A company controlled by property investor Robert Tchenguiz is suing Spanish law firm Cuatrecasas for €213m (£181m) claiming it acted negligently over the sale of Santander’s Madrid HQ.
Tchenguiz spent the best part of a decade vying for control of the property which was bought from Santander in 2008 by property entrepreneurs Derek Quinlan and Glenn Maud.
At the time, the intricately leveraged transaction was one of the biggest ever European property deals with the HQ valued at more than €2bn. But by 2014, Maud and Quinlan’s investment vehicle, Marme Group, fell into insolvency. This triggered a battle amongst investors to take control of Marme, and thus the freehold.
After a series of court battles, Tchenguiz-controlled company Edgeworth Capital acquired various assets and liabilities of Marme. In June 2019, following a Spanish court-supervised process, Edgeworth sold the interest to another investment vehicle, Sorlinda Investments, which subsequently sold the HQ back to Santander.
Edgeworth is now suing its former Spanish law firm for professional negligence over its actions in 2019.
According to court documents, Edgeworth alleges that lawyers at Cuatrecasas didn’t tell them about two Spanish Supreme Court judgments earlier that year that, they say, increased the value of their investment.
The Supreme Court ruled that Marme’s creditors couldn’t claim interest on their debts which reduced Marme’s liabilities by more than €400m. Had they known this, Edgeworth’s lawyers say, they would have negotiated a better price for their holding.
At a court hearing earlier this year, lawyers for Cuatrecasas tried to get the claim knocked out, saying there was a mistake on the claim form.
However, in a ruling handed down last week, High Court judge Master MCQuail ruled the claim from could be amended. The judgment also included details of Edgeworth’s case.
Edgeworth Capital (Luxembourg) SARL v Cuatrecasas Gonçalves Pereira LLP
Business and Property Courts (Master McQuail) 2 May 2025
