As well as the shopping centre, this includes the £1.2 billion regeneration of London’s Royal Albert Docks by a Chinese developer, and the redevelopment of the landmark Battersea Power Station on the River Thames by a Malaysian consortium.
Samuel Tombs, economist at Capital Economics, said the report “seems to make some tenuous claims”.
“It’s hard to believe that the Games were the decisive factor in many of the business deals discussed in the report,” he told AFP, adding that the money spent on the event would have been better invested elsewhere.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson insisted, however: “London is succeeding where virtually no other host city has, on track to secure a solid gold payback on the taxpayers’ outlay.”
The government says that 58 percent of the investment from the Games had gone into areas of Britain outside London, although some business leaders questioned this.
“Out in the regions, we found that the effect of the Olympics and Paralympics and the contracts we were expecting really didn’t materialise as much as I suspect many people were hoping for,” said Mike Cherry, national policy chairman for the Federation of Small Businesses.
Howard Archer, chief European and UK economist at IHS Global Insight consultancy, said it was always hard to put a figure on economic benefits from an event like the Olympics.
“There is always the possibility that some of the investment/business deals that were brokered would eventually have been won anyway even if the Olympics did significantly help matters,” he told AFP.
“However, I think the fact that the Olympics were so well staged and were such a success did reflect very well on the UK and boosted our reputation for efficiency and as a country for doing business.”
The question of whether the Games have inspired Britons to take up sport is less clear.
A recent survey by Sport England, cited in Friday’s report, found an extra 1.4 million are playing sport at least once a week than before Britain won its bid in 2005.
But it also found that 52.3 percent of British adults still play no sport at all.
