Developer sued over City’s Royal Albert Dock project
A US hedge fund is suing the new owner of the Royal Albert Dock development once hailed as a beacon of Chinese-british relations.
Baupost Group has alleged that DPK Management, owned by developer and amateur jockey David Maxwell, pulled out of a deal to acquire the east London site together. The hedge fund claimed it had made an oral agreement on a joint venture with DPK at a September 2022 meeting between Mr Maxwell and Scott Dunn, Baupost’s managing director.
The deal involved Baupost providing 95pc of the funds required with DPK responsible for the rest. The hedge fund has brought the lawsuit alongside a Luxembourg entity it said was intended as the joint venture vehicle.
Baupost claimed that Mr Maxwell also confirmed in an email that the hedge fund would have the exclusive right to do the deal with DPK.
The east London development was originally designed to rival the City of London and Canary Wharf. Boris Johnson, London mayor at the time, originally struck a deal with Chinese company Advanced Business Parks (ABP) in 2013 to develop a 35-acre plot of land opposite London City airport.
The £1.7bn site was to feature offices, shops and homes. However, construction was halted after just 400,000 sq ft had been completed and with only a handful of tenants in place.
Last summer, Sadiq Khan, Mr Johnson’s successor at City Hall, removed ABP and Xu Weiping, its chairman, from the site. PWC, the “big four” accounting firm, was appointed as liquidator to sell off the office space on which Mr Xu had spent around £270m.
DPK exchanged contracts with PWC to buy the site in a deal believed to be worth “tens of millions of pounds”, far less than that paid into the development by the Chinese tycoon.
The companies previously worked on property deals together, including an investment in a portfolio of UK car showrooms, according to the claim.
Pallas Partners is representing Baupost and DPK Management’s lawyers are Paul Hastings. Baupost and DPK were contacted for comment.