Desmond will increase his ownership from 6.4 per cent to 15 per cent as the company announced that it is to raise €40 million from investors.
Image: Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland
FINANCIER DERMOT DESMOND will more than double his shareholding in Independent News & Media the group announced today.
Desmond will increase his ownership from 6.4 per cent to 15
per cent as the company announced that it is to raise €40 million from
investors.
INM’s largest shareholder Denis O’Brien will also
participate in the capital raising exercise but will only do so to
maintain his shareholding at 29.9 per cent.
The group say that the €40 million capital raise and and
further debt paydown of €40 million will reduce the group’s core debt to
to €118 million.
Shares in INM have jumped by 31 per cent on the Irish Stock
Exchange since this morning’s announcement, increasing from 10 cents
per share to just over 13 cents per share in early trading.
Dermot Desmond
Desmond is a prolific investor and first came to prominence
as the founder of NCB Stockbrokers. He was one of the primary drivers
behind the development of the International Financial Services Centre
(IFSC) in Dublin’s docklands.
Desmond’s private equity firm, International Investment and
Underwriting (IIU), has invested in many prominent deals including
London City Airport which was bought for €30 million in 1995 and sold
for a reported €1.2 billion in 2006. Desmond is 831st on Forbes list of richest billionaires in the world.
Read: There was too much fat in INM – Communicorp’s Lucy Gaffney >
Laurie Werner, Contributor
I cover singular, luxury travel and food experiences around the world
2/12/2014 @ 6:00AM |6,373 views
A Splash In The Grenadines
This story appears in the March 3, 2014 issue of Forbes.
Billionaire Irish financier Dermot Desmond, founder and chairman of the Dublin-based private equity firm International Investment & Underwriting, is a busy man, but when it came to selecting salt and pepper grinders for his new Caribbean resort, the Pink Sands Club on the island of Canouan
in the Grenadines, he tested 29 versions before greenlighting the
(presumably) perfect pair. “He is so detail-oriented,” says the resort’s
sales and marketing director, Patrice Van Isacker. “He wants everything
to be perfect.”
Thanks to Desmond’s credibility–he also owns the venerable Sandy Lane on Barbados–the ambitious, $120 million Pink Sands is already widely anticipated, though it won’t officially open until the spring.
The property itself has led several previous lives, but so far perfection has been elusive. The original owner, Swiss-Italian banker Antonio Saladino, attempted to capitalize on Canouan’s abundant island charm with previous hotels, all of which failed, a fact that obviously didn’t dissuade Desmond.
Saladino’s first attempt in 1999, Carenage Bay Beach & Golf Club, was constructed as a multicolored doppelgänger of the Sardinian resort Porto Cervo and designed by the same architect. It was a miss: The hotel was too big–156 rooms in 61 spread-out villas–and clumsily designed. The villas were nicknamed “the bunkers.” Add to that the limited flights to Canouan, insufficient to fill 156 rooms, and a marketing strategy aimed at Europe but not the much closer U.S., and the result was low occupancy numbers.
Then Rosewood Hotels & Resorts
came along in 2000 to manage the property and step up marketing efforts
to U.S. travelers, but that tenure lasted only 15 months, and the
resort closed to regroup in 2002. Two years later another major hotel
brand, Raffles, came in and changed the look of the resort , bleaching out the Sardinian colors for softer tones while bringing in the Trump Organization to operate a casino and a golf course designed by Jim Fazio. Raffles’ best efforts didn’t work out, either.
When Raffles exited in 2010, Saladino began casting about for a partner. Enter Desmond, who bought in on a 50-50 basis and began some three years of construction.
Desmond was taken with Canouan, a verdant, hilly island with
beautiful beaches, a coral-reef-protected turquoise lagoon and very
little development. “It’s the perfect equilibrium,” says Pink Sands Club
General Manager Jeff Morgan, who came over from exclusive Parrot Cay in 2013. “Predevelopment but not a pile of sand. There is a village here, so you get a real sense of Caribbean island charm.”
The new partnership’s first move was to tear down most of the previous hotel and build a new one in a different location–Desmond and his partners own 1,200 of the island’s 1,800 acres–directly on pristine Godahl Beach. The size was also downscaled dramatically: 26 suites (and only suites), each measuring a minimum of 1,300 square feet, plus 20 sprawling villas, all new or thoroughly redesigned. You can get an idea of the resort’s ambitions from its published rates ($2,050 to $5,300 per night for the suites; $10,000 to $22,000 for the villas), which, in high season, are higher than those of Sandy Lane, Necker Island and other chic Caribbean enclaves. In addition to the golf course, the spa and four restaurants, what you’ll get for your money are design elements generally seen in the elite hotels of New York and London, not in a small Caribbean hideaway: the highest-quality mahogany furniture, cool, gray Carrara marble and a range of high-tech accessories, including a mirror that, with the touch of a button, turns into a TV set and with another touch reveals the living room.
Every element was sent during every stage to Desmond for his
approval. “He really only wanted the best,” says Van Isacker, pointing
out the Pratesi bed linens, which are priced at nearly $2,000 a set.
Desmond wanted the rooms to be user-friendly, so he built a model suite
in Milan and had focus-group guests stay in it for several months to
test the accommodations. Still, the place had some bugs to work out.
Construction problems and complications with new technology that uses
iPads to operate everything from the sliding doors to booking spa
appointments forced the Pink Sands Club to delay its planned December
opening.
One part of the construction that went smoothly was the extension of the airport runway to accommodate private jets. (If traveling commercially, guests fly to Barbados and are transferred by private jet.) The Canouan runway also neighbors an 80-berth marina that will be able to accommodate 100-meter yachts when it is finished in early 2015. The idea, according to Van Isacker, is that you can fly in on your jet and go directly to your yacht. The top-to-bottom reimagining of Canouan is undoubtedly an upgrade, but the question remains: Will Desmond’s enhancements entice the Sandy Lane set to this small island when all previous attempts have failed? “It is over-the-top gorgeous, [with] quality that I have not seen in a long time,” says Albert Herrera, senior vice president of Global Product Partnerships of Virtuoso, who believes the resort has the potential to become something like Sardinia’s VIP-magnet, Costa Smeralda. “It brings a whole new level of sophistication to the Caribbean.”
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Thanks to Desmond’s credibility–he also owns the venerable Sandy Lane on Barbados–the ambitious, $120 million Pink Sands is already widely anticipated, though it won’t officially open until the spring.
The property itself has led several previous lives, but so far perfection has been elusive. The original owner, Swiss-Italian banker Antonio Saladino, attempted to capitalize on Canouan’s abundant island charm with previous hotels, all of which failed, a fact that obviously didn’t dissuade Desmond.
Saladino’s first attempt in 1999, Carenage Bay Beach & Golf Club, was constructed as a multicolored doppelgänger of the Sardinian resort Porto Cervo and designed by the same architect. It was a miss: The hotel was too big–156 rooms in 61 spread-out villas–and clumsily designed. The villas were nicknamed “the bunkers.” Add to that the limited flights to Canouan, insufficient to fill 156 rooms, and a marketing strategy aimed at Europe but not the much closer U.S., and the result was low occupancy numbers.
The setting of the Pink Sands Club is one
of the prettiest in the Grenadines–pristine and surrounded by a coral
reef protected turquoise lagoon.
When Raffles exited in 2010, Saladino began casting about for a partner. Enter Desmond, who bought in on a 50-50 basis and began some three years of construction.
Among the colors highlighted at Pink Sands: the turquoise of the sea and a hot pink shade favored by Dermot Desmond
The new partnership’s first move was to tear down most of the previous hotel and build a new one in a different location–Desmond and his partners own 1,200 of the island’s 1,800 acres–directly on pristine Godahl Beach. The size was also downscaled dramatically: 26 suites (and only suites), each measuring a minimum of 1,300 square feet, plus 20 sprawling villas, all new or thoroughly redesigned. You can get an idea of the resort’s ambitions from its published rates ($2,050 to $5,300 per night for the suites; $10,000 to $22,000 for the villas), which, in high season, are higher than those of Sandy Lane, Necker Island and other chic Caribbean enclaves. In addition to the golf course, the spa and four restaurants, what you’ll get for your money are design elements generally seen in the elite hotels of New York and London, not in a small Caribbean hideaway: the highest-quality mahogany furniture, cool, gray Carrara marble and a range of high-tech accessories, including a mirror that, with the touch of a button, turns into a TV set and with another touch reveals the living room.
The 26 suites and 20 villas are filled with
materials of a quality usually seen in top major city hotels, not
remote Caribbean hotels.
One part of the construction that went smoothly was the extension of the airport runway to accommodate private jets. (If traveling commercially, guests fly to Barbados and are transferred by private jet.) The Canouan runway also neighbors an 80-berth marina that will be able to accommodate 100-meter yachts when it is finished in early 2015. The idea, according to Van Isacker, is that you can fly in on your jet and go directly to your yacht. The top-to-bottom reimagining of Canouan is undoubtedly an upgrade, but the question remains: Will Desmond’s enhancements entice the Sandy Lane set to this small island when all previous attempts have failed? “It is over-the-top gorgeous, [with] quality that I have not seen in a long time,” says Albert Herrera, senior vice president of Global Product Partnerships of Virtuoso, who believes the resort has the potential to become something like Sardinia’s VIP-magnet, Costa Smeralda. “It brings a whole new level of sophistication to the Caribbean.”
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