Accounts for the company, Dolphin Square Limited which manages the property, reveal accrued losses of £47 million since it was formed in 2006.

The company, formerly called Mantilla Limited, is registered in Jersey and is controlled by the US property fund manager, Westbrook. It has to file accounts at UK Companies House because its operations are principally in the UK.

For the year ended 31st December 2017, accounts show that the company made a loss for the year of £2,414,740 compared with a loss of £13,586,980 in 2016.

The directors of the company are named as  Ernesto Diego Rico, Kashif Zaid Sheikh and Cindy Woon, who are all principals of Westbrook based in New York. The UK principals of Westbrook, Mark Donnor and David Collard, are not directors of the company.

The accounts state that the company is exposed to risks associated with “the hotel and serviced apartments” industry despite the current planning application not mentioning any hotel use.

According to the accounts, the freeholder of the property, The Dolphin Square Estate Limited, received rent of £6,408,800 from Dolphin Square Limited under an operating lease which was presumably for the use of Rodney House which operates as the Dolphin House hotel.

The accounts also show that Dolphin Square Limited received £146,800 from The Dolphin Square Estate Limited, also Jersey-based, as a management fee. It is likely that this fee relates to collection of rents for the remainder of Dolphin Square which based on a normal 10% fee assumes total rents for the rest of the building of £14,680,000. The total turnover was £11,642,502 which was principally income from Rodney House.

The accounts reveal that Dolphin Square Limited has 81 employees with an annual wage, social costs and pensions bill of £2,416,648. The employees number 31 for lettings, 24 for sports club and spa, 18 for bar and grill, and 8 for administration. In a document entitled Dolphin Square: The Next 100 years in support of the planning application, Westbrook claim to have more than 180 employees on site.

The accounts show a current deficit on shareholders’ funds of £17,214,287 compared with £14,799,547 the previous year and have been heavily qualified as a going concern by the company’s auditors, the London firm of Cohen Arnold.

Cohen Arnold say in a note to the accounts that the company is dependent on the support of the holders of the beneficial interest in the company’s share capital, WB Dolphin Square LLC “who have provided the company with an undertaking that for at least 12 months from the date of approval of these financial statements, they will not seek repayment of the amounts currently made available to the company.”

WB Dolphin Square LLC is a company registered in the US state of Delaware which offers easy company formation facilities with tax-free status. No filings have been made for this company since 2006. An article in The Economist magazine in February, 2013, jocularly described Delaware companies as “Dollars and Euros laundered and washed at reasonable expense.”

PLEASE CONTINUE TO CIRCULATE OUR PETITION ON SOCIAL MEDIA LIKE FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM AND WHATSAPP.

ALSO PLEASE VISIT THE PLANNING PORTAL TO REGISTER YOUR OPPOSITION TO THESE PLANS. THE ADDRESS IS:-

https://tinyurl.com/savedolphinsquare

The application reference is:  18/01099/FULL

THANK YOU!