The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A FORMER Baha Mar executive has suggested that the resort’s court-appointed receivers have failed to provide substantial responses to its letters and requests.

The suggestion came after Raymond Winder,

Deloitte & Touche’s managing partner, told Tribune Business on Thursday that Sarkis Izmirlian’s latest offer to purchase Baha Mar was made in vain because it has not gone through the Supreme Court’s approved sales process.

In light of Mr Winder’s comments, Whitney Their, a former executive vice president and general consul at Baha Mar, questioned why Mr Winder did not respond directly to developer Sarkis Izmirlian’s letters, as opposed to speaking only through a news report.

Last week, Mr Izmirlian wrote to the president of the Export Import Bank of China to accept his offer to complete and open the stalled resort, promising to rehire Bahamian employees while ensuring that the bank does not accept a discount on its debt.

The letter was a follow-up to the offer he made to the bank on January 11, to which Mr Izmirlian said he received no response.

“We read your comments in the press today about our offer with great interest, although we cannot help but wonder why you or CEXIM did not at least also communicate with us directly,” Ms Their said, in a statement released on Friday.

“Please be assured that we are not labouring under any impression that we will be given an advantage over any other investor who bids to buy the project, and rather feel that we may be disadvantaged over any other investor given that your response to our previous offers - made well before any official sale process was launched - was merely that they were unacceptable, with no explanation or further engagement.

“Was the court - or the joint provisional liquidators - informed that there was a standing offer, from us or any other party, at the time that the receivers sought consent for the sale from the court?”

Ms Their said the Supreme Court’s approved process is too opaque and cumbersome to encourage involvement.

“Notwithstanding various public statements made in recent weeks referencing a court approved sales process, the receivers - or for that matter the joint provisional liquidators who you say approved the sale process - have not revealed what the Supreme Court order provides and have not outlined the process,” she wrote.

“You say in the article that all offers must come through the receivers at the appropriate time, and that you will assess those bids and provide the best offer. We have previously inquired about the procedure to make a bid and associated timelines, only to be told that information is not currently available.

“Yet your comments in today’s (Friday’s) paper make repeated references to what the sales process will not allow, ie, our offer, without providing any concrete information. Of what benefit to the stakeholders is it to continue to conceal this information, and what possible harm could it do to reveal it given the importance of this project to the country and the number of Bahamians so directly affected by its outcome?

“Would you not think that potential bidders for this multi-billion dollar asset are entitled to understand the sales process?

“We applaud your statement that the receivers are duty bound to seek the best possible price for the asset for the benefit of the unsecured creditors, but first, a sales process that is opaque at best is not designed to achieve the highest price from a broad spectrum of investors, and second, we are unclear what the receivers are actually doing to maximise value.

“For example, have the receivers taken active steps to further the UK litigation against CSCEC (China State Construction Engineering Corporation) under the first completion guarantee to Baha Mar Ltd, or pursued the remedies against CSCEC under the second completion guarantee to CEXIM, or conducted further investigation into potential claims against any number of CSCEC subsidiaries for their misrepresentations to and failure to inform Baha Mar about their ability to complete the project?”

Ms Thier signed off “with optimism that this letter will not also have been written in vain.”

A formal sale process for the $3.5 billion project began last month, when Baha Mar’s court appointed receivers hired a Canadian real estate firm to market the project to potential buyers.