This report maps documented relationships between each director of Manchester City and its parent City Football Group and (i) the Government of Abu Dhabi and the UAE federal state, (ii) Abu Dhabi sovereign and state-linked investment vehicles, (iii) the directors’ other private interests, and (iv) the club’s commercial partners.

It identifies structural conflicts and associated-party exposure. It makes no allegation of personal wrongdoing against any individual. Evidence grades are applied throughout.

Headline findings

1. State saturation of the board. Of the six directors of Manchester City Football Club Limited, three  are current officials of the Executive Affairs Authority (EAA),  its Chairman (Khaldoon Al Mubarak), the Special Adviser to the Chairman (Simon Pearce) and its Executive Director of Government Affairs (Abdulla Al Khouri). A fourth (Martin Edelman) is a senior adviser to Mubadala, a director of MGX and General Counsel of G42. Four of six  hold current roles within the Abu Dhabi state or state-owned enterprises. On the seven-member CFG board, five of seven have a direct or institutional Abu Dhabi connection.

2. Owner and chairman are fused at sovereign-fund level. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed (UAE Vice President; person with significant control of CFG) chairs Mubadala; Khaldoon Al Mubarak is Mubadala’s Managing Director and Group CEO. The reporting line inside the club is replicated inside the sovereign fund. Companies House records Sheikh Mansour’s correspondence address as the Ministry of Presidential Affairs.

3. The minority investor is not independent of Abu Dhabi. Silver Lake (c.17% of CFG, represented by Co-CEO Egon Durban) has itself been partly owned by Mubadala since September 2020, when Mubadala acquired a minority equity interest in Silver Lake and committed US$2bn to a Silver Lake long-term vehicle. The deal was fronted by Khaldoon Al Mubarak and Mr Durban.

4. Sponsor overlap is structural, not incidental. Of 34 listed global partners, five are owned or controlled by the Abu Dhabi or UAE state (Etihad Airways via ADQ; via the Emirates Investment Authority, chaired by Sheikh Mansour; Experience Abu Dhabi, a government department; Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, owned by the Government of Abu Dhabi; Aldar, whose largest shareholder is Mubadala at 28.03%). One sitting director (Edelman) sits on Aldar’s board; a second (Durban) leads the firm that owns sponsor Qualtrics.

5. Continuity through the charge period. All six current MCFC directors were in office during at least part of the period covered by the Premier League’s charges (2009/10 to 2017/18, and non-cooperation from December 2018). Five of six were appointed before the end of the 2017/18 season. The commission’s reported findings of 25 September 2026 therefore fall on a board whose composition is materially unchanged.

Principal governance risks for regulators and counterparties

Associated-party perimeter: On any reading of an associated-party test built on common control or significant influence, Etihad, e&, Experience Abu Dhabi, Emirates Palace and Aldar sit inside the ownership group’s economic perimeter. Qualtrics is a closer, but live, question.

Independence deficit: No MCFC director can be characterised as independent of the owner in the sense used by the UK Corporate Governance Code. The two directors without current Abu Dhabi roles (Galassi, MacBeath) are long-serving (14 and 16 years); Mr Galassi previously ran a Mubadala-controlled company.

Foreign political exposure: The board carries direct exposure to US political controversy (Mr Edelman’s reported board seat at World Liberty Financial and membership of the Gaza “Board of Peace” executive board) and to Sino-Emirati diplomacy (Mr Al Mubarak as Presidential Special Envoy to China).

Disclosure hygiene: Published director biographies on the CFG and club websites are materially out of date.

The CFG website describes ownership through Newton Investment and Development LLC; the UK register describes a direct individual PSC. The two are reconcilable (an individual can be PSC through a wholly owned intermediate), but the intermediate entity is not recorded as a relevant legal entity on the register. Any regulator applying an owners’ test should require the full chain to be evidenced.

Martin Lee Edelman

On 19 September 2025 Messrs Al Mubarak, Pearce, MacBeath, Edelman and Galassi resigned together from the boards of City Football Marketing Ltd, City Football Services Ltd and/or City Football Treasury Management Ltd. The timing coincides with the 8 September 2025 settlement of the APT dispute. No causal link is asserted; the reason should be established before any conclusion is drawn.

Mr Al Mubarak is simultaneously the club’s chairman, the chief executive of the owner’s sovereign fund, the chair of the President’s policy agency and a member of the emirate’s cabinet-equivalent. There is no meaningful separation between his club role and his state roles. The CFG website biography still lists him as chair of Emirates Global Aluminium and ENEC, which his current Mubadala and EAA biographies no longer state,  an inconsistency the club should correct.

Mr Pearce is a direct subordinate of the club chairman in the Abu Dhabi government. His club directorship cannot be treated as independent oversight of the chairman.

A serving EAA official, reporting within the chairman’s agency. If the Emirates Palace directorship is current, he sits on both sides of a club sponsorship that the APT tribunal noted had been subject to delay.

Mr Edelman is the board’s principal bridge between the Mansour-chaired and Tahnoun-chaired centres of Abu Dhabi capital. He is the only director with a confirmed seat on a current sponsor’s board (Aldar). His reported WLF role imports US emoluments and foreign-influence controversy into the club boardroom. At 85 and 18 years in post, he is also the board’s longest-standing non-Emirati appointee alongside Mr Pearce.

Silver Lake is presented as an independent, arm’s-length minority investor. It is not: the owner’s sovereign fund is an equity holder in the general partner and a US$2bn capital provider to it. Silver Lake’s stake in CFG is therefore not a fully independent counterweight to Abu Dhabi control.

No current Abu Dhabi role identified. His appointment originated during a period of direct commercial dependency on Mubadala. Both the MCFC and CFG websites still describe him as Ferretti CEO more than four months after his departure.

The closest the board has to an independent non-executive, although 16 years’ service and executive history at the club weigh against independence under Code criteria.

The Premier League blocked a proposed Etihad renewal in 2023 on fair market value grounds. An arbitral tribunal set that decision aside as procedurally unfair in October 2024. On 8 September 2025 City and the League settled City’s challenge to the amended APT rules, with City accepting the current rules as valid and binding; press reports then indicated the renewal could proceed, with values of up to £1bn speculated. This review located no public confirmation of the terms or completion of a new Etihad agreement. Its value relative to independent benchmarks (The Sponsor put City’s front-of-shirt fair value at £72.8m in 2023) will be the single most important APT test for the club.

Club-side capital runs through bodies chaired by Sheikh Mansour (Mubadala, EIA, Central Bank). Sponsor-side and AI-side capital increasingly runs through bodies chaired by Sheikh Tahnoun (ADQ/Etihad, FAB, MGX, G42, ADIA). Mr Al Mubarak (MGX Vice Chair, G42 board) and Mr Edelman (MGX director, G42 GC) sit inside both. The club board is therefore embedded in the two principal centres of Abu Dhabi state capital, not merely in the owner’s personal holdings.

UAE opacity: UAE government agencies and private companies (including Newton Investment and Development LLC, Ethara, Ohana and Emirates Palace Co.) do not publish registers comparable to Companies House. Ownership of Ethara has not been established.

Secondary-source dependence: ADIC’s c.33% holding in FAB, Mr Al Mubarak’s chairmanship of ADIC, Mr Al Khouri’s Emirates Palace and Media Zone directorships, and Mr Edelman’s Royal Group advisory role rest on grade D sources and require verification.

Reported, not published: The 114-of-115 finding is based on press reports of an unpublished decision. The WLF board seat is based on reporting of the Wall Street Journal investigation, which the parties dispute in its implications.

Sponsorship values: Contract values for state-linked partners are not disclosed; no fair-value opinion is offered on any individual agreement.

Point in time: Positions are as at 29 September 2026. Biographies of several directors are demonstrably stale, so self-disclosed roles may also be out of date in either direction.

No allegation: Holding multiple roles is a structural conflict, not evidence of misconduct. Nothing in this report asserts that any individual has acted improperly.