Clive Palmer has received offers including one of more than $30 million to walk away from his Sunshine Coast resort, despite his lawyers warning that the tycoon’s companies face a “drop-dead date” amid cash-flow troubles.
The offers, disclosed privately to some of the owners of villas at his Coolum resort by a director at an annual meeting of its Presidents Club this week, were revealed yesterday by body corporate head Chris Shannon.
The axe hangs ominously over his loss-making Townsville nickel refinery, with more than 500 staff, and Mr Palmer blames the Chinese government-owned Citic Pacific for his inability to receive royalties on iron ore extracted from his tenements in Western Australia.
His ongoing disputes with Citic, which has spent more than $10 billion developing the project, remain the subject of costly and protracted litigation. A failure to resolve the disputes has led to a lack of cash to support his other loss-making businesses, causing serious problems for the self-proclaimed billionaire. His lawyers are seeking an urgent trial before the looming “drop-dead date”.
But Mr Shannon said yesterday that if Mr Palmer needed to raise funds urgently, as argued by his legal team in the Supreme Court in Perth on Tuesday, he had several serious buyers ready and motivated to buy.
He said the federal member for Fairfax and founder of the Palmer United Party would pocket $32m if he agreed to leave the resort and its championship golf course near the beach at Coolum.
“I know for a fact that there have been at least three offers to purchase the asset in the last six months,’’ said Mr Shannon, who was closely involved in the original development with Dean Andary, a major landholder.
“The offers are very credible and they have been made by people with significant expertise in the industry.
“One of the offers for $32m was disclosed to other owners by a residents’ club director after a formal meeting the other day.
“I know from my own involvement in the industry that they are genuine, they are involved in hospitality and property development and they believe they can restore the resort back to where it was and make it work. But Clive has stated categorically that the property is not on the market.”
Mr Palmer removed his resort and dinosaur park from the corporate ownership structure of his failing Queensland nickel refinery, which has been racking up increasingly heavy losses of tens of millions of dollars a year, according to documents filed with the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.
The changes distanced the resort from the financial woes of the nickel refinery in Townsville.
Before the ownership restructuring, company documents had promoted the Coolum resort’s place “under the leadership of Professor Palmer (in the) Queensland Nickel Group of Companies”.
The resort would not be vulnerable to refinery creditors as a result of the move to take ownership of the resort away from the nickel-related chain of companies.
More than 600 staff have lost their jobs there, and villa owners are furious at their lack of access and the cutting of their water and power. Mr Palmer has pledged he will sustain losses at the shutdown resort “probably until I die”, adding it was “only a minor amount of our financial aspects”.