Crain's Manchester Business - 22-26 February, 2010 - (Page 1)

CRAIN’S LIST Largest Office Lettings 2009 Page 14 FOCUS Page 11 Commercial Property Meet the man with £55m to spend CRAIN’S MANCHESTER BUSINESS VOL. 3, ISSUE 8, FEBRUARY 22 - 26, 2010 CrainsManchesterBusiness.co.uk £2 What’s News ■ Fluid Leader Group, the vehicle which Paul “The Plumber” Davidson floated on the Plus market in 2008 with a view to turning it into an industrial conglomerate, has delisted two months after its shares were suspended. Davidson sold a 12 per cent stake in the firm to Sheikh Faisal Al Qasimi, a member of the Sharjah royal family, for £5m at the beginning of 2008, which was supposedly a precursor to the construction of a £30m production plant in the UAE. However, Davidson resigned as a non-executive director from the board in November 2008. The group’s shares were suspended in November after it failed to file accounts for the year to April 30, 2009. The previous year’s accounts show no revenues and a pre-tax loss of £1.2m. ■ Corbieres Wine Cellar, the cellar bar on Manchester’s Half Moon Street which has been trading for more than 30 years, is to open a second outlet in the city’s Northern Quarter. The bar has been owned for the past ten years by Mike Hayes and Dave Redrobe, and their company has been granted planning permission to convert the former Milanzi warehouse unit on Stevenson Square. A licence has been granted until midnight between Thursday and Sunday and until 2am at weekends. ■ Andrew Silver, the former managing director of Mobberleybased property developer Idiom Estates, has been declared bankrupt. Last month, Crain’s reported that Idiom Estates had been wound up following a petition from Manchester-based law firm Pannone, to whom he had not paid bills following a legal dispute with Bank of Scotland, who have appointed Law of Property Act receivers on sites which Silver owned in Prestwich and at Fleet Street in Liverpool. A bankruptcy order was issued against Silver by Manchester County Court last week. ■ Stockport-based law firm Gorvins has secured a £4m payout for a former partner of a Greater Manchester-based law firm following a dispute between them. The partner, who cannot be named due to a confidentiality agreement, launched a case against the firm last year after the other partners renamed the firm and excluded Gorvins’ client from a newlycreated partnership. Management accounts for the firm showed that it was projecting a seven-figure profit per partner for its current financial year. The partner was represented by litigator Christine Oxenburgh. ■ Orbit Developments has let 3,000 sq ft of managed office space across two recently refurbished buildings in South Six million visitors a year is stadium leisure plan target BY SIMON BINNS Funders behind the landmark leisure scheme being drawn up to regenerate east Manchester want the attraction to bring about six million visitors a year to the area. Speculation is rife as to what may end up on the site next to the City of Manchester Stadium and an announcement is expected within the next few weeks. Key stakeholders Manchester City Football Club, Manchester City Council and New East Manchester City owners are putting up the cash but want to turn the area into a global destination Manchester have remained tightlipped. One source close to the discussions said Abu Dhabi United Group, the owner of Manchester City, had set a target of 100,000 visitors a week. Manchester’s top attraction, the Museum of Science and Industry, gets 819,000 visitors per year while London’s biggest crowd puller, The British Museum, attracts 5.9 million. “The club’s owners want 100,000 a week. That’s their target,” said the source. “It’s ambitious, but so are the club’s owners. There’s a feeling that they are putting the money into it and they have a very clear idea about the returns they would like to see. “It will have to be something really special or a collection of things that keep people coming into the area. The club’s owners want east Manchester to be a global destination.” Senior sources within Manchester’s regeneration and investment community have suggested the council may use MIPIM, the international property show taking place in Cannes in mid-March, as the forum SEE VISITORS, PAGE 18 An impression of the converted Colgate-Palmolive factory Failed mobile phone dealer ran law firm, say staff BY MICHAEL FAHY The former owner of two failed companies was the person in “de facto” charge of Cheadle-based law firm Wolstenholmes prior to its collapse in December, Crain’s has discovered. Ex-staff who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Wasim Saddique, who was brought in by former managing partner Nasser Ilyas as consultant to advise the firm, was effectively running it. Saddique is also said to have brought in his own people to head key functions in the firm, such as accounts and IT. Saddique and another consultant, Mario Cardinali, conducted interviews with potential new recruits and instructed money to be transferred from client accounts to the office account. It is not clear whether the firm carried out background checks on either of them. SCRUBS UP NICELY BY SIMON BINNS Hampered “Their word was law,” said one former employee. A person who worked in the accounts department said the firm was owed around £1.9m by creditors, but efforts made to recover debts were hampered because some clients refused to pay on the grounds of inadequate or non-existent service. “It was a mess,” the person said. “They’d transfer £20,000 or £50,000 with no paperwork to back it up. It N SEE WHAT’S NEWS, PAGE 2 ikal and Carlyle Group are planning to create a Deansgate Locks-style strip of bars and restaurants as part of its Soapworks development in Salford. The Manchester-based developer and the site owner are looking to create almost 100,000 sq ft of new leisure space at the former Colgate-Palmolive factory, which used to make one million tubes of toothpaste a day before it closed down in October 2008. The site links Castlefield in Manchester with Salford Quays and Media City, and James Payne, director at Nikal, said the firm would submit a planning application in April. “We’ll have around 400,000 sq ft of commercial space in the development, with 80,000 sq ft on the ground floor for bars and restaurants,” he said. “On the waterfront, there is the option for even more.” The scheme could create up to 4,000 jobs and the developer is hopeful the leisure occupants will service that market, as well as hook into the nearby Media City. Payne’s elder brother, Nick, also a director at Nikal, was involved in creating Deansgate Locks. Ask Developments bought a string of disused rail arches on Whitworth Street West in 1999 and turned them into a strip of bars. SEE SOAP, PAGE 18 SEE LAW, PAGE 18 Leading Page 3 IMMIGRATION RULES HOLD UP ROLL -OUT OF CHINESE RESTAURANT CHAIN http://CrainsManchesterBusiness.co.uk

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crain's Manchester Business - 22-26 February, 2010

Crain's Manchester Business - 22-26 February, 2010