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THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 2020
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Baha Mar sales process exposed By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
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AHA Mar’s current owner leapfrogged all rival bidders in less than two weeks to become the property’s chosen buyer despite its $1.3bn offer coming from outside the formal sales process. Documents previously kept from public view reveal the breathtaking speed at which Chow Tai Fook Enterprises (CTFE) seemingly emerged from nowhere to become the Cable Beach mega resort’s purchaser following Sarkis Izmirlian’s failed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection bid in 2015. Tribune Business can reveal that the privately-owned Hong Kong conglomerate, which is controlled by the billionaire Cheng family, had agreed a “Heads of Terms” with the former Christie
• CTFE: From nowhere to buyer in two weeks • Offer on August 2, ‘Heads’ with govt on 15th • Now-owner’s bid lower than preferred bidder’s
BAHA MAR administration less than a fortnight after its second “indicative” offer was submitted to Baha Mar’s receivers on August 2, 2016. The “Heads of Terms”, which set out the key points of the commercial agreements between CTFE and the Bahamian government, were “agreed” during the week that began on August 15, 2016, and provided investment incentives and concessions “for the proposed purchaser and only
Bahamas ‘catching up’ in Dorian’s wake
By YOURI KEMP Tribune Business Reporter ykemp@tribunemedia.net THE Bahamas’ major tourism promotion board saw website conversions jump ten percent during 2020’s first week as it anticipates “record numbers” from post-Dorian marketing efforts. Fred Lounsberry, president of the Nassau/Paradise Island Promotion Board, told Tribune Business that it “feels good” about the increase given that it was up against strong comparatives from 2019. “Our last week was kind of our first week where we
were ramping up digital,” he said. “This week we are having a significant television roll-out and additional digital media roll-out. Last week we had 25,000 visitors to the website and about ten percent of those were conversions. “We ended off 2019 with 7.9m visitors to the website in total. But last week, and we felt good about this, our website visits were up 35 percent over the prior year and conversions for us were up from ten percent from last year. Conversions, for us, is that you come to our website and
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Sarkis in $40m Rosewood ‘buy out’ proposal By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
SARKIS Izmirlian made a $40m offer to buy-out the Rosewood hotel property from the rest of Baha Mar after the property was placed into receivership in late 2015. But the mega resort’s Deloitte & Touche receivers rejected his proposal on the basis that they were trying to “dispose of the entirety” of the property even though its original developer suggested part of the deal involve himself and
SARKIS IZMIRLIAN his former Chinese partners dropping multi-million dollar legal claims against each other. Mr Izmirlian also proposed that he, and the
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the proposed purchaser”. And this newspaper can also disclose that CTFE leapt to the front of the buyer queue despite its two offers being “lower than the value” offered by the preferred bidder to emerge from the receivers’ formal sales process, rival Hong Kong casino, leisure and entertainment conglomerate, Melco International Development. Melco, which is chaired by Lawrence Ho, submitted
a $1.45bn first-round offer before coming up with the “highest net present value” bid of between $1.474bn to $1.636bn in the second. Baha Mar’s receivers, who began negotiations for a deal with Melco on June 3, 2016, ultimately abandoned these talks on August 9 without explaining why before informing the government one day later. Yet, just five days to one week later, the Christie administration had agreed a Heads of Terms with CTFE even though its first “non-binding” offer was only submitted to the receivers on June 28, 2016 - almost two months after the first round of bids were received, and following the closure of the stage in which Melco
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Financial industry hails ‘certainty’ on tax residency By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net FINANCIAL services executives yesterday hailed the government’s plans to codify its tax residency initiative via legislation as providing “certainty and transparency” for both investors and global regulators. Tanya McCartney, pictured, the Bahamas Financial Services Board’s (BFSB) chief executive, told Tribune Business that the industry is awaiting implementation of an initiative designed to certify high net worth individuals’ compliance with their home country tax laws and genuine presence in this nation as their major domicile. She added that the government’s plans to place the tax residency certificate initiative into statue law, as outlined by Elsworth Johnson, minister of financial services, trade and industry and immigration, would “give it a stronger footing” that encouraged investors as well as the likes of the European Union (EU) and Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). To qualify for a tax residency certificate, which gives successful applicants
the right to reside in the Bahamas for up to three years, persons must stay in this nation for a minimum 90 days per year and not spend more than 183 days in any other country annually. A “substantial presence test” will be conducted if there are suspicions that persons are abusing this criteria. Mr Johnson outlined the government’s plans in a World Finance article carrying his byline, which was published this week, and Ms McCartney said: “That’s a signalling of the direction we’ll be going in, which we would welcome. “It’s a restatement of our commitment to actually introduce the tax residency certificate, and the minister has indicated to us that this residency programme would be codified into statute... He has indicated to us the intent to legislate to give it a stronger footing,
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