How the deals began

A Guardian analysis published on 25 October 2026 charts a stark rise in UAE investment in Manchester, measured in land and property owned across the city. At its peak in 2023, the total extent was equivalent to 260 football pitches.

The report traces the origin to events far from the north of England: Hosni Mubarak's toppling in Egypt's 2011 Arab spring protests. His successor, the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, was described as a sworn enemy of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE warned David Cameron's ministers it could pull billion-pound arms deals unless Britain acted against the Brotherhood.

In response, a secret Whitehall unit was rushed into being to keep the oil-rich emirates on side, and investment deals were put on the table in private meetings.

Summer 2013 brought Manchester into the frame: Cameron's government asked the city council to draw up three investment proposals for the UAE. One became the £1bn Manchester Life deal, under which the council sold a prime slice of city-centre land to Abu Dhabi for £5m to build 6,000 homes, with first refusal on other projects.

Richard Leese, then council leader, said housing development around the city centre and Ancoats had stalled for years, with no other developers willing or able to do it. The deal, he said, was brokered by the UK government, and the council had been seeking a very significant investment for the £1bn scheme.

The Manchester Life agreement

In December 2015 the council signed a 10-year "collaboration agreement" with Abu Dhabi giving the emirates first refusal on land near the city centre. A clause in the deal stopped the council's elected politicians from announcing it without written approval from Sheikh Mansour's firm - a restriction other developers learned of only years later.

The council defended the clause as a standard agreement requiring announcements to be agreed by all parties.

Manchester city council strongly denied that the arrangement was a "sweetheart deal", after University of Sheffield researchers concluded it had effectively given away valuable land too cheaply. In 2017, the council paid £42m for a hollowed-out retail park - described as the biggest ever land purchase in Manchester city centre - at a price per acre at least six times higher than the adjacent land sold to Sheikh Mansour for £5m.

What got built - and what didn't

The housing numbers have fallen well short of what was promised:

• Manchester Life has delivered 2,039 homes - a third of the 6,000 promised.
• A further 2,839 were built by others, bringing the total to 4,878, nearly 20% short of the pledge.
• Despite a policy of at least 20% social and affordable housing, only 8% of the 4,878 properties fell into that category - and none were provided by Manchester Life.

The route fans walk to the Etihad Stadium runs through neighbourhoods counted among the poorest in England's second most deprived local authority. Four charity food banks operate within half a mile.

Mark Blake, chief executive of Manchester Central Foodbank, warned that the influx of new apartments during a cost of living crisis could feed resentment. There have also been reports of cars belonging to visitors to the Abu Dhabi-funded properties being vandalised after being left on council estate streets. Lib Dem councillor Alan Good described an "insane" property crisis, with 20,000 people on the city's social housing register.

Sheikh Mansour's holdings now reach well beyond the housing deal: the Manchester City owner has built a portfolio including the UK's biggest indoor arena, an "upper-upscale hotel" that opened last month, and investment in university research through a firm run by City chief executive Khaldoon al-Mubarak.

Burnham's loans and the investigations

Andy Burnham's own record is now part of the picture, as the cheating scandal at Manchester City puts a spotlight on Abu Dhabi's wider influence in the city that helped power him to Downing Street. In summer 2016, he told the Salford Star that if elected he would stop large property firms benefiting from multimillion-pound taxpayer-funded mayoral loans. Barely a year later, he signed off a £55m loan to Jersey-registered property firms owned by Sheikh Mansour, whose fortune is reported at about £300bn.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority said its loans fund was open to all developers meeting lending criteria and that the loans had been repaid in full - but those decisions are now being investigated by its scrutiny committee.

Internal dissent has also marked the council's property dealings. Dominic Hayes, a senior council property officer, quit abruptly in March 2018, citing concerns in an email to chief executive Joanne Roney about the council's dealings with Mansour's group. Days later, Eddie Smith reportedly said Hayes had thrown colleagues under a bus and made "not acceptable [and] possibly dangerous" criticisms of a Manchester City board, according to contemporaneous notes.

Burnham has said he initially had only one "significant" meeting with the club's bosses, in 2021, but a further five have since emerged. Last week he said he had asked the GMCA to conduct a manual trawl of its records. "I want everything possible to be out there", he said.

The GMCA loans decisions remain under investigation by its scrutiny committee, while Burnham has pressed for the full trawl of records so that everything can be published.