Claims Lipton Rogers owed middleman £11m over 22 Bishopsgate deal fizzle out

Legal action which said Lipton Rogers reneged on an £11m payment to a man who claimed to have helped broker the firm's deal on 22 Bishopsgate has been withdrawn.

In a statement released last month, Hamid Alqumairi said he had been a "crucial middleman" in the 2015 deal which saw Lipton Rogers and French investor AXA take over the project from a Saudi consortium and said he had been promised a fee for his role.

Litpon Rogers later said the claim, filed by Alqumairi and Middle East Real Estate Inc (MERE) more than two years ago, was "without any foundation and is factually inaccurate and misconceived".

In its statement, the developer said the judge hearing the case had described legal action as "'nothing more than a tactic' and that Mr Alqumairi and MERE 'had no serious belief … that [the proceedings] would result in a judgment in their favour.' The judge also described Mr Alqumairi's press release [last month] as 'wholly misleading and to my mind improper'."

Costs of £175,500 were awarded to Lipton Rogers which added: "This matter is now concluded. It should not have arisen at all."

In his claim, Alqumairi added the project "could not have been completed" without him and that he had been "instrumental in getting a workable design agreed". The £11.1m he said he was owed is 1% of the £1.1bn the AXA team is understood to have paid for the site.

Responding to the end of his legal action, Alqumairi told Building: "Despite this disappointing outcome it remains the case that I was instrumental in 22 Bishopsgate's development."

Lipton Rogers and AXA took over the development of the stalled tower, then known as the Pinnacle, eight years ago after work on that scheme was mothballed in 2012 because of funding problems.

The City of London's tallest tower, 22 Bishopsgate was finally finished by Multiplex in December 2020, more than a decade after it was first slated for completion.

Source; building