Complicated deal to sell Japanese assets
THE price developers have paid for The Villa private golf course at Nerang probably never will be revealed but other details of what was a somewhat complicated deal are dribbling out.
Among them is that Pointcorp, the Brisbane developer fronting the late 2018 deal for the once-pristine site, might well have inherited a rather large pile of tax losses.
The losses are a legacy of Japanese’s billionaire Toshi Ogasawara’s 30 or so years of investment in Gold Coast property but whether Pointcorp can use them will be at the unpredictable discretion of the Tax Office.
Toshi died in 2016 and his family quietly began unwinding some of his Gold Coast assets held in company Nifsan Developments.
That exercise, it has emerged, was an off-market affair that included The Villa, a riverfront gem housing a mansion that was Toshi’s Australian retreat.
There was nothing simple about the sell-off, such as finding a buyer for each property and doing a deal.
No, it seems the Ogasawara family wanted one buyer to take more than just the now-forlorn The Villa.
Also in the ‘package’ were an office building at Emerald Lakes and a 50 per cent stake in two townhouse development joint ventures.
In other words, if you wanted The Villa it was all or nothing.
The sales process was handled via Ernst and Young and it seems about 10 likely buyers were approached.
Some of them were sizeable players but, while they loved the prospect of owning The Villa, having to purchase an office tower and buy into townhouse joint ventures made the transaction less than straight forward.
The partner would have been Urban Construct, an Adelaide group which in 2010 entered a joint venture to complete the $1 billion Emerald Lakes project.
As things transpired, the reluctant buyers need not have worried as both townhouse projects were done and dusted before the Pointcorp deal was settled.
Property sources believe that the list of possible buyers of the Nifsan assets package was whittled down to Pointcorp and two others – Urban Construct and Troy Daffy’s Silverstone Developments.
Pointcorp won the day but not on its own – it is partnered by CVS Lane Capital Partners, which is backed by
Melbourne’s Liberman family.
CVS Lane is partnering Don O’Rorke’s Consolidated Properties in reigniting the stalled Pavilions retailresidential project at Palm Beach.
The Pointcorp-CVS deal involved buying Nifsan Developments, which held the assets on offer and also that pile of tax losses.
The new owners, taxman permitting, might be able to use those losses as they are to redevelop The Villa in the same business in which the losses were accumulated – property development.
Pointcorp, which is finalising its plans for The Villa, has doubled the occupancy of the ex-Nifsan Emerald Lakes office building and it is on the market.
Meanwhile, Toshi’s first major buy on the Gold Coast, the Emerald Lakes golf course, remains in family hands. It was transferred to companies owned by Toshi’s Californian-based daughter Yukiko ahead of The Villa package deal.