Crypto consortium eyes off more resorts
The international cryptocurrency consortium eyeing Dunk Island also has Brampton Island and a New Zealand ski resort in its sights, after publicly failing in its bid to acquire Great Keppel.
Sydney-based Tim Sommers, co-founder of Property Bay, revealing his plans for Dunk Island off North Queensland’s Mission Beach to The Australian, said he plans a $500 million redevelopment of the island, building and selling villas, a glamping site, renovating the island’s 160-room hotel, badly damaged by Cyclone Yasi in 2011, and adding an 18-hole golf course — if he can raise the funds and gain council approval.
Running Queensland islands is not for the faint of heart, with many insurers refusing coverage. Most Queensland resort islands, including Lindeman, Hayman, Brampton, Dunk, South Molle and Daydream, are closed due to severe cyclone damage or lack of funding. The only bright spot is Hamilton Island, owned by the cashed-up billionaire Oatley family.
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Sommers says that following the collapse of negotiations to buy Great Keppel Island, which subsequently was sold to a Singaporean and Taiwanese group, he forked out an unspecified non-refundable deposit to buy Dunk Island last Tuesday. He is in exclusive due diligence for 60 days, having struck a deal with the island’s owner, Peter Bond, founder of the failed Linc Energy group.
Sommers says he hopes Great Keppel Island’s owner, property developer Terry Agnew, will refund the $250,000 non-refundable option he had stumped up to buy Great Keppel Island.
“Terry Agnew is a very astute, very wealthy man and I think he will do the right thing (and refund the option),” Sommers says.
“He has sold over $100 million worth of assets in the past 10 days, I think he can afford to give us our deposit back. We are bitterly disappointed that Terry Agnew and Tower Holdings went down the route of selling Great Keppel Island to a Chinese-backed company,” Sommers says.
“We were disappointed the owners of Great Keppel and the Queensland government decided to go down that route.”
Sommers says the opportunity to invest in Dunk Island is a unique idea for sophisticated investors to buy into the re-energisation of the island via token units. “It’s anticipated to be one of the world’s first security tokenisation projects backed by an unregistered management investment scheme.”
Sommers says the asset-backed unit token project will start with an initial $US110 million ($155 million) capital raising, which will, in part, be funded by crypto currency, with construction commencing in the first quarter of 2019.
Sommers says he is interested in investing in significantly undervalued integrated resorts, adding that traditional banks are not investing in these properties.
“We have to find different sources of funding; we have found a different financing methodology.”
ASIC is yet to approve the investment scheme.
Agnew could not be reached for comment last night.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
