Nov 2010 Financial News

US$60M injection for Four Seasons

Nov 16, 2010

Work on the stalled Four Seasons Barbados Hotel and Resort will restart early next year, possibly as early as January, but not before a fair tendering process for the work is completed. That undertaking is expected to take place over the next six weeks.

The major project had come to a halt in February 2009, as it tried to work through financial challenges thrown up by the international credit crunch.

Executive Chairman of Paradise Beach Limited, Professor Avinash Persaud, whose services had been sought late last year by the late Prime Minister David Thompson to rescue the project, revealed the restart plans yesterday. He announced that the project will benefit from a US$60 million loan from the Trinidad & Tobago based ANSA Merchant Bank, to be backed by a Government of Barbados guarantee.

Persaud would later join Executive Director of ANSA Merchant Bank Gregory Hill and President and CEO of ANSA McAL (Barbados) David Inglefield who represented Consolidated Finance Co. Ltd., in signing for the final disbursement of the US$60 million credit facility at the Four Seasons Offices in Black Rock yesterday.

Persaud stressed that the loan is “a syndicated credit facility” with ANSA as a major participant in that syndicate. “The disbursement of the US$60 million credit facility between Paradise Beach Limited and ANSA Merchant Bank brings the Four Seasons Hotel & Residences one important step closer to restarting construction. It is also good news for the project’s local and international creditors and suppliers,” Professor Persaud commented.

“This is a day that we have all long waited for... I know that everyone in Barbados would like that to mean that tomorrow workers would be coming through the gate. But those of you who have been in developments and construction would know that that’s the surest way to make the project fail again. We have to do a fair amount of preparation, of really looking at our design, our master plan. We need to do a correct tendering process that is fair to all Barbadians suppliers and those things cannot be done in 24 hours,” he explained.

“With the best will in the world, I think with an aggressive timetable, we can complete all that preparation in about six weeks time, which will put us probably on Christmas Day, which I don’t think will be the time to start. So, we will be starting I reckon in all reasonableness in early next year,” Persaud told the media.
Persaud also explained that the credit facility will be used to purchase the “Esso land” needed in the construction, to restart design work with Four Seasons on the planned hotel and mobilise construction of the villas and the hotel.

The disbursement of the Credit Facility is the main trigger for the resumption of villa stage payments, that will help build out the project and meet future creditor payments as well. The hotel itself will cost between US$80–$100 million, while the overall project, inclusive of the hotel and villas, will be around US $275 million.

It is expected that between 800 –1 000 workers will work on the project, inclusive of workers who were already previously employed in the initial construction efforts. The Four Seasons project has an expected completion date of three years.

Meanwhile, Persaud has suggested that he has sought to honour the wishes of the late Prime Minister, though the “rescue efforts” for Four Seasons were quite complex.

“One of the last things that [the late] Prime Minister David Thompson said to me was, ‘Do not let anyone forget that I asked you to come up with a Barbadian solution that protected Barbadians creditors, workers and the national interest and you have done that.’ And I hope his wish can be honoured and all Barbadians can be proud of another example of Barbados being up to the challenge,” Persaud said.


Source:
By Regina Selman Moore
Barbados Advocate
Tuesday November 16, 2010

http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/newsitem.asp?more=local&NewsID=14035