The whole thing was a mess.”At that point, Nomura withdrew, plunging the sale back to square one. In a letter to Hands, the NMEC’s chairman said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the decision. David James wrote that, at meetings, Nomura had been given realistic, full-priced estimates and “you should also note that your team have been informed weekly of actual visitor numbers by e-mail. It is surprising, therefore, that you have only recently identified this as an issue.”James wrote that he felt particularly let down because Nomura had recently requested an improved communication flow, which was being attended to.Dome insiders try to put a gloss on Nomura’s climbdown, claiming that the bank was never serious, that Hands (who is currently just about Britain’s most successful deal-maker) was acting on his own, without the say-so of his masters in Japan “Bullshit,” said the Nomura executive quoted earlier “Guy Hands is an employee of Nomura He can’t do something like this without Nomura’s approval. The recommendation to withdraw was Guy’s.”Some of the blame for the debacle is levelled by Dome staff at PY Gerbeau, drafted in as chief executive of the NMEC to save its showpiece when it hit the buffers soon after the disastrous opening party on New Year’s Eve 1999.

“PY was great at enthusing staff but the whole issue of insolvency he did not see coming,” said one Dome executive.Such criticism is unfair Gerbeau was an excellent salesman and a terrific leader. Responsibility for preparing the books for sale, surely, lay elsewhere, with Falconer and his staff who oversaw the whole thing. “PY should have had better support,” acknowledges the Dome official.Today, Gerbeau believes he was made a victim for the failings of others. Now trying to put the Dome behind him, he has relaunched his career as chief executive of Exscape, a company developing combined leisure and shopping centres. Its first venture, in Milton Keynes, complete with an indoor mini-mountain of artificially created “real” snow, is already well on target to surpass the Dome’s visitor tally But he remains bitter “The Millennium Commission was the banker. Their agenda was ‘We must not lose face, we must try to cover ourselves.

And now we have a scapegoat in the Frenchman.’ Their agenda was survival.”Gerbeau claims that when it came to his own bid, the Government did not want to know, preferring to talk to others – rather than let him take it over and make it work. That may be so, but it is also the case that Gerbeau struggled to get the necessary level of financial backing for his proposal. Meanwhile, the Government was left with the ever more urgent problem of what to do about the Dome’s future.Nomura’s withdrawal set the sale back months. The next preferred bidder in line was Legacy, a consortium headed by Robert Bourne, the property developer. The same rigmarole swung into operation again in September 2000, with Legacy being granted preferred-bidder status.But Legacy’s bid – which has never been formally withdrawn – was doomed once the dot bubble burst. Bourne’s plan was for a hi-tech business park, employing 20,000 people in small units. Doubts were raised about the viability of the idea, and in February this year the special status was removed, sending the sale, for the second time, back to the drawing-board.Two years after the process started, the Government was no nearer concluding a sale.