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The biggest company you've never heard of: Lifting the lid on Peel Group - the property firm owned by a reclusive tax exile
The low-profile company controlled by a billionaire tax exile
When the BBC announced in 2007 that it was to move five major departments and 1,500 London-based jobs up to Salford, Manchester, one of the reasons it cited was a commitment to "distribute production spend... more widely across the whole of the UK".
Its new £200m, five-storey home - MediaCityUK - on the banks of the famous Salford Quays would be a shining beacon of regeneration that the then-Labour government was trying to encourage in less-affluent regions beyond London and the South-east.
However, the company that rents the 200-acre waterfront site to the BBC is, in fact, one tiny cog in a giant network of companies ultimately controlled by a billionaire tax exile who lives on the Isle of Man.
Over the next 20 years, the BBC is due to spend hundreds of millions of pounds in licence-fee payers' money to the Peel Group, one of the largest private-owned property companies in the UK.
At the apex of its complex corporate structures sits John Whittaker, a fearsome dealmaker whose aggressive business strategies have seen the firm colonise huge swathes of the North.
There are hundreds of subsidiary Peel companies registered in the UK, all ultimately owned by a private family trust, the Billown Trust, registered in the Isle of Man.
Almost three-quarters of this entity is owned by John Whittaker, 71, and his children, with the remaining stake taken by the Saudi Olayan Group.
The tycoon is a director of an astonishing 312 companies, according to Companies House. Almost all are Peel Group subsidiaries, which include interests in Liverpool, Durham and Doncaster airports, the Manchester Ship Canal, Scottish ports, and docks along the banks of the River Mersey.
The jewel in the Peel crown was, until 2011, the Trafford Centre, a huge out-of-town shopping mall in Manchester eventually sold to CSC for £1.65bn. When the sale was completed, Whittaker's empire managed to legitimately avoid paying around £200 million in capital gains tax because it took payment in CSC's shares.