NatWest in legal row over TV sponsorship


An event aimed at promoting multicultural harmony has turned into a bitter £200,000 legal battle involving NatWest.

Emma Awards - the Ethnic Multicultural Media Academy Awards - says the bank broke a sponsorship contract for the awards show, a move that ultimately caused the event to collapse.

The Emma Awards have been televised by the BBC for a number of years and award-winners have included celebrities such as footballer Thierry Henry, newsreader Moira Stewart and Hollywood star Tom Cruise.

Award winners are chosen for carrying out work that has promoted multicultural harmony. But harmony is in short supply between former award sponsors NatWest and Emma's founder, Bobby Syed.

'I can't believe it has come to this,' said Syed, a former public relations executive with the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising group. 'I wanted to settle this dispute amicably, but NatWest has displayed a lot of arrogance.'

The battle centres on five minutes of TV coverage. According to a High Court writ, NatWest cancelled its sponsorship, claiming the 45-minute BBC programme covering the 2004 awards was five minutes shorter than agreed under contract.

But Syed argues the bank was fully aware of the planned shorter broadcast time and had in effect agreed to the timing.

Under the original deal, NatWest was to sponsor the event for three years at £200,000 a year.

The deal had specified that the highlights of the event would be broadcast on a major TV channel for 50 minutes.

The writ claims that NatWest was aware the 2004 awards programme-would be just 45 minutes long and paid its sponsorship for that event.

Only five months later did the bank claim the five minutes was a breach of contract and declared it would not continue the sponsorship in 2005.

The Emma Awards claim the contract was still in force and duly sent an invoice to NatWest for an initial payment of £117,500 ahead of the 2005 event.

NatWest refused to pay and repeated its claim that the contract had been breached, the writ alleges.

After NatWest pulled its support, Syed said talks with other sponsors were hampered, they had to cancel the 2005 event and no awards have been held since.

The Emma Awards is seeking damages of £200,000 and interest of £31,518, as well as continuing interest of £43.83 a day.

NatWest declined to comment.

NatWest in legal row over TV sponsorship

Search within