The consortium formed by Mark Holyoake’s Oakvest, in partnership with Portugália and Sabina Estates, has pulled out of the race to acquire the Herdade da Comporta Estate.
The estate management company was forced to scrap a previous sale process and later insisted that all the previous bidders, should they wish to remain involved, would have to waive their legal rights to challenge any future decision on a successful sale.
The Oakvest consortium, which in the last sale process was chosen for exclusive negotiations to purchase Herdade da Comporta, has decided not to relinquish its legal rights and claims it has not been informed of the criteria that condition the latest sale process.
There remain two bidders for the former ‘jewel in the crown’ of the crashed Espírito Santo Empire: the Vanguard Properties / Amorim Luxury consortium and the French investor, Prince Louis-Albert de Broglie.
Oakvest said it will not sign away its legal rights before the deadline. This waiver is a requirement that Gesfimo, the controlling company, unilaterally issued to all interested parties after its majority shareholders insisted that the first sale process was scrapped.
The Oakvest / Portugália /Sabina Estates consortium is said to be analysing whether it will take Gesfimo to court over its botched earlier attempt to sell the estate as the consortium had been named as the winning bidder and was to enter an exclusive due diligence period.
At a general meeting of Gesfimo on July 27th, "the winning proposal was rejected by the combined vote of (shareholders) Novo Banco and Rioforte, joined by a small minority of the other shareholders."
A new contest was launched to sell Comporta but Oakvest claims that, "the rules of the new tender for the sale of the assets have not been communicated to this consortium, despite clarifications that have been requested from the management company."
Thus, "the consortium is not available to enter a new process, as it does not know the specifications and has no guarantee that there will not be the same outcome as in the previous tender - with significant additional costs."
