law


Paris Smith marches in with the Saints


As part of Paris Smith’s 200th anniversary celebrations The Business Magazine looks at the firm’s work with some of its major clients. Paris Smith was on the ball with Southampton Football Club when it moved to a purpose-built stadium in 2001


One of the more unusual legal aspects Paris Smith had to resolve before Premier League club Southampton could move from The Dell to St Mary’s involved delicate negotiations of a heavenly nature.


British Gas owned the land for the new stadium, but an arcane covenant in favour of the Church of England forbade the use of religious terminology in connection with the site. That would have been a bit of a problem for a club nicknamed the Saints that wanted to call its stadium St Mary’s.


Complex negotiations


Attention to details like this is essential in the complex world of property and commercial law. In the end, it was only a minor issue of nineteenth century law for Paris Smith’s commercial property partner James Snaith to unpick. “Covenants have a tendency to hang around, but each one had to be dealt with, including liquor licences on pubs that preceded the old gasworks on the site,” he said.


The firm had worked with the club for many years before the move from The Dell. Consultant and former partner of the firm, Ian Gordon, was a Southampton FC director and Snaith had worked on a range


of commercial issues for the club since the 1990s. This included carrying out due diligence work on a reverse takeover of the club and a subsequent flotation.


Malcolm Le Bas, the firm’s senior partner at the time of the ground move, acted for the club on selling The Dell to Barrett Homes, assisted by Snaith. Snaith’s negotiations on the purchase of the gasworks site included obtaining warranties from British Gas to deal with contamination on the site.


“The logistics of the deal were very challenging. We had to put everything in place from a legal perspective at exactly the right time. There wasn’t room for anything to go awry, and nothing did, so the football team was able to kick off a new season as planned at the new ground,” said Snaith.


The funding negotiations for the new stadium were led by former partner Douglas Cooper. Two stages of funding involved finance for the construction of the stadium followed by a securitisation deal for long-term finance.


Another relatively small issue that could have threatened the whole project was a footbridge over the railway line next to St


James Snaith


Mary’s. The footbridge is a vital pedestrian access route, but Railtrack’s engineers wanted to keep the lines open and running while it was built. “Negotiations were quite fraught but we found a solution,” remembered Snaith, who was involved in this aspect alongside former partner Sue MacPherson.


Action off the pitch


The club’s move was as much for commercial reasons as it was to give fans a better, safer stadium. It was a period when many older football grounds, with terracing for standing and out-of-date facilities, were vacated for purpose-built stadiums. Southampton’s move increased capacity from The Dell’s 18,000 to the 32,000 all- seater St Mary’s.


“The benefit of being able to walk from the city centre to St Mary’s is enormous, but other than on match days, there is little passing trade. We face an interesting business challenge of utilising the stadium when it only hosts around 25 games a year,” said the club’s current commercial director David Thomas.


St Mary’s ‘undercroft’ space beneath the Itchen stand is used for commercial activities and the club’s offices. Paris Smith was involved in negotiating some of the initial leases with business users. One was the city council and police, which operated a CCTV monitoring centre at the stadium that covered the whole city.


The Itchen stand includes hospitality areas for fans and 44 corporate boxes. The club hosts over 2,000 events a year, many with local organisations. Paris Smith is a regular customer. “Businesses realise that we can offer something quite unique here that’s more interesting than holding an event in a hotel,” said Thomas.


The stadium also hosts open-air summer concerts – Robbie Williams thrilled an audience of 30,000 last year.


74 businessmag.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – MARCH/APRIL 2018


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