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McKillen company sets aside €25m amid hotel row with Qataris

Hume Street Management Consultants launched legal proceedings in US against former ruler of Persian Gulf state in 2022

Paddy McKillen has claimed he is owed about €1 billion under a profit-share agreement reached with the Qataris in 2015 when they took over his 36 per cent interest in the Maybourne group. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA Wire

Ian Curran
Wed Jan 31 2024 - 06:00

A consultancy company owned by property player Paddy McKillen snr and linked to his management of the luxury Maybourne hotel group set aside €25 million in 2022 related to revenue contracts currently subject to legal proceedings, new accounts filed in Dublin reveal.

Hume Street Management Consultants (HSMC), where Mr McKillen is listed as a director and owner through an Isle of Man-registered entity, reported a loss of almost €1.7 million for the year to the end of December 2022. That compared with a profit of more than €7 million in 2021, according to the filings.

A note attached to the abridged accounts reveals the company set aside more than €25.08 million as a “provision for revenue contracts subject to legal proceedings”.

Although the nature of the issue is not detailed in the accounts, HSMC is the company through which Mr McKillen launched legal proceedings in the US in 2022 related to a dispute with members of the Qatari royal family over his management of the Maybourne group, owner of the luxury Claridge’s, the Connaught and the Berkeley hotels in London.

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In the UK, Mr McKillen has been in dispute with Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, former ruler of the Qatari regime, and his family, claiming he is owed about €1 billion under a profit-share agreement reached with the Qataris in 2015 when they took over his 36 per cent interest in the Maybourne group. He has also taken legal proceedings in the US and France to secure payment of multimillion fees for refurbishing the Maybourne Beverly Hills and the Maybourne Riviera.

In proceedings filed in California in late 2022, the Belfast-born developer said he failed to recover management fees owed to him – despite a number of attempts to do so – through representatives and directly to the former Qatari ruler and his daughter.

HSMC provided invoices for $6 million (€5.6 million) in hotel management fees and $12 million in project management fees for work on the Maybourne Beverly Hills in 2020 and 2021. However, Mr McKillen claims that work carried out would warrant “tens of millions of dollars” of fees.

Hume Street received management fee payments of €4.4 million in 2020 and €4.3 million in 2021 from Coroin Ltd – the operator of the Maybourne hotels in London where Mr McKillen was listed as a director until 2018 – and related companies, previous filings indicated.

Last year, however, the company availed of an exemption to avoid disclosing transactions entered into with other group companies.

The accounts also note that the company is engaged in “several ongoing legal proceedings in France, the UK and the US, some of which are confidential”. The proceedings are described as “ongoing” and their outcomes “have not yet been determined”.

The wider Maybourne group is owned by former Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa and Qatar’s former prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani.

Ian Curran

Ian Curran

Ian Curran is a Business reporter with The Irish Times

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