Manchester City

MANCHESTER, England — In the 14 years since an investment vehicle linked to the state of Abu Dhabi bought Manchester City, the emirate's wealth has ...

But investments in property and other ventures, and the people that enable them, also have drawn scrutiny. The report also concluded that the “traceable rental and sales income streams” from the 1,468 homes built on the sites so far “flow to Abu Dhabi interests only.” Although the Manchester City Council claims to have a revenue-sharing arrangement with its partners, the researchers said they had found “no income from the Manchester Life investment in the council’s accounts.” The researchers claim, though, that A.D.U.G. did rather better out of the deal than its partner. The Manchester City Council insisted that each of the deals — which granted the United Group’s holding companies leases on the properties stretching for 999 years — told the researchers that all of the proposals “achieved best consideration.” Yet despite a chronic homelessness problem in the city, the developers were excused from meeting commitments on including affordable housing by planning officers who decreed there was enough supply in the area to meet demand, the report found. Its construction and property boom has been outpaced only by London; by some metrics, it is England’s fastest-growing city. The breadth of that investment, though, stretches far beyond the confines of the club’s Etihad Stadium, according to a report published Thursday by researchers in England. In it, the report’s authors said the club’s owners have benefited from what they called a “sweetheart deal” with local lawmakers that allowed them to buy vast tracts of public land in Manchester at substantially reduced prices.