Poor little rich club
Yellowstone Club World in Involuntary Bankruptcy Liquidation
Creditors ask for deposits back, force liquidation of Yellowstone Club's world assets.By Courtney Lowery, 1-26-09
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Members this week filed an involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition—liquidation—against Yellowstone World Club, a spinoff of the Yellowstone Club that was envisioned as a world-wide time-share program for the richest of the rich.
The Chapter 7 petition was filed Sunday on behalf of four creditors, who total are claiming $4.65 million in refunds for deposits in Yellowstone Club World, which when launched boasted assets like the Chateau de Farcheville in France and a private golf club near the famous St. Andrews golf course in Scotland. Owner Tim Blixseth had imagined the club as having up to 150 members who would pay initiation fees of up to $10 million to rove as they wished to properties Tim Blixseth has bought across the globe. But, it never got off the ground and when it ceased operations last year, there were only a handful of members, most of them Yellowstone Club members who had “upgraded” to Yellowstone Club World.
The filing is the latest in the legal fiasco that is the Yellowstone Club bankruptcy case and while it is separate, because the convoluted financial picture that made up the empire of Tim and his ex wife Edra, it is also likely to be part of the wrangling over the Montana resort. The $375 million Credit Suisse loan that has been so central in the original bankruptcy proceedings was in part, used to purchase the properties for Yellowstone Club World and one property in particular, the chateau in France, was volleyed as collateral in Edra Blixseths takeover of the club (they divorced last year) and eventually for the post-Chapter 11 financing to continue operations. A $60 million sale of that property fell through in August.
Edra won the chateau in France and the Scotland property as part of the same settlement that gave her the Yellowstone Club. She had promised to “monetize” both properties for the benefit of the club.
The Chapter 7 filing is an aim to sort out, and likely more quickly than in Chapter 11, who and what entity now controls the Yellowstone Club World properties.
“We’re concerned the assets they do have are no longer in control of the Yellowstone Club World,” said John Amsden, one of the laywers representing Yellowstone Club World members.
Members who paid to use to those properties are now being denied access and considering at least one of the properties is now being used as leverage in the Chapter 11 proceedings, the Chapter 7 is a way for the world club members to protect their interests in those assets.
“The members of the Yellowstone Club World were promised access to very specific and significant properties in return for their significant membership dues. They anticipate that their interests to those properties will be respected,” Amsden said via email.
The court will appoint a trustee within 20 days who will begin sorting through the assets.
“The involuntary bankruptcy was necessary because it appears that there is no one minding the Club’s business,” Amsden said. “We hope that the matter can be resolved with a minimum of expense.”
The petitioners include Angus A. MacNaughton of Danville, Calif., Edgar A. Rainin of Berkeley, Calif., Yoav Rubinstein of Toronto, all of whom are requesting $1.5 million each in refunds, and Thomas W. Hook of Houston, who is requesting $150,000. All four are also Yellowstone Club members.
For background on the story:
- Yellowstone Club Creditors Assert Fraud by Credit Suisse
- Bozeman’s Story Mill Falls Victim to Yellowstone Club Debacle
- Yellowstone Club Financing Settled (For Now)
- Credit Suisse Takes Another Swing in Yellowstone Club Bankruptcy
- Portrait of a “Toxic Asset”
- Credit Suisse Prepares to Continue Legal Fight for Yellowstone Club
- Yellowstone Club Returns to Bankruptcy Court, to Sink Further Into Debt
- Yellowstone Club Gets a (Brief) Lease on Life
- Tim Blixseth Absent from Yellowstone Club Debacle - For Now
- Yellowstone Club Bankruptcy Exposes Brutal Financial Showdown
- Yellowstone Club In Desperate Straits, Court Papers Say
- Edra Blixseth Takes Over Yellowstone Club
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Comments
TIM HAS SOLD SOME OF THEM AND WELL FARCHEVILLE IS SECURITY FOR YELLOWSTONE CLUB NOW, SO UNLESS YOU GO AFTER TIM AND HIS ASSETS, I AM AFRAID THE MEMBERS ARE SCREWED, WHICH IS A SHAME AS I KNOW THEM PERSONALLY AND THEY ARE WONDERFUL PEOPLE WHO WERE DECEIVED BY SMOKE AND MIRRORS. THE FUTURE IS IN BACKING CROSSHARBOR AAS THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO GET ANY VALUE BACK BUT GO AFTER TIM. DID ANYONE CATCH THE FACT TIM IS NOT PAYING THE 1M DONATION TO THE MONTANA CHARITY PROMISED FOR TTHE SCHOOL DUE FEB 1,2009? BOZO CRONICLE MADE TIM A LOCAL HERO FOR THAT DONATION BUT AS USUAL NO MONEY. ALL TALK
Do your guys still have the Hollow Top property near Pray. I.E.., Hollow Top partners LLC with the address listed as 1 Yellowstone Club Trail? You can hide your jets thru bank leased trustees but you can not hide it all. Many of your assets, Tim, were purchased with monies taken from the YC Development LLC thus quite well documented. Did you give Jim his % of the timber company because you never paid him back the loan I know you got from he and his father-in-law and never repaid some 50 million? I know this is the case. It is a small world scumbag!
I believe the Hollow Top property is near Pony, not Pray. I bet they're happy up there that they won't be ruined like Pig Stye.
I love it! "Lifestyles of the arrogant and crooked".
I took the time to email the hero news reporter at the Comical that he had better do some research on the West Coast before he wrote anymore hero stories about Timmie, because there were many, many indications he was a fraud and a litigating bully with a legal bluffing team of noticeable strength. But nothing inside his stuffed shirt. Timmie was the Wizard of Oz....a tiny little nothing behind a curtain of spending and attorneys. A fraud it now appears, once again, as he was so many times in the past.
But, if he and McDougal had not bought the checkerboard sections, and had not made the USFS trade, there would be no critical mass at Big Sky to make it a world class resort, with or without YC. Getting that land out of USFS hands and into private development hands is the only way to have first class ski areas in the West. The litigating NGOs and a spineless USFS keep them off public lands for the most part. There are no gondolas to the top in the far west because the USFS owns the top. Only railroad lands, collected into a whole, provide for the destination ski resort, or patented mining claims. Sun Valley was a railroad venture. Aspen is a mining venture. So no matter what an ass Blixeth is and has been, at least he accomplished a land trade with the Gallatin NF and got it done with environmental NGO help. Everybody was happy, and in time, the area will once again boom, and people will be there annually in the millions to enjoy a great resource which can only happen when it is in private ownership. Unless, of course, the ObamaNation re-instates the Rural Relocation Act, and buys up all the foreclosed lands and real estate, as did FDR during the Depression.
Thanks, my bad. Must have been the thought of hot springs. Pony is fun town with lots of history. The Pony Bar with their past poker nights were a whole lot of fun! A very good place to get local scuttle regarding the scum from Pig Stye. The croanies are not well liked up there.
Bearbait, I do know at least one head of the department of interior has been a guest at the club and can only wonder if she accepted any perks from Tim. I know Ms. Bono, and Connie Mack whom are married, I think now, have both been to the club and Ms Bono even bragged she was there on Tim's dime. I believe for a Congress woman this is unethical to accept and maybe illegal. What kind of support has Tim received from them in Florida or California? Where is all the watch dogs?!
When he bought the Plum Creek land and mill, he came and talked to us mill workers in Belgrade. Tim said he and his brother were long-time lumbermen and they had wanted this mill for a long time. He promised we would all keep our jobs at the same wage and benefit levels. He promised to invest capital in the mill for safety improvements and new machinery. He promised to keep the mill supplied with logs from his newly-purchased land. He gave us his personal pledge to keep and operate that sawmill for at least five years.
That was on a Wednesday. The next Monday we discovered he'd sold the mill to Louisiana-Pacific and we all got fired. L-P hired back the ones they decided to.
The Plum Creek foresters did an incredible job of restoration on Jack Creek. I saw the 'before and after' pictures as well as hiking through those beautiful meadows filled with wildflowers where there had been a mess of dead wood waiting for a spark. It was nasty stuff to put through the mill, let me tell you. I don't miss the dry, choking dust or the cracked logs that would fall apart and clog the machinery, not to mention the occasional skunk in a hollow log.
No matter how well we did, Plum Creek looked down their nose at the Gallatin, and wanted out. That's why they sold the whole lot to Blixeth (et al) at the "marginal and recently cut" timberland price. All Tim did was arrange the financing for that purchase, walk out of that meeting and into another where he sold Jack Creek at the "development land" price to Moonlight Basin Properties for enough cash to pay off the whole thing. Then he came and lied to us at the mill while he negotiated with L-P to sell the mill for the cash to set up the Yellowstone Club.
That's why Plum Creek is now a Real Estate Investment Trust. I guess they learned a little.
The big question is, How could anyone be such a bad business person as to go broke after acquiring thousands of acres of prime property for essentially nothing?"
It seems to me company law needs to be changed. Manipulation of company law has contributed to the Credit Crunch. Companies transferring its "business" - usually to off shore secret accounts. in the case of Yellowstone, the set (numerous companies) means the directors walk away with not only the money invested by individuals but with the money from the sell off of any property.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNgPUizIUsA