Lorraine Peers and Ed Kopp work at the Copper Coulee Casino during the January 2019 grand opening night. A judge has denied a bid by part owners Albert Stark and Cam Christianson to keep their 50 per cent casino stake out of a receivership sale involving Medicine Hat Lodge owners Mayfield Investments.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
@@CollinGallant
A judge has ruled against a request by part owners of the Copper Coulee Casino to keep their partner’s 50 per cent stake out of a receivership sale this spring.
Mayfield Investments owns the Medicine Hat Lodge and half the shares in the casino, which is its tenant, but Mayfield is restructuring as a court-appointed monitor as it prepares to sell assets to clean up debts.
The casino itself is profitable and has lived up to its financial commitments, lawyers for businessmen Albert Stark and Cam Christianson argued in court late last month.
They applied to Court of King’s Bench to invoke a clause in the casino shareholders agreement that would allow them to buy out their partner in the case of bankruptcy.
That was opposed at the Jan. 27 hearing by monitor Ernst & Young, which argued keeping the casino shares out of a larger sale would deprive other creditors.
Justice Grant Dunlap ruled in favour of including the casino interest in a sales package now being prepared by real estate firm Avison Young, and which will have an initial bid deadline of March 31.
“I agree with the Receiver and (main creditor) ATB … Mayfield’s shares in 1995 should be included in (the sales process), to expose those shares to the market now and obtain better information regarding their value,” he wrote in his decision on Jan.31
“The (other) shareholders are free to make an offer in the (process) or they may wait and assert their first refusal rights under (the) Unanimous Shareholders Agreement.”
Lawyers for Starks, a Medicine Hat businessman, and Christianson, the owner of the Canalta Hotels chain, argued that they viewed including the casino shares in a liquidation process as a way to drive up their costs or solicit a bid from them to purchase the hotel.
The two partners have suggested a move to a new facility is the eventual long-term plan since they acquired the shares in 2017, but since no single party has a majority control, decisions are determined through the unanimous agreement clause in the shareholder agreement.
ATB began the creditors action to recover more than $30 million owed to it by Mayfield in the summer, but had proceedings stayed until late October as the Edmonton-based hospitality company attempted to refinance debt through another bank.
Bids on the Medicine Hat Lodge, the shares in Copper Coulee and the Camrose Resort Casino Hotel, not including that related casino, are scheduled to be received by late March with a potential court certification of any sale suggested by the mid summer.
