This is a minority stake sold for an undisclosed amount to a mutual investment fund 3i. At the same time, the management scheme of this successful workshop was radically changed. Norman Foster retained his position as chairman of the board, but Mougins Majidi, one of the bureau's leading architects, is now CEO of the new Wembley Stadium, which is due to open this year. Spencer de Gray and David Nelson will lead the "creative" part, and Graeme Phillips will be the CEO. All of them will also join the new board of directors, all 14 members of which are architects who have worked at Foster's firm for an average of about 20 years.
Thanks to the financial investments of 3i, Foster & Partners will be able to expand both the geographic area of project implementation and the typological area to which these projects relate. In particular, it is planned to develop the direction of India, where the real estate market is now rapidly developing, as well as to pay even more attention to environmentally friendly architecture with rational use of resources.
These injections are especially relevant given the fact that Foster's bureau's revenues have plummeted over the past few years. Now, as the architect himself admits, he will be able to devote much more time to design, the development of creative problems of interest to him.
At the same time, the condition for the purchase of shares by the 3i fund was the transfer of Foster's name as a brand "Foster & Partners" (under this "brand" all projects, without exception, will now leave the workshop), and this agreement will be valid even when Norman Foster himself retire.
