This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
DEFENSE, offence and extra time will now be part of football matches at Wembley Stadium rather than off field incidents for Multiplex and the English Football Association.
Last weekend, Multiplex officially handed over the keys to the stadium to the Wembley National Stadium Limited.
The seven year project is now in the hands of WNSL and FA, albeit 14 months and $2.4 billion later – the project was originally priced at $1.12 billion.
Multiplex has been in the defense after it emerged that the Wembley Stadium project has set the company back $365 million. In addition, Multiplex agreed to a $32 million settlement with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in December last year – for failing inform investors the costs blowout associated with the project.
And the company still faces a $100 million class action over the same issue.
Multiplex has also been on the offense, taking on the WNSL with a £350 million ($A850 million) lawsuit. In October last year, both parties agreed to enter into a comprehensive settlement. The agreement was chaired by Lord Carter avoided an open courtroom Multiplex played out during its successful test case against steel subcontractor CBUK.
Multiplex was awarded damages and remedies against CBUK totalling £32.66 million ($A81 million) in June last year.
According to British reports, the agreement in the Lord Carter mediation process, included FA paying Multiplex $173 million on top of the originally agreed $1.12 billion redevelopment price and Multiplex would pay the FA $87 million back as late penalty compensation.
And last month, British reports said an impending legal dispute between Multiplex and another subcontractor, Honeywell, could further delay the staging of test events at Wembley. However, Multiplex shot down any rumours adding that “Multiplex can see no reason why the FA Cup final should not be held at Wembley in 2007,”
The stadium must now host two ‘ramp-up’ events of up to 60,000 capacity in order to test facilities and obtain a General Safety Certificate from the London Borough of Brent.
However, The FA are unable to confirm that The FA Cup Final will take place at Wembley Stadium on May 19 until the ‘ramp-up’ events and safety procedures are concluded.
The first ‘ramp-up’ event will be a Community Day on Saturday, March 17. The second ‘ramp-up’ event will be an England Under-21 International against Italy on Saturday, March 24.
The Football Association’s chief executive Brian Barwick said handover of the keys is a significant step towards staging this year’s FA Cup Final and opening the new Wembley Stadium.
WNSL’s managing director Alex Horne said there are a lot of detailed work still to do and will continue post-handover to work with Multiplex and their sub-contractors to finalise all aspects of the stadium and bring it to life.
Following this chapter, Multiplex will now turn to an impending $4 billion takeover bid launched by the Roberts Family and Canadian asset manager Brooksfield Asset Management.
Last month, Brookfield and RFN made a bid to buy 100% of the underlying businesses of Multiplex Limited, including Multiplex’s property development, construction, property funds management and facilities management businesses.
In 2004, the Roberts family floated the $2 billion company on the Australian Stock Exchange and had a majority shareholding of 46%. RFN later sold down its stake to 25.6% in Multiplex.
Australian Property Journal
