Wayne Rooney among football stars landing windfall selling easyHotel building

07 February 2023 , 07:30

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Wayne Rooney and a host of other sports stars have scored a small windfall from a property investment (Image: Getty Images)

Wayne Rooney is among a team of footie legends to score a share of the £8.5million sale of a building housing a budget hotel.

The ex-England captain, 37, and former team-mate Ashley Cole, 42, were among investors cashing in on a building occupied by a £34-a-night easyHotel.

Others included ex-England manager Sam Allardyce, Celtic keeper Joe Hart, ex-Everton midfielder Leon Osman, Portugal coach Roberto Martinez and boxing legend Joe Calzaghe. Premier League stars Marouane Fellaini, Lucas Leiva, Darren Bent, Papiss Cisse and Sylvain Distin were also involved, paperwork shows.

A total of 33 investors bought the building, Proctor House in Newcastle, in 2013, and rented it out. They decided to cash in on their investment and the building sold for £8.5m.

The bank loan against the property was £4.7m, documents lodged at Companies House show, with other debts taking the total owed to creditors to around £4.9m. The £8.5m sale price would have left a profit of £3.6m for the 33 members of the scheme – or more than £100,000 each.

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Members did not give final profit and loss figures for 2021/22. But the records confirmed an initial valuation of Proctor House at £7.7m and the “disposal” or sale figure of £8.5m.

The investors resigned as members of the company owning it last month.

Paperwork for the group said: “The partnership disposed of the sole investment property. This property was the only income generating unit and therefore the partnership ceased to trade after disposal.”

Rooney's former England teammate Ashley Cole was also an investor (Michael Regan/Getty)

The group had encountered problems with their bank loan for the building two years ago, with cash-flow issues when the hotel struggled due to the pandemic. However, trading improved once the country came out of lockdown.

EasyHotel was founded by easyJet’s Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou in 2004 and is now owned by a Canadian pension fund and Luxembourg property investors.

Wayne Rooney’s spokesman declined to comment yesterday.

Jeremy Armstrong