Minerva plc is a London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 based British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 developer and property

Property

Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...

 firm co-founded by the millionaire

Millionaire

A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. It can also be a person who owns one million units of currency in a bank account or savings account...

 philanthropists Sir David Garrard and Andrew Rosenfeld. Garrard and Rosenfeld took the company public in 1996 and have now left the business.

Minerva is involved in several major projects, including the proposed Minerva Building

Minerva Building

The Minerva Building was a skyscraper once planned for the eastern edge of London's main financial district, the City of London. If built, it would have been the first building in the City of London to contain more than of office space....

 and The Walbrook in the City of London

City of London

The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...

. The Minerva Building and Minerva's planned Park Place

Park Place (Croydon)

Park Place was a shopping centre which had been expected to open in Croydon, England by 2011, although this date has been pushed back and building has not started. It is part of the Croydon Vision 2020 re-generation scheme...

 shopping and office development and its previous ownership of the Allders

Allders

Allders is an independent department store in Croydon, established by Joshua Allder in 1862. It is the fourth-largest department store in the United Kingdom.The Croydon store was the flagship of a large chain of department stores in the UK...

 chain of department stores, both in Croydon

Croydon

Croydon is a town in South London, England, located within the London Borough of Croydon to which it gives its name. It is situated south of Charing Cross...

, came under scrutiny amidst the 2006 Cash for Peerages

Cash for Peerages

Cash for Honours is the name given by some in the media to a political scandal in the United Kingdom in 2006 and 2007 concerning the connection between political donations and the award of life peerages...

 political scandal, when it emerged that the Labour

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

government had chosen not to intervene over the Minerva Building and Park Place planning decisions or the state of Allders' pension fund shortly after both Garrard and Rosenfeld had made major loans and donations to the Labour Party.