March 13, 2018 | less than a minute read

'All that glitters is not gold'

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Michael Craik

Consultant, Construction

Get in touch

Michael Craik

Consultant, Construction

Once again it would appear the PR and glossy brochures were too good to be true. Investors will have lost money, confidence in these buyer-led or buyer-funded redevelopment schemes will be reduced and we may never know what really went wrong and why.

I have no doubt that other redevelopment schemes in Liverpool and Manchester will be successful. At the same time I am sure this recent high profile failure will encourage investors in future such schemes to be far more cautious and to carry out more due diligence before putting pen to paper and hitting the 'transfer funds' button.

They were billed as the jewels in the crown of the Northern Powerhouse: a multimillion-pound series of property developments that would have brought thousands of new homes and hundreds of jobs to Liverpool and Manchester, complete with helipads, Chinese bazaars and a Banksy street art gallery. But now the plans have collapsed amid accusations of fraud – all strongly denied – leaving the cities scarred with abandoned building sites and a trail of angry investors from around the world demanding to know where their money has gone

www.theguardian.com/...