Alan 1:42 Tue Oct 6
London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Financial News
London Stadium owners sue law firm Allen & Overy over West Ham’s 99-year lease
West Ham and the London Stadium’s owners have fought a series of legal battles over the lease of the ground
By James Booth
The owners of London’s former Olympic stadium have kicked off a legal fight with Magic Circle law firm Allen & Overy over its drafting of Premier League club West Ham United’s 99-year lease of the arena.
The stadium’s owners have brought a professional negligence suit against the City law firm for its work on the 2013 concession agreement with West Ham, which has been the subject of a series of expensive lawsuits.
West Ham and the London Stadium’s public sector owners London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) and E20 Stadium LLP have fought several multimillion pound legal disputes stemming from disagreements over the contract that governs the club’s lease of the ground.
The stadium’s public sector owners have lost millions of pounds annually under the terms of the agreement, which a 2017 report, commissioned by London mayor Sadiq Khan, concluded represented poor value for taxpayers.
LLDC and E20 are set to argue that poor drafting by A&O contributed to their difficult relationship with West Ham and a series of costly legal disputes over the interpretation of the agreement, a person with knowledge of the situation said.
“The whole case will revolve around the drafting of the concession agreement and the problems that has caused,” the person said.
LLDC and E20 Stadium launched the High Court claim on 29 September, according to court filings.
An LLDC spokesperson said: “We are in dispute with A&O over the drafting of the West Ham United concession agreement and despite our attempts to resolve this dispute with A&O have been unable to do so.
“We have a responsibility to protect taxpayers’ interests and so have had no alternative but to seek redress through the courts.”
A spokesperson for A&O said: “This claim is entirely without merit and we will defend it vigorously.”
The stadium’s owners and West Ham fought a legal battle that was settled out of court in 2018 over whether the concession agreement allowed for the stadium’s match-day capacity to be increased from 57,000 to 66,000.
West Ham and the stadium’s owners have also fought costly legal battles over issues such as the colour of the materials surrounding the pitch, the number of draught beer pumps in the stadium’s bars and the number of televisions showing Sky TV in the ground.
E20 Stadium LLP – which runs the ground and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of LLDC – made a loss of £28.7m in the year to 31 March 2019 according to its accounts filed with Companies House.
It reported nearly £6m in exceptional costs, which it said included legal fees from the stadium capacity dispute with West Ham.
A 2017 report from accountancy firm Moore Stephens commissioned by Sadiq Khan found that the concession agreement with West Ham would not cover the cost of running the stadium and would leave taxpayers with a hefty annual bill.
“The West Ham agreement... does not recover from West Ham by way of rent and other charges a sum sufficient to cover the associated running costs of the stadium,” it said.
“Presently, the investment by the public purse in the stadium transformation is not only unlikely ever to be recovered, it will on present figures be likely to worsen year by year at the rate of some £10m to £20m per year, due to expected operating losses” the report added.
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Replies - In Chronological Order ( Show Newest Messages First)
Lily Hammer
1:45 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Fuck me!
This is a very interesting development.
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Moncurs Putting Iron
1:46 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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It seems to been equitable:
Everyone lost.
Except GSB that is.
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Golden Oldie
1:49 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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It's fascinating in the fact this was known from the very beginning and the media somehow helped shield the dildo brothers and their hag from any criticism.
Even as a fan it was disgusting how they offset routine running costs onto the taxpayer, imagine how it looks to those who couldn't care less for West Ham
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Mike Oxsaw
1:50 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Who was it who refused West Ham's input before the stadium was even designed?
Who was it that insisted the stadium retain it's external appearance rather than knocking it all down and replacing it with a fit-for-purpose arena?
Easy decisions when it's tax-payers' money you're pissing up the wall.
As is this claim.
Sell the stadium - but not to West Ham's owners or anybody connected to them.
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goose
1:59 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Knock the fucking thing down.
The land must be worth a fortune.
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Jim79
2:01 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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So what is the desired outcome of this legal case, that Allen & Overy stump up the surplus annual loss of £10/20m or just an arbitrary lump sum which will not effect the annual losses?
The whole stadium deal was a joke from start to finish and will never have a happy ending.
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Pickle Rick
2:09 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Basically civil servants screwed up during the process and are now trying to blame the Lawyers for not double checking or correcting there (civil servants) incompetence.
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Lily Hammer
2:12 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Jim79
I can only guess that this is all to publicly shift blame for the bad taxpayer deal onto the law firm, not to get money out of them, but to soften the political blow of selling, (or practically giving away), the stadium.
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Lily Hammer
2:13 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Pickle Rick
That's just what I was thinking and trying to suggest.
Shit is going down.
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Pickle Rick
2:16 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Lily Hammer 2:13 Tue Oct 6
I used to be a CS (not contract negotiations) so were around during the times when they were handing out 30 year contracts. In IT they were handing out 7 year contracts but as the years have gone on they have got a little better and now only hand out 3 year contracts to outsource providers, in IT at least.
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SurfaceAgentX2Zero
2:20 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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In a way this is nothing to do with us. We offered to buy the stadium for a fair price and were turned down - probably in order to preserve the jobs of those at LLDC/E20. There were no better offers than ours and Tottenham and Orient objected to it anyway.
Peace appears to have broken out between ourselves and the landlords who are now desperately trying recoup some cash from another source. As sitting tennants, we'll end up getting it for a quid. I don't really care if that does benefit G&S, in the long-term it will benefit the club, whoever owns it.
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Lily Hammer
2:22 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Something will have to give. There is simply no way the mayor can justify blowing so much taxpayer money year in year out. Khan was hoping to find some kind of loophole, but this latest news clearly shows that this is one bit of work Brady did well, namely pegging the government while they were bent over a barrel.
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El Scorchio
2:34 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Isn't business rule 101 to check what you're signing or agreeing to isn't detrimental to you before you sign it?
Who else's fault other than theirs if they didn't do due diligence at the time and refuse or ask for changes before willingly entering into a contract? This just sounds like 'we fucked up but don't want to look like idiots'.
As mentioned below as well. If they'd not been so arrogant as to not welcome West Ham's input in the first place, most of this mess could have been totally avoided.
However if it all adds up to a stadium sale or a redrawing of the agreement and gets the owners to sell quicker then good.
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Pickle Rick
2:41 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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El Scorchio 2:34 Tue Oct 6
Wasn't the not wanting West Ham's input all down to the desire to keep the stadium an athletics stadium due to the misguided thought that people would give a s**t about athletics after 2012?
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Mike Oxsaw
2:48 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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El Scorchio 2:34 Tue Oct 6
In most cases like this, all the work will be delegated to junior civil servants - many fresh out of university, with the department heads saying stuff like "Don't bring me your problems, bring me your solutions" or "Just get it done by (some arbitrary deadline)": the sort of thing they expect proper managers in the real world to be saying.
In the main, these senior civil servants are just rubber-stampers who love a good meeting or six - at a (foreign) 5-star hotel if possible. They have no actual clue what goes on in their departments, just happy that "it" gets done.
The government/tax-payers were always going to lose on the stadium deal.
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El Scorchio
2:49 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Pickle Rick 2:41
Pretty much, yes! A combination of snobbery and hubris between Coe, the LLDC and whoever the sports minister at the time was, to eschew the idea of football in the stadium or of getting rid of it after the games for redevelopment, when realistically a football team as a tenant (us at 60,000 or Orient at 25,000) was the only way to keep it standing and not turning into a big empty pile of rust and weeds.
I think they'd sold the games as one with legacy so they tied themselves into keeping it, but their stupid plan was as a 25,000 seater athletics only stadium or nothing.
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El Scorchio
2:52 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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Mike Oxsaw 2:48
Sounds about right to be honest. People who have no clue or expertise into what actually needs to happen for anything to be viable. Huge cock up though and they only have themselves to blame for tying themselves into a shit deal. The cheek of trying to shift the blame is something else though....
The idiots should have just sold it to us. As I recall they were happy to sell off most of the rest of the land to foreign investors for somewhat under market value.
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oioi
3:00 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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SurfaceAgentX2Zero 2:20 Tue Oct 6
Exact.
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Sven Roeder
3:01 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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There is probably one way to avoid ongoing legal disputes over the agreement
Read the fucker & realise you have been done like a kipper so go ahead and do what they are asked.
As I understand it they’ve tried to weasel out of certain requests and have been told to fuck off and read what you signed.
This is what happens when civil servants pretend to know their arse from their elbow in business matters
Unlucky
So just shut up and work on handing the ground over for a PEPPERCORN
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Kaiser Zoso
3:15 Tue Oct 6
Re: London Stadium owners sue law firm over West Ham's 99-year lease
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This must be up there with Gina Miller for unintended consequences.
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