Award for €300 million Evans building project overturned

The Public Contracts Review Board has annulled the recommendation to award a 65-year concession for the Evans Building in Valletta to Valletta Luxury Projects (VLP).

This decision follows separate appeals lodged by Katari Hospitality JV and the Iconic Hotel Malta Nobu Consortium, represented by the European School of English (ESE).

The estimated value of the tender, which involves regenerating the historic site into a luxury tourism establishment, is approximately €300,025,420.

At the heart of the dispute was a significant discrepancy in the financial offer submitted by the preferred bidder, VLP. While VLP’s Financial Bid Form indicated a total of €78 million, representing €1.2 million per year for 65 years, the company manually entered only €1.2 million as the "Grand Total" in the electronic XML submission system.

The board ruled that the evaluation committee acted unlawfully by allowing VLP to "correct" this figure to €78 million after the bids were opened. The sources state that the board determined this was not a simple arithmetical error but a substantive change to the bid, violating the principles of equal treatment and self-limitation.

Meanwhile, the appeal by ESE was found formally inadmissible because it was filed without its consortium partner, Arrigo Group of Hotels, violating the requirement for joint representation.

Furthermore, the board upheld ESE’s disqualification regarding its financial standing, specifically confirming that the company failed to meet the required "gearing ratio" threshold.

The board rejected ESE’s preferred mathematical methodology, ruling that the contracting authority’s approach was a rational and industry-standard method for assessing financial resilience over a long-term concession.

Despite remaining disqualified, the board ordered a full refund of ESE's €50,000 deposit, noting that their legal challenge served the public interest by helping to identify legal errors in the preferred bidder's offer.

As a result of these findings, the contracting authority must now appoint a new evaluation committee to conduct a fresh financial review of all compliant bidders.

The board explicitly ordered that the Nobu Consortium must remain excluded from this re-evaluation due to their confirmed failure to meet the initial selection criteria.