnership (DGHP) with 29,000 homes, which joined Wheatley in 2020.

GHA is by no means alone in this trend. Once upon a time, Housing Associations were non-profit organisations set up to provide affordable housing for local communities. But in the last 20 years they have transformed, becoming big businesses. Successful associations have grown by buying up others, merging to become massive groups which own properties often across the whole of the UK. They have also increasingly become property developers and private landlords, renting and selling homes at market-level prices. This growth is funded by borrowing large amounts from banks and investment funds.

Why do GHA say they need to put up rents?

Right at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, GHA imposed a rent increase of 3.4%.³ One year later, it is asking tenants to face a further 1.7% rise. How does GHA justify hitting people with this extra burden?

This isn’t so clear. GHA sent round consultation documents GHA saying that if rents go up they “could keep delivering services and all the investment work already planned”. But they don’t say rents need to go up to do this. They just don’t give tenants any option to keep rents the same. They don’t provide any figures to show how much money they make from rents, what it is spent on, or why it is not enough for next year. There is a vague “breakdown of how each pound was spent” – but without actually giving any amounts!

If we want to understand what’s going on, the information GHA gives to its tenants is pretty useless. However, the information Wheatley Group gives to investors in its Annual Report is much more detailed, so we can take a look there.

In the money

Wheatley Group’s latest Annual Report shows that it had a “turnover” of £357 million in 2020. This is all the money coming in from rent and other regular sources, before paying its costs.

As a “non-profit” company, Wheatley Group’s accounts don’t talk about profit. Instead, they use the term “surplus” to talk about the money they bring in minus the costs going out. Wheatley Group made a surplus of £14 million in 2020. So one thing is clear: Wheatley Group doesn’t need to raise rents because it’s losing money. It made a very healthy “profit” (surplus) in 2020.⁴

Sometimes companies can be profitable but still short of cash to pay their immediate expenses – e.g., because they are owed money which hasn’t come in yet. This is not so for Wheatley Group. They had no less than £116 million in cash sitting in the bank according to the latest accounts – more than enough to pay for repairs several times over.

Note: Wheatley also made a massive gain of over £200 million from the extrahousing stock, cash and other assets DGHP brought with it when it joined. This gave Wheatley Group a truly enormous surplus on paper of £245 million in 2020. We are not focusing on this figure as it isn’t available to spend. It’s “locked” into the value of the properties they took on, and it does not reflect the group’s performance – so isn’t a reason for higher or lower rent.

So where does the money go?

GHA’s consultation documents say rent increases will be spent on “delivering services” and “investment work”. But the reality is that about half of tenants’ rents aren’t spent on their homes at all. The rest goes on everything from subsidising new house building to paying managers’ salaries and bankers’ profits.

Wheatley Group’s Annual Report clarifies that the company spent a total of £129 million on repairs and investment in properties in 2020. £61 million of this was for repairs, with £66 million on “improvements” – e.g., new bathrooms and kitchens, or other spending to “improve” flats and communal areas.⁵

But as we just saw, the group had a turnover of £357 million. The bulk of that money came from social housing rents: £242 million, plus an extra £6 million in service charges.⁶

So: GHA and other Wheatley Group social tenants paid their landlord almost double what was spent on work on their homes. Or about four times what was spent on repairs. On any interpretation, it’s stretching the truth to say that rent rises are needed for “repairs and investment work”. And this is without the proposed rent rises.

CEO Martin Armstrong receiving an award from business lobby group the Institute of Directors (Scotland)

Who gains?

Many GHA tenants have been struggling to meet rent payments during the COVID-19 pandemic – and now they’re being asked to pay even more. Meanwhile, some other people have been doing very nicely out of the housing business.

The accounts show more money goes on paying interest to investors – £72 million⁷ – or on “management and maintenance administration” costs – £62 million⁸ – than on repairs.

Let’s take the management and admin costs first. These are barely broken down in the accounts and we do not know how many of these are ‘genuinely’ necessary for the management and upkeep of properties. But we can find details of one item included: the bosses’ pay.

Last year the six people deemed “key management” together made £1.4 million. Of these, CEO Martin Armstrong was the highest individual earner. He made £351,000 – a base salary of £296,000 plus another £55,000 in pension contributions. The other five managers got paid over £160,000 each. That’s a lot more than most GHA tenants are taking home.⁹

Meanwhile, the “non-executive” Chairman of the Board, Alastair MacNish, pocketed £32,370. MacNish is the retired boss of South Lanarkshire Council. He isn’t involved in the day-to-day running of Wheatley Group and this money will be just for chairing meetings and other ‘supervisory’ duties. The hourly rate must be huge.

Rent goes to some even bigger earners. As we saw, Wheatley paid £72 million in interest last year. This goes to the banks and investment funds who lend the group money to pay for its building of new homes (Wheatley also receives grants from the Scottish government for this: the company spent £86 million¹⁰on building new properties in 2020, while receiving £41 million in government grants).

In total, Wheatley owes over £1.5 billion in interest accruing debt. Main lenders include the world’s biggest fund manager, BlackRock, as well as the UK’s giant banks HSBC and RBS. Ultimately, the hugely wealthy bosses of these institutions benefit from the interest. Tenants could ask exactly what this money is being used for, and whether it is worth the interest costs.¹¹

Is that clear?

In its Annual Report, Wheatley Group tells its investors a lot more than it does tenants. One basic fact we do know: the landlord is making a healthy profit, it doesn’t need to raise rents because it’s in the red. Another: rents already pay for much more than the cost of repairs and building improvements – they are used to subsidise other expenditures such as executive salaries, finance costs, and expanding the business.

But there’s still a lot of detail we can’t find from the published information. These are just a few questions tenants might want to ask:

• How much of the rent rise is really about paying manager’s high salaries?
• Why are management and admin costs so high? Can Wheatley Group provide tenants with a proper breakdown of where all that money is going?
• Why is Wheatley Group paying so much interest to banks and investment funds? How much of this borrowing has been used to fund the group’s rapid growth, buying up and building more properties, rather than on essential work for existing tenants?
• Tenants may agree with building new houses – but how much of that should be paid for by raising rents to help cover borrowing costs? Shouldn’t they have a say in this?
• The group spends £10 million on “activities to support the community”¹² Tenants may agree with the landlord providing community services, e.g., emergency food packages during the COVID pandemic. But should it be tenants paying for all this from their rents? Or what about, for example, executives chipping in from their big salaries?

If managers disagree with any of the points we’ve made above, we’d say: the onus is on them to provide clear information about where the money goes. Why aren’t tenants being told just what they plan to spend these rent rises on?

Notes

1 GHA don’t say how many tenants they have – this figure is estimated by Living Rent, based on multiplying the number of properties by the average Scottish household size of 2.15 people.

The post Why is Glasgow Housing Association hiking rents again? appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Delancey is run by old-Etonian Jamie Ritblat, son of a powerful family of property tycoons who are also major funders of the Conservative Party and other right-wing causes. It has financial backing from billionaires including George Soros and the dictatorship of Qatar.

This is the story of UK property profiteering in a nutshell. The old British elites meet new global investors, united through a complex web of letterbox companies registered in offshore tax havens. While their deals are eagerly facilitated by politicians from all parties.

A few key points about the company:

• Olympic Village. Delancey is best known for its partnership with the Qatari royal family to buy East London’s former Olympic Village and turn it into private rental flats. The land was sold at a loss by the UK government. At the time of sale, Sir John Ritblat (Jamie’s father) was a member of the government’s Olympics “oversight” committee.
• Elephant One. In its earlier Elephant & Castle tower blocks development, Delancey managed to get out of all affordable housing commitments for a payment of just £1 million.
• Most Delancey schemes are partnerships with other investors, whose identities are often hidden behind offshore funds. But a few regular partners have come to light, including: billionaire speculator George Soros, the ruling family of the dictatorship of Qatar, Royal Bank of Scotland, and pension funds from Canada and the Netherlands.
• Delancey and Jamie Ritblat have funded the Conservative party to the tune of at least £345,000. The Ritblat family also support a range of right-wing “neo-conservative” think tanks.
• The Ritblats have a powerful network of connections in the UK’s political and cultural elites. They sponsor and sit on the boards of institutions including Kings College, the Tate Gallery, and the Royal Albert Hall.
• Recent Delancey’s schemes involve its joint venture company “Get Living”, a “build to rent” corporate landlord. Beyond London, Get Living is planning massive new rental apartment developments in Leeds, Glasgow and Manchester.

You can click the links below to jump to the following sections:

• Company structure: a network of offshore letterboxes
• Get Living: Delancey’s new “build to rent” corporate landlord
• Who profits?
• Who runs it? The Ritblat family and friends, and their cultural connections
• The Ritblats’ right-wing politicking
• A few notorious deals: Mapeley scandal, Olympic village, Elephant One
• Behind Delancey: meet the investors, from Soros and Qatar to Canadian pensioners

How Delancey works

Delancey was founded in the 1995 by Jamie Ritblat, an Eton-educated Conservative donor born to wealth and power. Jamie is the son of Sir John Ritblat, a well-known property tycoon worth an estimated £234m, who for decades ran Britain’s second biggest property company, British Land. Jamie learnt the ropes at his father’s company before striking out on his own with Delancey.

Delancey describes itself as a property investment “advisor”. That is, its developments don’t just use the company’s own capital, but bring in other investors from across the world.

In the last two decades, Delancey “has acquired, developed, managed and sold over £20bn of property” through its various funds and companies. It bulked up during the 2008 financial crisis – taking advantage of the dip in property prices to buy up ‘distressed’ assets from the Royal Bank of Scotland, and to take over another major London development company, Minerva.

The funds Delancey “advises” own buildings across London and the UK. Its investments reflect the big trends in UK property speculation: from corporate office developments in the 1990s and early 2000s, to today’s focus on “Build to Rent” housing. Delancey’s latest major venture is its Get Living rented apartment complexes (see below).

Delancey also has an educational sideline: a chain of elite private schools called Alpha Plus.

Alpha Plus promotional picture from Delancey’s website

Company structure: a network of offshore letterboxes ..

Delancey’s plush London headquarters are in Mayfair’s Berkeley Square. But the money is moved around a complex web of companies, many of them registered offshore in the British Virgin Islands tax haven.

In the early days, Delancey was a public company (PLC) listed on the stock exchange. But in 2001 Jamie Ritblat bought out the shares to turn it private – with the backing of his major investors George Soros, John Ritblat, and the Royal Bank of Scotland (which reportedly helped out with a £170 million loan).

As a private firm, the parent company for many years was Delancey Real Estate Partners (DREP), which is registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) tax haven. But in 2018, Delancey was restructured. DREP is now legally a subsidiary of another company called Cortx Holdings Limited (CHL), which until 8 May 2019 was called Cortx 1. Unlike DREP, Cortx is registered in the UK. Cortx has one controlling shareholder: Jamie Ritblat.

But Cortx’s latest accounts show assets of just £35 million, while the Delancey property empire is worth billions. How does this work?

Investment funds

First of all, Delancey sets up and manages investment funds into which different investors pool their money. These often have bland names – such as DV3, DV4, etc. As well as the initial investments, these funds can be ‘geared up’ by borrowing more money from banks and other lenders. Delancey then gets paid management fees for running these funds and “advising” them on property deals.

It’s not easy to find out who are the investors in Delancey’s funds. They are typically registered in offshore locations with minimal accounting transparency, allowing investors to remain anonymous.

Back in 2009 the Information Commissioner ruled on a “freedom of information” request from a campaigner asking for information on Delancey’s involvement in developments in Bury St Edmunds. After a battle, the local council finally released a letter from Ritblat naming some of the investors in the DV3 fund. As Private Eye has reported, these included Soros, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and various insurers and pension funds. Separately, it emerged that another investor was Conservative minister Andrew Mitchell.

It is not clear which funds remain active. The DV4 fund certainly is: it is described as an “open-ended” fund without a fixed lifespan, and continues to make new investments after more than a decade in operation. But there is no public information on who its current investors are.

Development companies

When Delancey has secured a site for development, it will often set up a specific company with its partners to manage this deal. These may be structured as “Limited Liability Partnerships” (LLPs) and, again, may involve offshore tax havens.

For example, for its Elephant and Castle shopping centre development Delancey has set up an offshore company called Elephant and Castle Properties Co Limited, based in the British Virgin Islands. This in turn is owned by Elephant and Castle LLP, a limited liability partnership registered in the UK. And this has a number of partners:

• DOOR S.L.P – a Jersey registered collaboration between Delancey’s DV4 fund and Oxford Properties, part of Canadian pension fund OMERS.
• Stichting Depository APG Strategic Real Estate Pool – a vehicle of the Dutch pension fund APG, registered in the Netherlands.
• Qatari Diar Real Estate Holding Company – a fund owned by the government of Qatar.
• QD UK Holdings Limited Partnership – a Scottish Limited Partnership vehicle also owned by Qatar Diar Real Estate Investment Company Q.S.C
• Kintyre Corp – a property investment vehicle registered in Panama, named in the leaked Panama Papers. (NB: it is not clear whether this vehicle is connected to the German developer Kintyre, which opened a London office in 2016.)

We look in more detail at some of these partners below.

Get Living site at former Olympic village, from Delancey’s website

Get Living

Delancey’s newest business focus is the booming “build to rent” property sector. Build-to-rent schemes are typically big developments with hundreds of flats in shiny tower blocks – but rather than selling them on to private buyers, the developer rents them out, becoming a corporate landlord. (See our recent profile of Grainger PLC for much more on this trend.)

Delancey first set up Get Living to rent flats in its East Village development on the former Stratford Olympics site (see below). It was then expanded to incorporate rental units at Elephant One (see below), and is now lined up for the Elephant and Castle shopping centre scheme too.

But these London developments are just the start of Get Living’s ambitions. The company says it has a current “development pipeline” of around 4,400 homes, and aims to build a portfolio of 12,500 properties. Outside London, it has acquired 800 homes in Middlewood Locks in Manchester, and lined up big sites at Globe Road in Leeds and in the centre of Glasgow.

The latter is a £200 million development with 727 flats for rent that will be “Scotland’s largest build to rent scheme to date” which will “completely overhaul a key area of Glasgow”. Work on the first phase of the development is expected to start in 2019, subject to building warrant.

The rent charged by Get Living does not come cheap. In Delancey’s Elephant One development, student rooms In Porchester House start at £279 per week for a ‘Classic’ room, or £349 for a ‘Supreme’. Private rented units are being advertised starting at £1,841 per month for a 1-bed flat.

Like other Delancey schemes, Get Living is a joint venture involving a number of regular investors. Again, the initial partners were Qatari Diar, and the Dutch pension fund APG. In 2018, Delancey also brought in another big investor – Oxford Properties, the property investment business of Canada’s Ontario pension fund (OMERS). They set up a new joint venture company called Delancey Oxford Residential (DOOR), owned jointly by Delancey’s DV4 fund and Oxford Properties, with stated plans to invest £600 million in UK residential property.

After Oxford Properties got involved, Delancey registered a new company called Get Living Limited. Its partners were:

• DOOR (Delancey DV4 and Oxford Properties): 39%
• APG: 39%
• Qatari Diar: 22%

And in another classic tax avoidance move, Get Living is now converting to become a “Real Estate Investment Trust” or REIT. This is a fully legal tax-dodging structure introduced into the UK in 2007, after concerted lobbying by the property industry. Unlike other companies, REITs are exempt from paying corporation tax.

The requirements for a company to register as a REIT are that they focus on property investment, distribute 90% of their profits to investors every year, and are listed on a recognised stock exchange. To meet this last requirement, in November 2018 Get Living re-registered as Get Living PLC, and was listed to sell shares on the Guernsey Stock Exchange.

Graffiti against Delancey development at Elephant & Castle

Who profits?

Because of the complex and secretive corporate structure outlined above, it is hard to trace how much profit Delancey’s developments make – or whose hands those profits end up in.

Cortx, Delancey’s new legal parent company, reported a turnover of £18.6m in 2018 – “advisory fees” from its funds and investment vehicles. However, the company’s accounts claim it made a loss of £4.6m, after paying out £22 million in “administrative expenses”.

These administrative expenses include: £1.2 million in interest and finance costs; £14.5 million in salaries to 55 staff; and £4.6 million in payments to its directors. Cortx has just two directors: Jamie Ritblat and Paul Goswell. So although we don’t know who was paid what, we know that between them they pocketed £4.6 million in 2018.ⁱ

As the company registered a loss in 2018, it didn’t pay out any dividend to its owner – also Jamie Ritblat. But with his share of the £4.6 million directors’ pay, that shouldn’t have bothered him much.

However, we shouldn’t get too fixated on Cortx’s figures. They don’t begin to capture the vast amounts of capital flowing in and out of Delancey’s multi-billion pound property deals, through a misty archipelago of funds and offshore vehicles.

For example, a business media article in August 2018 reported that Delancey’s DV4 fund had sold £1.2 billion worth of property in the previous 12 months. There is no way of knowing how much profit Delancey’s investors made on those sales.

Who runs it? The Ritblats, their entourage, and their cultural power

All Delancey’s network of companies trace back to one man: Jamie Ritblat. And Jamie got where he is today thanks to the support of his property tycoon father Sir John Ritblat, who continues to pull strings for his son’s business.

But the Ritblats, and the other directors around them, aren’t just businessmen. They are also heavyweight players in Britain’s elite cultural scene, sponsoring and sitting as directors on numerous national institutions. Of course this helps them keep up an impressive network of powerful connections which are great for business too.

The boss: Jamie Ritblat

Jamie Ritblat is Delancey’s founder and CEO. He has a London address at 24 St Petersburgh Place in Bayswater. He also built and owns a fake 18th Century stately home in Winchcombe in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds.

When he’s not busy donating to the Tories, stashing millions out of sight of the taxman, or getting plebs to serve him in his mansion, Jamie lends his name and elitist credentials to prestigious London art institutions and universities. In the past, he’s been a member of Kings College London’s College Council and member of the Southbank Centre’s Board of Governors. He also helps out other property financiers: he is non-executive chairperson of private equity real estate firm Mitheridge Capital Management.

But, according to his bio on the Mitheridge website, he has now stepped down from his voluntary roles except for one: he remains an “active Trustee” of the Bathurst Estate – an 8,000-acre estate in Gloucestershire where he helps out the Earl Bathurst and the rest of his ‘barmy’, hunting enthusiast family.

Sir John Ritblat (wikimedia commons)

Big Daddy: Sir John Ritblat

Ritblat senior has provided backing, advice and crucial connections through the years. After stepping down from British Land in 2007, he became chair of Delancey’s advisory board.

Now formally retired, Sir John and his wife Lady Jill have been directors or trustees of many top arts, education and sporting institutions. Their current and former positions include the boards of the Wallace Collection, Royal Academy of Music, the Design Museum, the Royal College of Art and the London Business School.

They are also big patrons of the arts themselves. John Ritblat has a room named after him at the British Library, “The Sir John Ritblat Gallery, Treasures of The British Library”. Jill has donated her personal dress collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and they once bought a Damien Hirst as a birthday present for Jamie.

Despite now being an octogenarian, Sir John is still involved with the following organisations:

• Although now retired as a governor, he remains a Special Advisor to Dulwich College, his old school.
• Chairman, Falcon Prep School for Boys and Falcon Girls School.
• Hon Fellow and Hon Trustee of the Royal Academy of Music.
• Vice President of International Students’ House – where Nigel Carrington, the Vice Chancellor of University of the Arts also sits on the board.
• Honorary Fellow and Patron of the Council of The Royal Institution.
• President of British Ski & Snowboard.
• Ritblat and Delancey sponsor the British Alpine National Ski Championships
• Vice President of the Tennis & Rackets Association.

Colin Barry Wagman: Delancey director and close Ritblat family associate

A specialist in business strategy and tax planning, Colin is likely responsible for many of Delancey’s best offshore avoidance schemes. He is a director of Delancey (DREP) and of its subsidiaries Alpha Plus and Minerva. Until March 2018 he was Delancey’s vice chair and chief finance officer. He is also chairman of the City of London Group, which includes a number of brands providing finance to property owners and SMEs. He is a trustee of the Sir John Ritblat Family Foundation, which funds neo-conservative and Zionist organisations (see below).

Outside of finance and politics, Colin is a Trustee of the Bryanston Square Garden Trust, where he lives at number 7; and also, alongside Sir John Ritblat, of the Gold Standard Charitable Trust which pays for the education of underprivileged kids.

Stafford Lancaster: investment director

Stafford often appears as a spokesperson for Delancey in the media, including on the Elephant and Castle project. He is invariably described as “investment director at Delancey”, where he has worked since 2000. According to one online bio, he has “particular responsibility for Delancey’s residential investment and educational portfolios”, and “his role is to oversee and implement the company’s existing, ongoing and future investment and development strategies, including the Elephant & Castle Town Centre redevelopment.”

He chairs the Reading Real Estate Foundation, a charity set up ‘to provide support for real estate and planning education’ at the University of Reading’ where he studied land management.

Paul Jonathon Goswell: Delancey managing director

The only other director listed alongside Jamie Ritblat of Delancey’s new parent company Cortx. He has a number of positions in London institutions. He is an independent member of the King’s College Council, and sits on the Development Board of the Royal Albert Hall.

Stuart Corbyn: chairman of Get Living

Until 2008 Corbyn was chief executive of the Cadogan estate, the property holdings of the Earl of Cadogan, one of London’s biggest landowners who basically owns Chelsea. Corbyn has also been president of the British Property Federation. He played a leading role in Delancey’s Olympic deal with the Qataris, chairing the initial joint venture company they set up.

With his aristocratic Chelsea connections alongside his Ritblat links, Corbyn is another paid up member of the London elite who has held directorships of institutions such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Hospital Chelsea, Royal Parks Foundation, Chelsea Festival, and Somerset House Trust. He is a member of the council of the Royal Albert Hall, “sitting on the Fabric and Seat Rate Committees”.

Cartoon thanks to Southwark Notes

The Ritblats’ right wing politicking

The Ritblat family don’t just have the power to shape our built environment and our cultural life, they also dabble in political influencing. Delancey is a major funder of the Conservative party. Sir John Ritblat uses his “family foundation” and other charitable trusts to back think-tanks spreading neo-conservative, war-mongering ideas, and an arch capitalist pro-Brexit lobby group.

• Conservative Party. Delancey as a company makes regular donations to the Conservative party. Since 2011, the company has donated £335,000 – according to declarations in annual accounts.ⁱⁱ Jamie Ritblat also made a personal donation of £10,000 in 2015. Sir John Ritblat has not reported any cash donations to the party, but he was widely reported sitting with former prime minister David Cameron at a Tory party fundraiser.
• Henry Jackson Society. This right-wing think tank is described in a study by Spinwatch as a leading exponent of neoconservatism in the UK today: “grounded in a transatlantic tradition deeply influenced by Islamophobia and an open embrace of the ‘War on Terror’.” It is one of the main regular beneficiaries of the Sir John Ritblat Family Foundation. One recent Henry Jackson Society project is an organisation called Student Rights, which presents itself as “against extremism” and promoting “free speech” on campuses – but is accused by the National Union of Students of “fuelling Islamophobia”. Its director Raheem Kassam went on to become editor of “alt right” news portal Breitbart London.
• Weizmann UK. Sir John Ritblat is vice president of this UK foundation and supports it through his charitable trusts. Set up to support the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, in recent years Weizmann UK has taken a political stance in trying to fight boycotts against Israeli academic and cultural institutions.

• Open Europe. Right wing think tank, linked to neoconservative movements, that pushes for “economic liberalisation” in Europe. Described by the Economist as “the Eurosceptic group that controls British coverage of the EU”. Sir John has donated through his Family Foundation, and is listed as a “supporter” on Open Europe’s website.

A few infamous Delancey deals

The Mapeley scandal

Along with long-time backer Soros, Delancey was involved in one of the most notorious UK property scandals of the early 2000s: when no less an institution than the Inland Revenue sold its own offices to an offshore consortium based in the tax haven of Bermuda.

The deal, one of the most brazen examples of the last Labour government’s PFI mania, is called STEPS: “Strategic Transfer of the Estate to the Private Sector”. In 2001, three government departments – the Inland Revenue, HM Revenue and Customs, and the Valuation Office Agency – signed a contract selling their office buildings and other property to a private company for £220 million. The company then leased the buildings back to the government for 20 years, for a fee averaging £170 million per year. Altogether, the freeholds and leaseholds on 698 buildings were handed over.

The company was called Mapeley STEPS. It was a joint venture specially set up for the deal, and registered in Bermuda. It was owned by three partners: Soros Real Estate Partners (42.5%), Fortress Investment Group (42.5%), with Delancey as the junior partner holding 15%.

The government claimed it would save millions in property maintenance over the deal’s lifetime. But the deal became a national scandal when, in 2002, the Inland Revenue was forced to come clean about the buildings being sold to a company registered in a tax haven. It was reported that the Soros-Fortress-Delancey partnership could save some £170 million in tax through this offshore structure.

Olympic Village

London’s 2012 Olympic Games involved building an “Olympic Village” with athletes’ accommodation in Stratford, East London. While parts of the site were empty, others involved demolishing 450 homes on the Clays Lane Estate. The site was owned a quango called the Olympic Development Authority (ODA), which reportedly spent £1.2 billion on building the Olympic Village.

The ODA lined up developers to take over after the games. Part of the site, with 1,379 properties, was sold for “affordable housing” to a consortium called Triathlon Homes. The other 1,439 homes, known as “East Village”, were sold in 2011 to the partnership of Delancey and Qatari Diar. The Delancey-Qatar partnership also got six neighbouring development plots with planning permission for 2,000 more apartments.

All this cost them £557 million. With Triathlon paying £268 million for their bit, overall the UK government lost £275 million on the deal.

After widespread fears about the games’ costs going over budget, the government had set up an Olympics Oversight Committee of “business experts”. The committee’s remit specifically included the costs and finances of the Olympics development site. Its chairman was none other than Sir John Ritblat.

The Daily Mail has claimed Delancey and the Qataris could make as much as £1 billion on the Olympics deal. The bulk of the East Village apartments are now rented out by Delancey’s joint venture “build to rent” company Get Living. The village itself is an example of a pseudo public space that is basically fully privatised, patrolled by a private security army who move on anyone trying to sleep on the streets, or even set up a camera on a tripod without permission.

Elephant One development, from 35% campaign

Elephant One – how Delancey avoided any affordable housing

Delancey’s first development in the Elephant and Castle area was a “mixed use” scheme called Elephant One, next door to the Elephant and Castle shopping centre it is now planning to demolish. Completed in 2017, Elephant One features shops and tower blocks with 272 student rooms and 374 private residences managed by Get Living.

Research by the 35% campaign has revealed Delancey’s “dirty tricks” in the development – including how it managed to get out of commitments to build any affordable housing.

Summed up, Elephant One was a classic story of “development creep”: over the several years between first getting planning approval and the actual build, ever more profitable units were added into the scheme, while the promised “affordable” units or community facilities disappeared.

The once public land was originally sold by Southwark Council to Sir John Ritblat’s British Land. Then, in 2006, it was sold again to an Isle of Man registered company called Eadon Estates for £8.5 million. Eadon Estates was a joint venture owned by Delancey’s DV4 fund and another developer called Oakmayne. The development was originally called Oakmayne Plaza, then renamed Tribeca Square, before finally becoming Elephant One.

Then between 2006 and 2011 Delancey resold the land to itself twice via offshore companies, each time inflating the price considerably. The land’s value went from £8.5m in 2006, to £18m in 2007, then £40m in 2011.

And over this period Delancey submitted several new planning applications, using revised figures to change its “viability assessments”. These are the crucial documents in which developers argue they cannot provide the expected amount of affordable housing and other commitments because otherwise they wouldn’t make a profit.

According to the 35% campaign:

Southwark later accidentally published the confidential viability assessment submitted to justify these concessions. It showed that £18m had been used as the land purchase cost – not the £8m originally paid. It also claimed that the completed residential flats would sell for an average of just £525 per square foot. Flats on Lendlease’s neighbouring Elephant Park are selling for an average of over £1,000 per square foot.

As a result, Delancey got away with dropping any plans for “affordable housing” at all:

Instead of affordable housing an in-lieu payment was agreed, amounting to just £1m and justified by the ‘exceptional cost’ to the developer of providing the market square and the basement access area – estimated to cost £12.5m. […] Delancey should normally have paid £52.7m under Southwark’s tariff for commuted affordable housing payments.

Then, in 2013, Delancey got even more concessions from the council. These included being allowed to raise the height of its buildings to include more market rent student flats, while promised “affordable retail units” were instead sold for a Sainsburys supermarket.

If anyone is wondering how Delancey manages to get away with all this, the answer is that Delancey is very well advised. Delancey has employed former deputy Council leader Kim Humphries as its adviser and representative. Indeed, Kim was deputy leader when the planning applications were approved […] He has been for hire as a freelance development consultant since he stepped down as deputy Council leader and Cabinet member for Housing.

Behind Delancey: meet the investors

Pic: George Soros (photo by Harald Dettenborn)

George Soros

One of Delancey’s major backers has long been hedge fund billionaire George Soros – the man famous for crashing Sterling in 1992’s “Black Monday” currency crisis, and more recently as bogeyman for conservative regimes due to his Open Society Foundation’s sponsorship of liberal causes. Soros’ “progressive” values have not stopped him being a key ally of the Ritblats, who themselves fund right-wing causes.

The relationship goes back at least to 1993. Soros decided to diversify some of his multi-billion winnings into the London property market. He partnered with Sir John Ritblat, investing £250 million in a joint fund with British Land targeting high profile commercial developments in the City.

When Ritblat junior went his own way with Delancey, Soros became his biggest investor – as well as acting as a “mentor”. In 1998, Soros “helped pump £127 million” into Delancey from his Quantum hedge fund – also based in the British Virgin Islands tax haven. By 2000, Soros reportedly owned 40% of the company, and was instrumental in backing Ritblat’s move to take it private in 2001. In 2005, Soros reportedly invested at least another £300 million in London premium office developments through Delancey funds.

Since Delancey went private, Soros’ investments with Delancey have been made through offshore funds which publish no information about their investors. One scrap of information came out in 2009, after a ruling by the Information Commissioner named Soros as one of the investors in the Delancey DV3 fund, which controlled a property portfolio worth an estimated £3 billion in 2008.

It is not possible to make any estimate of Soros’ present investments with Delancey. But Delancey’s current corporate brochure include Soros Real Estate Partners in its list of “partners and joint ventures”.

Qatari Royal Family

The small gulf state of Qatar is behind some of the UK’s biggest recent property developments. According to the BBC, “it is now said that Qatar owns more land in London than the Queen”. Those London holdings include the Shard, Canary Wharf, Harrods, the former US embassy in Grosvenor Square … and much more.

Qatar is an absolute monarchy, ruled since 1868 by the Al Thani family. It is only half the size of Wales, but sits on the world’s third largest reserves of natural gas.

In recent decades the Thanis have funnelled much of this wealth through their sovereign wealth fund, Qatari Investment Authority (QIA). This owns assets across the world, with a total value around $335 billion. The UK is currently the single largest target for their investments, with £35 billion invested.

The QIA has numerous subsidiary funds specialising in different asset classes. One of these is its real estate investment company Qatari Diar, which claims to own global property worth $35 billion. Qatari Diar is the main Qatari vehicle used for holding property in the UK, although other Qatari state companies also have separate holdings, as do individual members of the Thani family.

Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, emir of Qatar

APG: enormous Dutch pension fund with a mixed “ethical” record

APG is one of the world’s biggest pension fund managers. Its total funds as of February 2019 were valued at €487 billion.

It is a subsidiary of the public sector pension fund ABP, which pools the pension contributions of government and education sector workers in the Netherlands. But it also now manages other pension assets as well. According to its website, it “works for over 21,000 employers, providing the pension for one in five families in the Netherlands (over 4.5 million participants).”

With its public sector focus, and a human and labour rights policy, campaigns have sometimes had successes in pushing APG to pull out from “unethical” investments. Its board includes a representative from the FNV trade union. In the past it has divested from Walmart, nuclear weapons and palm oil producing companies involved in deforestation. In January 2019, APG lost an appeal by trade unions against changes to military pensions. But these moves have not always succeeded: in 2014 APG was criticised for indirectly funding Israel settlements and again in 2018 ABP was criticised by environmental organisations for its investments in tar sands oil companies and pipelines.

Oxford Properties: Canadian pension fund with trade union representation

Oxford Properties is a global real estate company, which buys property across North America and Europe. It is based in Canada and wholly owned by a Canadian pension fund: the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS).

In 2018, Oxford Properties entered a new partnership with Delancey, setting up a joint venture company called DOOR, which has plans to invest at least £600 million in UK residential property. DOOR in turn is one of the main shareholders in the “Get Living” build-to-rent company (see details above).

OMERS is one of Canada’s biggest pension funds, with 496,000 members and assets of $97 billion in 2018. Like APG, its roots are in the public sector, it claims a commitment to “sustainable investing”, and has trade union representation on its board. The main union involved is the Ontario Public Sector Employees Union (OPSEU) which represents approximately 155,000 public sector across Ontario. They have shown willingness in the past to take on the OMERS pension fund over proposed changes and may not be aware of the damage their money is doing to communities in the UK.

Web page advertise Elephant & Castle properties for sale to Qatari investors

Notes

iThe accounts also state that the unnamed “highest paid director” received £1.95 million. This is a little mysterious, as there were only two directors and they received £4.6 million altogether.

The post Delancey: tax-haven Tories devouring neighbourhoods appeared first on Corporate Watch.

The developers’ next target is the shopping centre in the middle of the area. The complex’s architectural beauty is debated – 1960s design icon to some, concrete carbuncle to others. But it’s undeniably a living heart of a diverse working class neighbourhood, with its many Latin American shops and cafes, street stalls, a popular bingo hall, and the nearby Coronet venue.

All this is set to be demolished and “redeveloped” by property investor Delancey (see our profile of the company here). Delancey is also responsible for the Elephant One tower next door: a luxury housing development with zero “affordable homes”, involving massive profiteering through offshore tax havens. In the new shopping centre scheme, too, Delancey has used every possible trick to minimise its commitments to local people.

In July 2018, Southwark Council finally gave planning permission for Delancey’s new scheme – after sustained local resistance had helped defer it several times. This will see the shopping centre replaced with 979 apartments – only 116 of them for “social rent”. There will also be offices, a new campus for the University of the Arts (UAL) London College of Communication, and retail space – but little of it for the existing shopping centre traders. Of the businesses located in and around the site, 36 have been given a ‘relocation offer’. But more than twice as many have been left facing enforced downsizing or eviction and displacement.

The developers want bulldozers in by the end of this year. But traders and campaigners haven’t given up their fight. They are now challenging the planning decision in a judicial review. They aim to ensure the centre stays serving the locals that need and use it on a daily basis.

The judicial review hearing is now set to take place this week: on 17 and 18 July, at the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand.

NB: see also this detailed report by the 35% campaign for more information on the shopping centre plan.

Who’s involved?

Who’s making the key decisions about the Elephant and Castle shopping centre development? And who’s profiting from it? Here’s a list of some of the main players:

• • The developer: Delancey. Will oversee the development, and rent out the new private homes through its “Get Living” joint venture company.

Behind Delancey are a number of big money backers. These include the following investors who own the site in a partnership with Delancey:

• • The ruling family of Qatar;
  • Dutch pension fund manager APG;
  • Oxford Properties, real estate company of the Canadian pension fund OMERS.
  • Kintyre Corp – a property investment vehicle registered in Panama and named in the Panama Papers.

We zoom in on Delancey and its partner investors in our company profile report.

But as well as these direct profiteers, the scheme would not be possible without the cooperation of other key partners including government bodies.

• Local government: Southwark Council, under its Labour party leader Peter John. Has supported Delancey’s plans and granted permission for the scheme.
• Local government: the Mayor and Greater London Assembly. The Mayor of London has a “strategic planning” role across London and is able to block planning permission for controversial schemes. In December 2018, he supported Southwark council and refused to intervene.
• Key business partner: The University of the Arts – London College of Communication. Will have a new campus on the developed site. Local campaigners say is effectively “artwashing” the development, and helps by lobbying hard for the scheme to go through.
• Other partners include Tree Shepherd – a consultant employed as an “independent business and relocation advisor”, helps encourage market traders to move out without a fuss. (See report by Southwark Notes.)

Potted history

The redevelopment of the shopping centre has been in the pipeline since 2002. Former owners St. Modwen Properties wanted to build housing on top of the site and to refurbish rather than replace the shopping centre. However, the financial crisis and disagreements with Southwark Council meant that the funding was never achieved nor permission granted for the plans. St. Modwen sold the site to Delancey in 2013 for £80m.

See here for a detailed timeline of all Elephant and Castle gentrification projects.

Key Issue: social cleansing of Southwark

The Shopping Centre lies at the heart of the controversial ‘regeneration’ of the entire area. According to the official Elephant and Castle partnership” there are 21 “core” projects “either underway or in the pipeline”. The biggest developments include, besides the shopping centre:

• Elephant One. A tower block complex next to the shopping centre, already built by Delancey. Infamously contains zero “social” housing, breaking Southwark Council pledges.
• Elephant Park (former Heygate Estate). In 2013, the 1194 council homes on the Heygate Estate were demolished after years of resistance and delays. These are now being replaced by shiny tower blocks that contain less than 100 ‘socially-rented’ homes out of more than 2500 new flats. The developer is Australia-based corporation Lendlease – see here for our detailed profile of the company.
• Aylesbury Estate. Once London’s biggest housing estate, which originally contained 2700 council homes. Southwark council has been scheming to get rid of its residents for more than 20 years. The latest plan involves demolishing what’s left of the estate for a new development led by Notting Hill Housing, with much reduced social housing. But some tenants and leaseholders are still holding out …

Taking these together, the Elephant and Castle is one of the UK’s biggest “regeneration”, or social transformation, schemes. The built environment and day-to-day experiences are being reshaped by the flows of global capital, prioritising investors’ profits over the needs of the people who actually live and work in those places. Face-to-face trade and community space are replaced by luxury living, retail chains and privatised plazas.

In a March 2012 Equalities Assessment Paper, Southwark Council itself recognised that:

The regeneration of Elephant and Castle may result in a rise in house prices and housing may become unaffordable to those currently living in the area, especially for, lone parents, disabled people, the BME community and elderly people. This may also result in a dilution of the community as people are forced to move out of the area as they no longer can afford to live there.

Of course, this is yet another example of ‘social cleansing’ in London: poorer and/or ethnically diverse communities priced out of the area, as a new more affluent class of resident and consumer moves in. In the “Heygate diaspora”, as the 35% campaign has shown, tenants were scattered far from the demolished estate, with only one in five rehoused in the SE17 area. Since 1997, more than 135,000 poorer London residents have been forcibly displaced by similar schemes.

Profits and tax avoidance

But some other people are doing very well out of this “social cleansing”. Typically, Build to Rent schemes like the one Delancey is proposing may make a 7.5% annual return on investment. This may be lower than the profit on a more traditional “Build to Sell” development. However, it’s a long-term investment, with much less risk to the developers and profits flowing reliably over a number of years.

Where will those profits end up? In the case of the Elephant shopping centre, all profits generated from the ‘Build to Rent’ properties to be managed by ‘Get Living’, a Delancey joint venture, will fly off to Qatar, Holland, Canada, and the pockets of the super-rich. A complex web of tax haven companies will be used to make sure the minimum of that goes to the UK public. Get Living is already bringing in £35 million in rental income a year from its London flats. (See our Delancey company profile for more details.)

Delancey’s vision for the shopping centre development

What about social housing?

One of the main arguments politicians and developers use to push through schemes is the need for more housing. But whose housing? The Elephant developments so far have been overwhelmingly for private sale or rent, often marketed at rich overseas buyers.

Officially, Southwark Council has a policy of 35% “affordable housing” in new developments, with half of that dedicated to ‘social rent’ – the supposed equivalent of council housing. But it has routinely allowed developers to flaunt this. In reality in the 5 years to 2017, only 28% of new units were ‘affordable’ across the Borough, and under half of these were social rent. Delancey’s Elephant One scheme got away with zero social housing.

The developer’s original plans for the shopping centre development were also pitiful – with 33 homes for “social rent”, out of 979 flats. Local campaigning has managed to push them back on this to some degree. The latest plans include 116 homes for Social Rent, including 28 three-bedroom homes. There will be another 214 on intermediate or so-called “affordable” rents – i.e., slightly below open market levels, but still far from affordable for the majority of local people.

This concession has been hard won by campaigners. But it is still below Southwark’s official targets – and a drop in the ocean considering the thousands of council homes lost on the Heygate and Aylesbury Estates.

Also, campaigners remain unconvinced about when and if the ‘socially-rented’ homes will actually be built. The details of the planning agreement say they will only be built if the second phase ‘West Side’ of the development goes ahead, which may not happen for another ten years.

What about local businesses?

There are over 100 active businesses on the site. The development promises 500,000 square feet of retail space – an increase on the 327,000 sq ft in the current shopping centre. And yet most of the existing traders are being evicted with no guarantee of new space.

After fierce campaigning by local traders and supporters, the council’s January 2019 planning agreement made Delancey include a “relocation strategy” to “mitigate the impact” of the development. The developer is supposed to put aside a fund of £634,700 for business relocation.

However, at the time of writing, only 36 businesses have been made “relocation” offers. Many others will be left with nothing.

And many have already been pushed out. The shopping centre is becoming a ghost town, with Delancey and their partners – managing agent Savills, and consultant “relocation partner” Tree Shepherd – already busy emptying the building.

For example, tenants of Hannibal House, the offices above the centre, were evicted in Summer 2018. Many of these were charities and other non-profits that serviced the local community, such as grassroots trade union United Voices of the World.

By the end of March 2019, London Palace Bingo had closed its doors for the last time. A popular community space, the bingo was enjoyed by 7500 people a week. Nearly half of its customers were over 65 years old and nearly two-thirds were of black African or Caribbean descent. This comes on top of the closure of the Charlie Chaplin Pub and the Victorian nightclub/ theatre venue the Coronet. Other businesses are either upping sticks or haemorrhaging money because of the uncertainty over their future.

Other businesses. such as established Latin venues La Bodeguita and Distriandina, have been offered relocation — but on worse terms. These will lead to a significant decrease in the size of their businesses, as well as their potential closure as nightclubs and music venues, something which would be hugely damaging for London’s Latin American community.

Some traders have now accepted the relocation package on offer from Delancey and their ‘partners’. This includes discounted rents on premises located around the main the site at Castle Square, Perronet House and One Elephant. However, the move comes at a cost even to them. Most are being forced to downsize, with a net loss overall of 4,000 square metres of trading space.

The Campaign

While Southwark Council are hand-in-glove with Delancey, local people have been organising and fighting back on the ground. The Elephant and Castle shopping centre is a prime example of how a strong, organised local community can push back against top-down profit-seeking redevelopment plans, even if it has not yet succeeded in getting the scheme scrapped in favour of a more locally-aware and human-centric scheme.

The ‘Up the Elephant’ campaign emerged to challenge plans for the Shopping Centre on the:

• small number of homes available for ‘social rent’ (the private equivalent of council housing),
• failure to mitigate the impact on the ethnically diverse community that use the shopping centre, for example, it is a focal point for London’s Latin American population
• inadequate provision in the plans for the many small businesses currently located on site.

It is formed of a loose coalition of organisations including:

• Southwark Notes
• Elephant Amenity Network / The 35% Campaign
• The Latin Elephant
• Southwark Law Centre
• Southwark Defend Council Housing
• Elephant and Castle Traders Association
• Stop the Elephant Development – UAL student campaign.

All is not yet lost: judicial review and the ongoing campaign

The campaign is currently focusing around a judicial review to try and get the planning approval overturned.

As the campaigners sum up:

The case for quashing the planning approval is that Southwark Council’s planning committee was misled about the maximum amount of affordable housing that the scheme could viably provide. Delancey said it could only afford to provide 116 social rented units, but we now know that with the Mayor’s funding they could give us another 42.

The legal challenge was launched in March 2019. It is supported by the Public Interest Law Centre and Southwark Law Centre.

A judicial hearing is now set to take place on 17 and 18 July, at the High Court in the Strand.

The post Elephant & Castle shopping centre: the battle at London’s gentrification “ground zero” appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Town centre and street markets are at the frontline of gentrification battles between neighbourhoods and big developers. In Seven Sisters, North London, traders and campaigners are fighting to save the “Latin Village” market, a centre of life for the local Latin American community in particular.

The traders are trying to stop huge corporate landlord Grainger’s ‘redevelopment’ of the area. Grainger is backed by the new ‘Corbynista’ Labour council led by Joe Ejiofor, which seems intent on forcing the development through.

There is a third key player in the scheme: a group of companies owned by two Essex-based businessmen called Raymond Linch and Jonathan Owen. They are on a mission to buy up and “redevelop” markets across the UK.

One of their businesses, named Quarterbridge, was hired as a consultant to help draw up the Seven Sisters market redevelopment plan. Another company they own, called Market Asset Management (MAM) Seven Sisters, now runs the market – and is set to win the lease on the redeveloped site too.

In this report we outline Quarterbridge-MAM’s activities in Seven Sisters, and look deeper at how the business works. We find:

• Owen and Linch have been making handsome profits from Seven Sisters market. They have transferred an average of £100,000 a year of traders’ rental income between their companies.

• After numerous complaints from traders, Jonathan Owen has been forced to apologise for behaviour that included threatening language and racial slurs. Despite this, so far Quarterbridge-MAM has kept its lease to run Seven Sisters market and is slated to run the new market in Grainger’s development.

• Quarterbridge-MAM have used the same basic model in other UK cities: one part of the business advises councils on “redevelopment” plans; then another angles for lucrative contracts running the revamped markets.

• But things don’t always go their way. At least two councils, Leeds and Rochdale, have dropped projects with Quarterbridge-MAM. Leeds’ council leader decided: “We aren’t spending millions of pounds to lose it to a private company.” Rochdale Borough Council concluded they weren’t “the right people to run our cherished market”.

• Quarterbridge-MAM is looking to buy up more markets. To fund expansion, it is now being bankrolled by Places for People, one of the UK’s biggest landlords and housing associations. Last year, Places for People took a 50% stake in Market Asset Management Ltd. This was likely arranged by Places for People’s chairman, Chris Phillips, who works alongside Owen and Linch as a MAM director.

We put the points in this report to Quarterbridge but have not received a reply. We will send the findings to Haringey Council and Transport for London.

Image from Save Latin Village Community Plan for the market

The fight for Seven Sisters market

The Seven Sisters market, often called “Latin Village”, is a hub of the Latin American community in Haringey, North London. It sits inside the ‘Wards Corner’ complex of buildings historically owned by Transport for London, but now set for ‘redevelopment’ by corporate landlord Grainger PLC, with the support of Haringey council (click here to read our recent profile of Grainger).

The battle over Wards Corner has been raging for over 12 years now. Campaigners challenge Grainger’s ‘clone town’ vision for the bustling, ethnically diverse shopping and community centre. The development will not include any affordable housing, while market traders fear their rents will increase and become unaffordable – Grainger has guaranteed rents only for a limited period.

(Click here to read interviews with market traders in the Metro and click here to find out more about the Save Latin Village campaign.)

In fact the first version of Grainger’s proposal did not include any provision for the market at all, just private flats and chain stores and restaurants. The second version included space for just 12 market stalls.

It was only after a successful judicial review brought by campaigners, and the intervention of the Mayor of London, that Grainger began to make any real effort to accommodate a market within its development plans. In 2012, Haringey Council and Grainger drew up a planning (“Section 106”) agreement, which promised a new market space.

According to this, at least some qualifying traders would get stalls in the new market. While building work went on, they would be moved to a temporary site across the road in Apex House – another Grainger development. The new market would be paid for in part by some £284,500 of Mayoral funds.

Enter Quarterbridge

The same planning agreement also defined a role for a ‘market facilitator’ to oversee the transition to the new market. This was where Owen and Linch came in. Also in 2012, Grainger and Haringey Council appointed their company Quarterbridge Project Management Ltd to the market facilitator job.

At the time, Quarterbridge director Jonathan Owen said they were “confident we can design a new Market Hall and stalls that suit everyone’s needs and improve sales turnover.”

But the Wards Corner battle wasn’t over. While housing on the site has been emptied, the market traders held out, few trusting Grainger’s vague promises. Three years later, in 2015, the bulldozers were still not rumbling.

This was when another of Owen and Linch’s companies turned up – a newly registered business called MAM (Seven Sisters). The site owner, Transport for London, awarded them the lease to run the existing market. So at the same time, Owen and Linch were both managing the ongoing business of the market, and advising Grainger on how to knock it down.

And the pair also stand to further profit from Seven Sisters as Grainger has chosen MAM (Seven Sisters) to run the future lease on the new market in its finished development, as well as the temporary market in Apex House while construction goes on.

Quarterbridge and Market Asset Management

So what, or who, are Quarterbridge and Market Asset Management (MAM)? Jonathan Owen, a chartered surveyor, founded Quarterbridge in 1997, according to the firm’s website. Raymond Linch joined two years later.

Jonathan Owen

The business comprises a sprawling network of companies, all run or owned by Linch and Owen. Companies House lists seven companies they own shares in together, with at least one of them serving as director. At least five others under their control are now dissolved or in liquidation.

Their newer companies are all variations on the name “Market Asset Management” (MAM). For example, as well as MAM (Seven Sisters), you can find MAM (Darlington) and MAM (Doncaster), and an overall investment company called just MAM Ltd, which was incorporated in January 2016.

With the business split up into so many different companies, none of which are big enough to have to file detailed financial statements, it is difficult to know exactly how profitable it has been.

But Owen and Linch appear to have done okay over the years. Linch especially: until recently he was ‘Lord of the Manor of Wix’, thanks to his ownership of Wix Abbey, a listed farmhouse on the market for £1.15 million.

Lord of the Manor was at least a real title. Linch has repeatedly claimed he has been appointed as the “London Mayor’s Special Market Advisor”.

Not so, says the Greater London Authority. Responding to a Freedom of Information request at the end of last year, the GLA was clear:

“Neither Quarterbridge, nor any members of its team, serve, or have ever served, as a Special Advisor to the Mayor for Markets. We have contacted Quarterbridge about this issue, and references are being removed from their website and social media channels”.

However, at the time of writing this report the claim remained on the Market Asset Management website.

Screenshot, www.marketassetmanagement.com

Having a network of different companies allows these to play different roles in the market redevelopment schemes they are part of – and to move cash between them. For example, £332,388 was moved from Market Asset Management (Seven Sisters) Ltd to Quarterbridge Project Management Ltd in the last three years, according to accounts filed at Companies House.

The accounts do not describe what this is for, but the vast majority of MAM (Seven Sisters)’s income presumably comes from the rent paid to the company by market traders. The Save Latin Village campaign told Corporate Watch they estimate traders are paying £370,000 in rent. Given MAM agreed to pay £60,000 for its lease in September 2015, with only small increases for inflation, it must be making a significant profit.

After this profit is passed on to Quarterbridge, it ends up with the company’s three shareholders: Linch, Owen, and Owen’s wife Angela.

Linch and Owen also own half each of Market Asset Management (Seven Sisters) Ltd. The two of them are directors of both companies.

The sums transferred from MAM (Seven Sisters) helped Quarterbridge pay dividends totalling £320,000 to Linch, Owen and his wife, in the three years between 2016 and 2018.

But this is hardly likely to be all the money Owen and Linch are making from Seven Sisters and their other deals. None of the Quarterbridge-MAM companies disclose how much they pay Owen and Linch in directors’ salaries.

‘Unacceptable behaviour’

As Owen and Linch count the cash, Seven Sisters traders have voiced serious concerns over the management of their market since MAM took over. They have made at least 13 complaints to site owner Transport for London.

In a letter presented at the market steering group (set up by Grainger) at the end of 2016, traders said Quarterbridge was not maintaining the market properly. Toilets were out of order, the roof was leaking, floors were dirty and pests were starting to appear.

All of this, of course, makes the current market look as though it is in ever more urgent need of redevelopment – which just happens to benefit other parts of the Owen-Linch business network.

Jonathan Owen’s own behaviour and language have come under scrutiny. A 2017 letter from the traders’ solicitors to Transport for London detailed incidents including Owen:

• telling a trader who had complained about his management style: “If you want a fucking war, you will get a fucking war”.

• telling a meeting of traders: “If I wanted to, I could get rid of 90% of the traders here”

• using racially-charged language such as “bloody illegal immigrants” and “not meaning to be Irish” at a meeting of traders.

One trader has described separately how:

“Owen is pretty cutting. He doesn’t look for solutions in his conversations with the traders. He uses insulting language against them. When one of the traders made a complaint he called her a ‘fucking bitch’”.

An investigation by site owner Transport for London found Owen had used offensive language in meetings and in personal conversations with traders.

But despite that, TfL chose to continue MAM’s lease. The landlords reasoned that Owen had now accepted his behaviour had been inappropriate and apologised, and also that a new MAM director, Malcolm Veigas, was appointed to take over day-to-day running of the market.

The Save Latin Village campaign group has since called on Haringey Council, Transport for London and the London Mayor to act on their complaints of “race discrimination, victimisation and harassment by Quarterbridge/MAM”.

Traders call on Sadiq Khan for support

Quarterbridge/MAM did lose one of its Seven Sisters contracts following the complaints. Recently, in March 2019, a letter from the Mayor of London to one of traders confirmed that Grainger has agreed to appoint another facilitator.

Grainger dropped Quarterbridge from its original role as “market facilitator”. One of the role’s duties was supposed to be to “promote the interests of Spanish and non-English speaking traders”.

But Grainger hasn’t dropped Owen and Linch altogether: in fact MAM (Seven Sisters) Ltd still seems to be lined up for the lease on the new market. The Planning Inspector’s report for the recent decision to allow Haringey council to go ahead with the ‘Compulsory Purchase Order’ to buy the remaining land needed for the development confirmed MAM was still slated to be the market leaseholder in the new development.

Campaigners are increasing their efforts to remove MAM from the market, and have launched a final legal appeal to stop the Grainger development. The prize is the chance to deliver the alternative community plan for Wards Corner, taking the future of Seven Sisters market into their own hands.

Turning markets into financial assets

Over the last two decades, Quarterbridge has developed into one of the main companies pushing the gentrification of UK markets. As the company itself explains on its website:

“most of the 468 Councils in the UK own and operate one or more markets in their area. These are delivered as a discretionary service, not a statutory obligation such as education so can be outsourced.”

Quarterbridge’s mission is to encourage councils to replace what it calls their “largely unskilled” management with “professional asset management” – such as that provided by its MAM sister companies, managed in the “professional style” so obvious at Seven Sisters.

The company’s website says its “market acquisitions and developments range in value between £0.5m and £8m depending on size, location and development potential.” This may release some money for cash-strapped councils. But in the long run it is Quarterbridge/MAM raking in the profit, with “larger markets” bringing in revenues of “£2.5 – £3.0m” per year. MAM claims to typically produce annual profit margins of “7% to 9.5%” for its investors.

Traders have been pushed off their stalls as a result, with rent rises for those who remain. For example, after Woking borough council followed Quarterbridge’s plans to relocate its town centre market, only three stalls from the previous market were granted a permanent place in the new site.

In Blackburn, where Quarterbridge managed the relocation of the market to a shopping centre, one trader running a stall for over 50 years said he could not afford the 162% rent rise.

In Doncaster, this January the council unveiled a scheme to hand two markets to MAM in a 25 year lease. Again, the deal comes after Quarterbridge were brought in as a consultant in 2016 to conduct a “strategic review” of the markets. Traders’ rents there will only be guaranteed for a year after the handover – after which “all bets are off”. Opposition councillors demanded the scheme be “called in” for further discussion but the contract is going ahead.

Moving up a league: deal with Places for People

MAM’s market buy-outs require significant investment. In Doncaster, for example, the company has said it will invest £6.2 million over the course of its 25-year contract.

According to the company website, deals are typically funded by “syndicates, individual private investors and niche retail funds” who take “investment lots” of between £500,000 and £5 million. But now MAM has potentially bulked up its financial muscle by bringing in a new partner with serious capital behind it – Places for People.

Places for People is one of Britain’s biggest landlords and property management companies. In 2018, it owned or managed 199,000 properties across the UK, and had a turnover of £754 million. Places for People started out as a “social landlord”, originally founded as North British Housing Association in 1965. But over the last two decades it has grown into a major private sector developer. Around 67,000 of its properties are still “social or affordable” homes, rented out by its various housing association subsidiaries.

Chris Phillips

Places for People’s chairman is a former investment banker called Chris Phillips. He joined the group’s board as an independent director in 2006, becoming non-executive chairman in 2010.

One thing not mentioned in Phillips’ biography on the Places for People website is his involvement in MAM.ⁱ In 2016, Linch and Owen incorporated their new company, Market Asset Management Ltd.ⁱⁱ Alongside Linch and Owen, there was one other director and equal shareholder: Chris Phillips.

Then in January 2018, Places for People bought a 50% stake in MAM Ltd.

We will have to wait for future accounts to see what Places for People has invested so far in MAM’s projects. But presumably Phillips helped bring in the group he chairs as a financial backer for MAM’s market buy-outs.

Although now a profit-making corporation, Places for People still emphasises its “social” mission. It describes itself as “a placemaking and regeneration company that takes a commercial approach to delivering social outcomes”. It says it is committed to “equality and diversity”, and “building strong communities with a sense of togetherness and tackling inequality to create a fairer, sustainable society”.

A quick look at Places for People’s finances shows profits of around £100 million in each of the last two years. The company would do well enough financially without involving itself in Owen and Linch’s ventures. Are other Places for People board members aware of Phillips’ activities with Linch and Owen? And how does Owen’s record of abuse fit in with their company’s commitment to building communities with “a sense of togetherness”?

You can say no

It doesn’t always go Linch and Owen’s way. Campaigners for the Seven Sisters market can take heart from other cases where councils have dismissed their schemes.

Back in 2012, Leeds City Council paid Quarterbridge £12,500 to recommend how the historic Kirkgate market could be developed. The company suggested outsourcing the market’s management and putting tenants through a “reselection process” to hold onto their spots.

The executive councillor for development, Richard Lewis, told the Yorkshire Evening Post he found some parts of the report useful but others “indigestible” – and he “wasn’t that keen on their thoughts about ownership.”

Council leader Keith Wakefield summed up: “We aren’t spending millions of pounds to lose it to a private company. It will remain in council ownership.”

Last year Rochdale Borough Council terminated Quarterbridge’s contract to run their new Riverbank market. A council spokesperson said Quarterbridge had been “unable to meet our expectations”. This was in spite of being given “significant additional help and support” and “numerous opportunities” to prove they were “the right people to run our cherished market”.

A later council document simply said “Quarterbridge have been removed from the market after underperformance”.

The post Quarterbridge-MAM: meet the companies waging ‘f***ing war’ on local markets appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Corporate Watch has been glad to support Deptford people fighting the destruction of council homes at Reginald House and of the Old Tidemill community wildlife garden. Back in November, we contributed to the campaign by writing a factsheet on the gentrification scheme and reports on main developer Peabody, the Lewisham councillors driving the scheme and their brutal security company County Enforcement.

Here is a quick update on developments in the last four months. Sadly, earlier this week the developers succeeded in destroying the garden, cutting down up to 100 trees (read this account by Andy Worthington for more details). But the battle for Reginald House and the surrounding neighbourhood continues. The passion and commitment of the residents is very much alive.

This came across loud and clear in the meeting we helped run on Saturday, where around 50 people came together to think about “who’s gentrifying Deptford?”, and strategise about the struggle. Click here for a list of development schemes we are starting to compile with residents: over 5,000 new private flats are being crammed into one of London’s most densely populated areas, to the profit of developers and global investors from New York to Hong Kong.

Even as people mourn the garden’s destruction, we think it’s worth noting some successes for the campaign along the way. There is much to learn and to build on for the struggles ahead.

• County Enforcement loses contract

In November, a fence went up around the wildlife garden, after campaigners had been evicted from their occupation. It was guarded 24/7 by a small army of private security guards. These guards were employed by a contractor called County Enforcement, who are well known for their brutality and have a history of union-busting. After our profile of the company was spread, Lewisham councillor Paul Bell, cabinet member for housing, promised that the council would end its contract with the firm. He told local media:

“County Enforcement are going to go. They have been used for about twenty years I am told by council officers. […] Residents have pointed out to us that this is not a suitable organisation for workers’ rights and for Labour in terms of local government.”

Bell works as a national officer for the Unison trade union, and other comments made clear that he objected to County’s boasts about their role in the miners’ strike and Wapping printers’ strike — rather than their recent assaults on Tidemill campaigners.

Finally, on 18 February, County appeared to be replaced by new security guards. The identity of the new contractors is not yet confirmed. The current guards do not wear any company uniforms, only plain black clothes with yellow high-vis vests. When asked, the guards tell people that they are directly employed by Lewisham Council.

• Security costs confirmed

In response to questions at recent council meetings, there is some confirmed information on what Lewisham are spending to keep their security army at Tidemill.

The cost of the eviction itself on 19 October was £105,188. By the Council meeting on 27 February, the cost of keeping security in place was a further £1.37 million.

This is obviously a massive waste of money. It could all have been saved if the council had listened to residents and worked together on the alternative community plan for the site, rather than trying to force people out of their own homes and community resources. An obvious question is: will the council spend similar sums on the other controversial demolitions and developments about to start in the area?

• Artemis Trees pull out

On 22 November, Lewisham started cutting the trees in the community garden. They employed a tree surgeon company called Artemis Trees to do this. But Artemis pulled out of the contract the next day after numerous people told their workers in person, and their managers on social media, about how people felt about the garden.

I’ve just spoken to Aaron, contracts manager from @ArtemisTrees and they have pulled out of the #Tidemill job, without pay, for ethical reasons. They weren’t aware of the campaign or situation surrounding this. Please thank them for doing the right thing (unlike @LewishamCouncil) pic.twitter.com/V6omqX4atI

— Reginald Resident (@under_siege_SE8) 23 November 2018

• New tree cutters: SDL Solutions

Tidemill campaigners also contacted other tree surgeon companies based in London and the South East, explaining what was happening on the site and asking them to follow Artemis’ example. This could be a reason why Lewisham eventually brought in a company from Gloucestershire, who hacked most of the trees down with heavy machinery on 28 February.

SDL solutions specialises in clearing trees then pulping them for fuel. So a beloved community wildlife garden ends up as woodchips burning in “biofuel” incinerators.

Picture: SDL Solutions truck with tree-cutting equipment photographed at the Tidemill site (Frankham Street). Thanks to @se8_dad.

The same day that Lewisham Council sent in SDL to cut the trees, as London sizzled with unprecedented winter high temperatures, its full council meeting voted to declare a “Climate Emergency”. Biofuel plants infamously often cause as many CO2 emissions as the fossil fuel ones they replace.

Enhance your boiler performance with our premium, best of British wood chip! We are offering 1 cubic metre in a ton bag, for £120.00 including delivery. Order yours now! email: info@sdlsolutions.co.uk call 01386 840980. #fuel #biomass #boiler #winter #energy #RenewableEnergy pic.twitter.com/5ZomFn87Zu

— SDL Solutions (@sdl_solutions) 5 November 2018

The post Tidemill update: the trees come down, the battle for Deptford continues appeared first on Corporate Watch.

On Saturday 23 February Corporate Watch ran a meeting called “Who’s gentrifying Deptford?”, hosted by the Save Reginald Save Tidemill campaign. The meeting was packed out – 50 or so people squeezed into the Frankham Street “Pink Palace”, or listened outside through the open doorway. People came from estates facing demolition and development in Deptford and New Cross, from other parts of Lewisham, and from as far away as Brent.

Our aim for the meeting was to think through how gentrification works in a neighbourhood like Deptford and so help people develop strategies to fight it effectively. We started by flagging up two big questions: Who decides? And who profits?

Click here for a working list of 15 current development schemes in Deptford.

Picture: It often starts with a “Masterplan”, here for the Convoys Wharf development in north Deptford.

Who Decides?

It’s often very clear who doesn’t decide. In the Tidemill development, for example, the residents of Reginald House strongly oppose demolition of their homes but have been refused any say in the matter. More generally, most people living in gentrifying neighbourhoods have very little control over the changes taking place.

So who does cook up gentrification projects? The local council is often the first suspect. People at the meeting recalled how the Tidemill development started with council officers drawing up a “Masterplan” for the area, working with corporate consultants and other “experts”. They made a show of consulting local people through public meetings with “patronising” architects and PR wonks.

Behind the scenes, actual decisions are made in closed meetings between council executives, senior councillors – and property developers. At best, residents are allowed a say on small details, or get to haggle over a few dozen “affordable” flats.

The typical outcome? Developers get approval to cram yet more luxury flats and hipster markets into the area; working class residents are told they should be grateful for even a small number of so-called “affordable” homes. In Deptford and New Cross, over 5,000 new homes are currently being planned in what is already the densest part of Lewisham. Just a tiny handful of these will be for “social rent”.

Picture: Lewisham mayor Damien Egan with fans.

Meet the investors

So the most obvious decision-makers are council bosses – both elected councillors and professional officers – and the property developers they work hand in glove with. But there is another, deeper, level of power behind these. The property development companies are funded by – and ultimately answerable to – investors who make big profits out of sky-high property prices.

In the meeting, we looked at some of the main investors behind developments in Deptford. There are billionaires like Li Ka Shing, whose Hong Kong based family empire is behind the enormous 3,500 home development at Convoys Wharf – the old Royal Dockyard and now London’s biggest empty building site. There are massive global investment funds like BlackRock – which owns chunks of Lendlease, Grainger, and quite probably other development companies active in the area.

There are also specialist private equity investors like M3 Capital and Oaktree – one of the infamous “vulture funds” known for buying up debts of countries like Greece, but also behind the Anthology company which owns the Deptford Foundry skyscraper. And smaller figures like businessmen Tom Mulligan and James Gant, who own Bluecroft, the company developing No 1 Creekside.

Click here for an in depth look at these investors.

All for charity?

But what about the line, pushed by Lewisham councillors, that schemes like Tidemill are different, because the developers involved are “non profit” housing associations like Peabody?

As we have previously reported, the truth is that Peabody is “non profit” only in a technical sense. Nowadays only one third of its new buildings are for “social rent”, with most of its effort going into building homes for sale and rent at market levels. It’s true that it doesn’t have “shareholders” who get a share of profits (in payments called dividends). But it does have a chief executive on £300,000 a year, and 50 other managers earning over £100,000.

And it certainly does have powerful investors. Instead of selling shares, Peabody and other big housing associations sell corporate bonds. Many bond investors are likely to be just the same big investment funds, the likes of BlackRock, who invest in other developers. But as the bond market is much less regulated than the share market, it’s much harder to find out who they are.

Picture: Bob Kerslake, Peabody chairman

Who profits?

So the second big question we looked at was: who profits, who gains, from these schemes?

Obviously, the investors who buy shares or bonds in the development companies get paid dividends or interest in return for their investments. And also the managers who rake in often huge salaries and bonuses. But we also looked at other kinds of “gains” beyond the obviously financial. For example, what motivates councillors to push development schemes?

Certainly, there can be financial benefits. For example, it’s well known how some politicians like Southwark’s council leader Peter John collect dozens of reported gifts from developers like Lendlease.

But another issue is probably much bigger than obvious gifts: the culture of “revolving doors” between councils and developers. Councillors and council managers spend a lot of time meeting and networking with developers. Later, many get jobs as well-paid corporate executives or “consultants”. So in the long run, they certainly profit from their connections in the development world. When there’s a few years of delay between service rendered and payment returned, it’s somehow no longer considered “corruption”.

Still, not all cuddling up with developers is driven by money. For example, many ambitious politicians use council seats as part of their climb up the greasy ladder towards parliament. They may use schemes to build a reputation for “getting things done” and for being friendly to business. These characters may be chasing power and status rather than just financial gain.

Finally, many councillors and managers no doubt genuinely believe they are doing the best they can. They have swallowed whole the line that there is “no alternative” to this kind of development. And it’s much easier to maintain this story because they don’t directly feel the pain of gentrification themselves. Its notable that the councillors pushing Tidemill are all home-owners on comfortable salaries. None of them face having their own homes demolished or being priced out of their local shops. As people said at the meeting, they are part of the “political class” – which is tightly interconnected with the business class, and shares similar values and assumptions.

Picture: Councillor Joe Dromey, “red prince” of New Cross

Identifying the decision-makers

In the second part of the meeting, we zoomed in on a concrete example. We made a “mind map” of the key players making decisions about, and making money from, the Tidemill scheme.

At the top of most people’s list were two: Peabody Homes, and Lewisham Council – including particular councillors and senior officials who have been active in driving the scheme. Another “for profit” developer, Sherrygreen Homes, is also involved alongside Peabody. Although Lewisham councillors have recently been downplaying the role of Sherrygreen, it is believed to still be very much part of the scheme. We also discussed the investors funding Peabody and Sherrygreen.

But as well as the council and its “developer partner”, a host of other players are also necessary to make the scheme happen. These include the building contractor, Mulalley, and the architects Pollard Thomas Evans (buildings) and BDP (landscape).

Other contractors include consultancies and demolition companies. In recent months, a lot of focus has been on two contractors playing a vital role at the current early stage: security guards, and tree surgeons. The council paid well over £1 million to its original security contractor, County Enforcement, who we profiled in November.

After Corporate Watch exposed County’s union-busting history, councillor Paul Bell, Lewisham’s cabinet member for housing, promised to replace them with a different firm (while their anti-union history bothered him, he had nothing to say about their recent assaults at Tidemill). This appeared to finally happen on 18 February. The new security guards have been instructed to tell people that they are directly employed by the council. When asked, they refused to give their manager’s name, or to identify any contracting firm.

A tree surgeon firm called Artemis began cutting trees back in November 2018. After many people asked them to stop – at the site, and also by email and on social media – they pulled out of the contract after the first day. (At the time of writing in March 2019, Lewisham has been able to go ahead with tree cutting after bringing in another company from Gloucestershire.)

Picture: Larry Fink (right), CEO of BlackRock, with other big property investors.

Weak points

Fighting gentrification is a David and Goliath battle against the massed power of finance capital and politics. On the front line, that comes down to the armies of police and private security guards used to push through developments like Tidemill when people resist.

To have any chance of beating them, people may need to think strategically, and deploy cunning and creativity against their brute force. After identifying the gentrification players, we started to think about strategies: now we know who is doing this, how can we fight them? Does it make sense to target some players in particular? What actions might lead different ones to drop or pull out of the scheme? What “leverage” can campaigners find to influence them? What are their weak points?

For example, take BlackRock, which finances and profits from various Deptford developments. It is one of the world’s greatest financial empires, based in the US. What could the 50 odd campaigners sitting in the Deptford pink palace do to stop BlackRock stop gentrifying the neighbourhood? The likely answer: sweet nothing.

On the other hand, the Tidemill campaign had already had two small victories: getting County Security’s contract cancelled, and persuading Artemis Trees to pull out themselves.

There was no doubt in the room that Lewisham Council, too, has been feeling pressure from the campaign. Its “socialist” mask slips badly when it sends an army of security guards to destroy a community project and people’s homes, revealing the brutal arrogance of the careerists at the top. We also discussed how the campaign is linking up with Peabody tenants across London, who are increasingly challenging neglect and profiteering by their landlord.

We won’t go into more detail here on the strategic ideas discussed. We’ll just say there was a really strong positive energy in the room. The battle for Tidemill is still far from over. But also, it’s an example of impassioned resistance, and its spreading. On Saturday people from across Deptford, Lewisham, and beyond, were sharing ideas and strategising together about how to fight off new developments.

The post Who’s gentrifying Deptford? Identifying the profiteers, making strategies appeared first on Corporate Watch.

In the meeting with the Tidemill campaign, we started to make a collaborative map of major development schemes happening in the Deptford area, and to identify key players behind them. This list is still very incomplete – we want to add in more information and expand it in the coming weeks. Please send in anything you know (click here to get in touch)!

The list below is roughly in order of size, i.e., the number of homes involved. Some of these developments have recently been completed, others are yet to start.

NB: big thanks for help with this report to Crosswhatfields, Achilles Street Stop and Listen, and everyone who came to the meeting!

1. Convoys Wharf

This is perhaps London’s biggest building site. Currently an empty lot apart from one listed warehouse building, it sits by the Thames on the historic site of Deptford’s old Royal Dockyard (see drone footage of the site here). Around 3,500 homes are planned, 15% of which are meant to be “affordable”. The scheme was given outline planning approval in 2014 by former London mayor Boris Johnson, who “called it in” from Lewisham Council’s hands after the developer claimed it needed an urgent decision. But five years later, there are still no buildings ready. The building work will happen in phases, each of which needs specific planning permission. The first phase was approved in 2018 and the developer has now started consulting on phase two, which will involve 123 “affordable homes”.

Developer: Hutchison Property Holdings. Hong Kong owned developer which has built a number of big glass tower complexes along the Thames riverfront in Chelsea and Battersea.

Investors: Hutchison is owned by the CK Hutchinson group, domiciled in the Cayman Islands and largely owned by the family of Li Ka Shing, one the richest people in the world. Among other things, CK Hutchinson also own a good part of the UK’s water supply, energy networks, ports, plus Superdrug, Savers and the 3 mobile telephone network (click here to read more). The investments in these companies are often made through a tax avoidance scheme through the Channel Islands, designed to extract huge levels of profit (click here for an example).

Photo: Li Ka Shing

2. Timber Yard

The next door site to Convoys Wharf, this is another massive development on former industrial land, set to build 1,132 homes. It is being built in several phases, the first of which started in 2016.

Developer: Lendlease, notorious for their roles in the gentrification of Elephant & Castle, and the proposed Haringey Development Vehicle. Click here for our detailed 2017 profile of Lendlease.

Investors: Lendlease is a public limited company (PLC) whose shares are traded on the open stock exchange. As of the 2017 accounts, only one shareholder owned over 5% of the stock – BlackRock, the world’s biggest global investment corporation, headquartered in New York.

3. Tidemill and Amersham Vale

See our report here for detailed information. The “Deptford Southern Housing” scheme involves two sites. One is on the old Tidemill school and community wildlife garden, including the demolition of Reginald House. The other is in Amersham Vale. Together they will have 339 homes. None will be at “social rent” level, although 141 will be at the higher “London Affordable Rent” level.

Developers: Peabody and Sherrygreen Homes.

Investors: Peabody is a registered charity without shareholders. It is funded through bank loans and sale of corporate bonds. Unlike shares, bond owners are not usually publicised, but may include the same large investment funds that also buy shares.

4. Besson Street

This is Lewisham Council’s first foray into the “private rented” market. It has zero “social rented” housing. Some will be priced at the so-called “London Living Rent” — which is around two thirds of market levels, directed at “middle income households” rather than those on the council waiting list. The development will be owned by a 50/50 joint venture between the council and private “build to rent” developer Grainger, registered as Lewisham Grainger Holdings. Grainger will be in charge of day to day management. “Up to 300” homes are planned.

The main part of the site was previously an estate of 69 council homes. These were demolished by Lewisham in 2007 to make way for a new “public/private” development as part of the New Cross “New Deal for Communities” regeneration scheme.

A planning application is expected in “Summer 2019“. Currently, the council/Grainger partnership is running local consultation meetings and has set up a “consultation portal” with a map of the site and a form where people can place comments. Local campaigners have already carried out their own survey “Besson Street: the proper consultation” which found strong opposition.

The scheme will also include a health surgery and office run by the New Cross Gate trust. This is a local charity which was originally set up to run the New Cross New Deal for Communities. It is backing the new proposal and involved in managing the consultation process — although its website does note some concerns around the lack of any social housing. (NB: the trust is part-funded by the Council, and sees the scheme as a main source of its future income.)

Developer: Grainger. A developer that specialises in the fast growing “build to rent” market, i.e., developing homes for market rent rather than sale. Grainger is also in the news currently for its gentrification scheme on the site of the Latin Village “Ward’s Corner” market in Haringey. We will soon publish a company profile of Grainger.

Shareholders: Grainger’s shares trade on the stock market. Its current biggest investor is global megacorporation BlackRock.

Picture: Helen Gordon, CEO of Grainger

5. Deptford Foundry, aka “Anthology Deptford”.

A tower, eight other buildings, around landscaped grounds, off Arklow road in the west of the area. Planned to be complete by September 2019. 276 flats, all for sale. Also includes artists studios.

Developer: Anthology.

Investors: Anthology is owned by Oaktree Capital, a US based investment fund which is best known as the world’s largest “distressed debt” or “vulture fund”. Its European Capital Group, which includes its Anthology investment, also profits by buying the “distressed debt” of countries such as Greece that have been hit by financial crisis. In Deptford, Anthology has tried to win a cleaner reputation by sponsoring the Deptford X art festival. (Although they are no longer a current sponsor.)

6. Deptford Market Yard

This development, completed in 2018, is the centrepiece of the gentrification of Deptford High Street. It was initially called the “Deptford Project”. It includes a hipster retail market with 152 homes above. The so-called “affordable” element of the scheme involved eight “shared ownership” houses developed and managed by Peabody.

Developer: U and I with Peabody. (NB: the scheme was formerly run by Cathedral Homes, which was then bought by Development Securities PLC. The group then rebranded as U&I.)

NB: family connection: Ros Kerslake, chair of the Heritage Fund which manages the National Lottery money, is also now a director of U & I. She is the sister of Bob Kerslake, chairman of Peabody.

Investors: U&I is a stock exchange listed PLC, its shares are bought and sold by major investment funds.

Deptford Creek developments

A rash of new private housing developments is appearing along the waterfront at Deptford Creek, the muddy tidal estuary where the ancient River Ravensbourne meets the Thames. The creek spans the borough boundaries, and some of the developments below are in Greenwich rather than Lewisham. But the brick and glass towers named after historical or imaginary “wharves” look just the same.

Picture of Deptford Creek thanks to fromthemurkydepths

8. Union Wharf (previously called Creekside Wharf)

Union Wharf is a new complex of two 23 and 12 storey towers near the end of the Creek in Greenwich. It has 249 “premium apartments” all for market rent.

Developer: Essential Living

Investor: M3 Capital

9. Kent Wharf

Another identikit tower building project on the creek, just completed with 143 flats. The original planning application said that 18 flats would be priced for “intermediate” sale or rent.

Developer: Bellway Homes. Bellway is one of Britain’s big housebuilders.

Investors: Bellway shares are traded by numerous investment funds.

Picture: Sun Wharf design

10. Sun Wharf

Next to Kent Wharf, this is a parcel of land currently occupied by Jones Furniture and Catering Equipment (“by royal appointment”). Their lease runs out in 2022.

The land is now owned by a joint venture of two developers: Bellway (see above) and Peabody. They have just (February 2019) submitted a planning application to develop the site with 233 homes in three blocks between eight and 17 storeys. There will be zero social rented housing, but 48 homes at “London Affordable Rent” (which is 63% higher than council rents), as well as 34 for “shared ownership” at market rates. 10% of the development will be business space.

NB: these figures officially make the development “35% affordable” on Lewisham’s very loose definition of “affordability”. For example, the planning documents state that the “shared ownership” rents will be “affordable to household incomes of £51,500 – £67,500” — i.e., certainly not to most people in the Deptford area.

Click here for a detailed report on the scheme by Crosswhatfields.

See here for the planning documents on the council’s planning website (search for “Sun Wharf”). Deadline for comments is 26 March 2019 (send to planning@lewisham.gov.uk with the application number in the subject heading, and include your name & address in the content).

Developers: Bellway Homes and Peabody.

11. No. 1 Creekside

Across the roundabout from the Old Tidemill garden lies an old MOT testing centre and also a strip of fenced-up woodland owned by the council. In Summer 2018, plans were revealed to build more tall buildings instead. So, like the next door Tidemill development, this scheme will involve both a handover of public land to a private developer, and the cutting down of yet more trees. There are claims of 35% “affordable housing”, but no details of that have been specified. 60 “units” altogether.

See the crosswhatfields blog for a detailed report: “Lewisham Council are partners in the scheme, having exchanged the publicly owned strip of wild woodland adjacent to the MOT site (without any public consultation) in return for leasing commercial space in the building which they intend to rent out to provide income to fund council services.”

Developer: Bluecroft Property Development, a relatively small development company based in Shoreditch.

Investors: Bluecroft is a private limited company with two main owners, Tom Mulligan and James Gant. According to Companies House filings, each own between 25% and 50% of the shares. They will no doubt raise further funding from other investors if the scheme goes ahead.

12. Nos. 2 and 3 Creekside

These are two sites near Deptford Bridge DLR that have been owned for some years by a businessman called John Cierach. Recently he has gone into partnership with Stow Projects, also known as Artworks, the father and son business of Bill and Charlie Fulford. They were responsible for spreading the hipster boxpark invasion to Elephant & Castle, working with Lendlease to build a shipping container market by the site of the demolished Heygate estate.

In 2017, Cierach and the Fulfords announced similar boxpark plans for the Creekside sites. While No 3 has so far become a rather lacklustre cafe and “artisan” bakery space under the name Artworks Creekside, the developers face some obstacles for the planned expansion of Number 2. Transport for London forbid building under the DLR rail line which runs over the site. Also, the scheme means displacing a community of boat-dwellers who live on the water next to the site, but they are not about to be pushed out quietly.

Read this detailed account from the crosswhatfields blog. This was written in August 2017 but not so much has changed since.

Developers: Artworks

Investors: John Cierach, Charlie and William Fulford. Other financial backers behind them?

13. Achilles Street area

This is a new scheme Lewisham Council is planning around the centre of New Cross, centred on Achilles Street next to Fordham Park. “Consultation” meetings began in Summer 2016. As locals write:

“The Council is proposing to demolish all of the homes and local businesses in the Achilles Street area in order to build high rise, high density housing in partnership with private developers”

The demolitions will include 87 council homes, which Lewisham itself says don’t need refurbishing as they already meet the “decent homes standard”. They are to be demolished simply in order to create space for profitable high rise development.

The council says that the development will include new “affordable homes” — as so often, there is no clarity about what this means. The council has said current council residents will at least get a ballot on this scheme.

Developers: not yet announced.

See: Achilles Street Stop and Listen website.

14. Goldsmiths College developments

New Cross’ Goldsmiths College, part of the University of London, is often viewed as a major force in the gentrification of the area, acting as a magnet for hordes of stereotypically trendy art students who may then become involved in “artwashing” developments. Besides its cultural influence, the college is also an important property owner and developer of student housing. At our public meeting on 23 February, we heard of moves by the college to start a new development in the shops it owns on New Cross road.

Developers: Goldsmiths college and other partners.

15. Millwall Stadium area

Just on the edge of New Cross council ward towards Bermondsey lies Millwall Football Club’s stadium The Den. Although not strictly in Deptford, this needs mentioning as it is probably the most notorious example of Lewisham Council’s approach to “regeneration”.

Lewisham council’s “New Bermondsey” development plan involved seizing the land around The Den using a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO). They would kick out the local businesses based there to build more profitable housing towers. Millwall, and the club’s fans, had very justifiable concerns that this would threaten the ground’s future too, and a strong campaign opposed the scheme (see: Guardian report on “The Battle for the Den”; Association of Millwall Supporters (AMS)).

The story gets muddier: the plan was to give the land to a mysterious development company called Renewal. Structured through offshore tax havens, no one has yet got to the bottom of this company, its owners and investors. What is known is that it was set up by a former mayor of Lewisham, Dave Sullivan, and later run by a former Lewisham council manager called Mushtaq Malilk. Sullivan has denied that he still has an interest in Renewal, claiming he sold his shares in the company. (See: report by RealMedia; open letter from AMS.).

As the Millwall CPO became a major issue in the 2017 mayoral elections, the council started to back away from the original scheme. The current mayor Damien Egan opened new talks with Millwall and Renewal about the area’s future.

Developers: Renewal.

Investors: ?

NB: some local websites with much more information on Deptford developments:

http://www.fromthemurkydepths.co.uk/

http://crossfields.blogspot.com

https://deptforddame.blogspot.com/

The post Who’s gentrifying Deptford? 15 development schemes and the investors behind them appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Councillors, Housing Associations, Property Developers, Investors … who are the companies and individuals pushing the gentrification of Deptford?

• Who gets to make decisions about a neighbourhood, and the lives and homes of people in it?
• Who profits from these decisions?

These are two big questions we’ll be looking at this Saturday in a public meeting in Deptford, South East London. The meeting will be run by Corporate Watch, and hosted by the Save Reginald Save Tidemill campaign (facebook page), who are fighting off the destruction of council homes and the community wildlife garden.

Come along, and/or spread the word!

4-6 PM, Saturday 23rd February, at the Pink Palace, Frankham House, 50 Frankham Street, London SE8 4RL

In the meeting we’ll work together to identify some of the key players making big money out of transforming the neighbourhood. We’ll look at the connections between them, from local politicians to global investment funds. We’ll share skills and ideas for investigating them further — and we’ll think about how we can fight them!

The post Who’s gentrifying Deptford? public meeting with the Tidemill Campaign this Saturday appeared first on Corporate Watch.