Berkeley Homes Collective

Post AGM Private Meeting with Berkeley’s Directors

At the end of the AGM on 9th September 2009 at the Woodlands Park Hotel, Cobham, Surrey, Berkeley Group Chairman, Victoria Mitchell, kindly arranged for 5 of her Directors to meet with the Berkeley Homes Collective in a private conference room.

The meeting lasted just over 1 hour.

At the beginning of the meeting Berkeley’s favourite phrase was muttered by all in the Berkeley camp:

“Off the record” (Clearly uncomfortable with having to face reality and talk to their customers, everyone who meets Berkeley hears the same phrase, “this is off the record”).

There were a few new faces and a couple of old ones we already knew, including Directors: Justin Tibaldi and Paul Vallone who are responsible for Caspian Wharf, E3 and Royal Arsenal Riverside, SE18 respectively.

Justin Tibaldi didn’t have much to say and just stood there uncomfortably looking at the floor.

Paul Vallone was his usual arrogant self and gave us the same tired old lecture -

- a contract is a contract

(What about your Section 106 agreements to build Royal Arsenal’s Crossrail station? Why are you trying to bail out of that one if a contract is a contract?)

- they were not suing anybody and are not going to bankrupt anyone (FALSE – see below)

- the reason they won’t negotiate is because buyers haven’t given them “full financial disclosure” (FALSE – see below)

We did point out that:

1. Berkeley won’t define what full financial disclosure is

2. Berkeley won’t tell us what they want the information for and if they’ll propose a solution once they have this information. It looks to us like a fishing exercise to see who is worth taking to the cleaners.

3. Numerous buyers have offered full disclosure and in lieu of any detailed request from Berkeley, have proactively offered sight of mortgage statements, pay slips etc. to prove they can still get a mortgage, but can’t complete at the original purchase price due to the collapse in valuations.

The result is the same “Go away and find the money, otherwise we’ll go legal”

Its a pointless exercise with no benefit for the buyer. Purely an intrusive and humiliating exercise to help Berkeley assess how much they can extract from each individual who can’t complete.

4. Mr Tibaldi was forced to confirm that several buyers have given full financial disclosure and that they had still nonetheless been sent pre-action protocol letters (the step before full High Court claims are issued). While looking at the floor, he confirmed to Mr Vallone that it had “gone legal”. Oooops. Mr Vallone clearly didn’t have a clue what the other half was doing.

Glad to see Berkeley’s Directors communicate with one another just as well as they communicate with their customers.