Are the Qataris ready for the curse of Canary Wharf?

I’ve written before of a ‘curse of Qatar’ that might explain misfortunes attending the Gulf state’s UK investments, of which the seven-years-delayed Chelsea Barracks redevelopment is an example. I also claim to have coined ‘curse of Canary Wharf’, a phenomenon afflicting not only financial tenants of the Docklands complex but visitors such as Gordon Brown, who never lived down his speech congratulating Lehman Brothers on ‘the contribution you make to the prosperity of Britain’ at the opening of the doomed bank’s office tower there. So the prospect of a renewed Qatari bid for Songbird, the corporate owner of Canary Wharf, fills me with foreboding.

A first 295-pence-per-share offer by the Qatar Investment Authority, which already holds 28.6 per cent, in partnership with US-Canadian investor Brookfield which holds 22 per cent, was firmly rejected. An improved offer above 350 pence was widely expected this week. Readers who have been following the shenanigans surrounding Qatar’s winning bid to host the 2022 World Cup, and have pondered the ambiguity of Qatar’s position as both a member of the military alliance against the Islamic State and, allegedly, a major funder of Islamist groups, may wonder whether this wheeler–dealer sheikhdom is ‘fit and proper’ to throw its money around London on such a scale: it already owns chunks of Barclays and Sainsbury’s as well as Harrods, the Shard and the Olympic Park, and is apparently now keen to buy into our high-speed rail projects.

And what of the future of Canary Wharf? It has plans to develop 3,000 homes on an adjacent site, and from 2018 Crossrail will bring it superfast links to the West End and Heathrow. So the marketing men can claim a new era dawns: but the gleaming towers and giant trading floors at the core of the estate were built to accommodate an era of finance that is passing and looks daily more tainted — last week’s forex trading revelations offering final confirmation of an incorrigible propensity to cheat combined with chronic failures of management.