By - Mar 30, 2011 8:00 PM GMT+0400
Onyx Investments Ltd., a fully owned subsidiary of the government controlled Oman Investment Fund, bought all of Essdar Investments Ltd.’s holdings of Blue City bonds.
The notes purchased represent 100 percent of the Class A1 notes and 98.8 percent of the Class A3 notes issued by Blue City, Oman Investment Fund said today. Essdar Investments is managed by Essdar Capital Managers Ltd. whose majority shareholder is the Abu Dhabi royal family.
Blue City, a stalled real estate project an hour’s drive from the Omani capital, Muscat, was supposed to include more than 200 villas, four hotels and two golf courses. A total of $925 million was raised from bondholders to finance construction, which started in 2006. The $20 billion project missed sales targets as buyers left Middle East real estate markets and a legal battle between the project’s owners undermined confidence.
Onyx Investments and Oman Investment Fund have hired Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP and Rothschild as their legal and financial advisers respectively, according to a statement. Neither company disclosed the price offered in the sale.
Essdar offered to buy the Class A notes it didn’t own in June last year at $630.3 per $1,000 for $399 million of outstanding Class A1 notes due 2013 and $624.8 per $1,000 for $262.5 million of Class A3 notes due 2016. Essdar no longer holds notes which had a face value of $658.25 million as of November 2006, it said today in a separate statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Camilla Hall in Dubai at chall24@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Maedler at cmaedler@bloomberg.net
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