WILLEMSTAD–The shareholders of Holiday Beach Hotel & Casino in Curaçao received a bid from an American from New York that is “above all expectations.” His advisors travelled to Curaçao to do some checking locally and have meanwhile returned to the US.
The wait is now for the result of the due diligence for the settling of the defi nite amount. This may take a month or two. La Prensa newspaper had reported that the purchase agreement had already been signed, but that is not true. The news caused some concern amongst the personnel, but referring to the Collective Labour Agreement (CLA), the union Horecaf calmed them down, saying that when there is a sale, the union has to be informed beforehand.
The Amigoe newspaper learned from reliable sources that since the hotel was put on the market, there have been dozens of bids, locally and from the Netherlands.
But none of these bids were as high as that of the unknown New Yorker. Reason for the shareholders to be delighted with the amount offered for the hotel complex, including the restaurant Denny’s and the money maker Casino Royale.
Amigoe reported a while ago that the owners were thinking of a sale price of more than 30 million US dollars or even 70 million guilders. Whether the bid was close to this amount or even higher could not be ascertained. Corporate Finance KPMG is leading the sale process in Curaçao.
The idea is that the personnel will keep their jobs if the deal goes through. Only the employees who are 60 or older will be offered a big bonus together with the redundancy pay to resign. They will be replaced by younger people. Even though the sale looks very favourable for the current owners, they emphasise that nothing is definite yet.
The shareholders did not have a meeting for a while, because not all of them were on the island at the same time. Holiday Beach has five shareholder groups. Each owns 20 per cent of the shares. The shareholders are the heirs of the American Donohue, Jocobo “Cocochi” Prins, Rodolfo “Rudy” Pizziolo, the heirs of Wim Riko and the heirs of Frank Ruiz. These shareholder groups have shared the sweet and bitter for about 35 years.
They now want to redeem part of their share for cash. Riko, who died in 2005, had three children from his fi rst marriage. They currently live abroad. He had one child from his marriage with Mayra Riko-De Freitas. Prins (71) and Pizziolo (66) are both registered as directors of Curaçao Real Estate BV, the official name of Holiday Beach Hotel & Casino. None of them are willing to give any information at this point.
Bron: Daily Herald