The council loaned them £14m when, given the sale price, ACL was worth less than £6m. Why not loan then £15m, sell the lease extension then you have ACL worth far more than the loan.
Or Higgs give ACL a bridging loan knowing a sale is imminent and they'll get their money straight back.
The 14m was secured on the assets of ACL including a lease valued in the accounts at 18m+ so wasn't based on the overall value of ACL or its sale price at all. The security actually exceeded the loan value
Due to be being placed in a distressed state ACL did not have the cash to achieve an extension. For the council to lend the money for an extension would have probably brought a judicial review that would have hampered finances of ACL. Would either Sisu or wasps have paid more because of a longer lease? In any case with no anchor tenant then the increase in value would it have been significant. As I keep saying the value of the lease extended or not is not the same for CCC & AEHC as it is now for wasps.
The charity could not have provided such a loan under current charity rules. It risked good money after bad on an investment AEHC wanted out of.
The original lease should have been longer. Extending the lease then selling might not have achieved any great increase prior to sale to wasps. It might simply increase to match the loan needed. It might have driven wasps away leaving CCC & AEHC in trouble given Sisu were saying often and loudly they were not planning on Ccfc staying effectively distressing themselves in addition to Sisu doing it. The risk was losing everything. That may well have let Sisu the site on the cheap but it is risk CCC assessed would be too great for all of CCC taxpayers not just the Ccfc ones.