White Oak Global Advisors of San Francisco bought Northern Beef Packers at bankruptcy auction yesterday. They put up only $4.8 million in cash, compared to the $12.75 million in cash offered by actual meat-packing company American Foods Group of Green Bay.
David Montgomery can smell the manure from his office:
It’s entirely possible that White Oak’s loan was intended from the very beginning to be a stealth purchase of Northern Beef. We don’t know, because the company has refused to comment. Northern Beef attorney Rory King told the Aberdeen American News that White Oak “might open and market (the beef) plant.”
The purchase is the latest twist in Northern Beef’s debt. Earlier, the company took out a $30 million loan — and then negated the loan by buying the lender. Then Northern Beef borrowed $35 million from White Oak — and had that loan erased when the lender bought it [David Montgomery, "Another Twist in the Northern Beef Saga," Political Smokeout, 2013.12.05].
White Oak bought the company to which it loaned millions. It now owes millions to itself. The disposition of that loan is as fishy as the disposition of the loan Epoch Star made to NBP before NBP bought it in 2010. Huge sums of money are appearing and disappearing... and the state is sitting idly by, refusing to take action in what looks more and more like a crooked shell game.
Is the $35 million loaned to Northern Beef Packers by White Oak included in the $39.5 million in credit?
The question is who is White Oak acting on behalf of......and why do I have this vision in my head of a bunch of South Dakota hayseeds standing on a city street corner being shellacked in a shell game?....
White Oak Global Advisors LLC of San Francisco seems to be a company that covers it's butt fairly well. They partner but are a separate company with a title close to the same name but different. That would be, White Oak Merchant Partners LLC. From that companies site we get this.
http://www.whiteoak-mp.com/businesses.php?sec=overview
We offer sophisticated origination, structuring, execution and syndication expertise, covering a spectrum of credit products.
In the private debt markets, we arrange:
Bank revolving credit facilities,
Senior asset-based and term loans,
Venture debt,
Mezzanine debt, and
Private high yield debt.
In the public markets we serve as arranger with syndication partners (levered loans and high yield bonds).
Debt Advisory
We are actively involved in debt advisory roles consisting of:
Debt capital refinancing's and restructurings,
Fairness opinions,
Amendment negotiations, and
General debt advisory services.
Our approach, experience and knowledge of debt structuring economically and structurally benefits our clients, taking into account their short- and long-term financing needs. Our deep relationships with multiple, well-known investment sources that provide capital through all tranches bring alternatives to our clients so that they can make the most educated decision.
Anchor and Arrange
Through our affiliate, White Oak Global Advisors, LLC, we offer access to private debt capital and have the ability to syndicate transactions for middle market companies with proprietary institutional investors, providing more certainty of financing in turbulent markets. White Oak Global Advisors provides private senior secured term loans for growth, acquisition and recapitalization purposes.
Now wouldn't it be fun to be a fly on the wall of the board meeting that set up this deal?
Or better yet wouldn't it be fun if our AG Marty Jacklow would subpoena a list of the clients that were involved in financing the South Dakota deal? He could do that if those things hanging between his legs could withstand the incessant kicking from the establishment in Pierre.
Na that wont ever happen because it would mean someone would have to answer questions that somebody doesn't want Marty to ask in the first place. Come on Marty, put your big boy panties on and "get r done."
who is White Oak acting on behalf of? Good question Bret, and I'm sure a bunch of creditors are in the process of asking their lawyers that same question. Funny thing is that Marty could go through the feds and have that answer in a weeks time. Even though none of these companies are public, they would still have to answer to FEC when it came to bankruptcy, wouldn't they?
The Blindman
Though it would hurt Jackley with the GOP establishment if he went hard after this case, both NBP, and EB-5 he would be making himself a name and the frontrunner for Governor in 2018
Bankruptcy liquidation is the process of a purchaser buying the assets for a fixed price and the proceeds going to creditors in order of priority.
In this case, White Oak bid $4.8mm plus what they were owed. The $4.8mm goes to creditors prior to White Oak on the priority list. White Oak now owns the plant free and clear. All other creditors/investors lose 100% of their investment.
On the surface pretty straightforward and normal in bankruptcy. Same as Solyndra except the largest losers were private investors vs the federal governments Solyndra loss.
Good goddess, Troy: pick a lane.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/11/26/you-call-it-subsidies-for-solyndra-citigroup-and-the-atlanta-braves-i-call-it-cronyism/
http://ideas.time.com/2013/12/06/football-a-waste-of-taxpayers-money/
I wonder how much White Oaks paid the other bidder to come show some cash and not bid?
When individuals declare bankruptcy, quite a different set of standards and rules apply, particularly since the recent revision of the bankruptcy laws, which are punitive to individuals, but legalize all manner of deception, deceit, and skullduggery for corporations. If corporations are now persons, one must wonder on why the same rules don't apply to them as apply to individuals. The $4.8 million went to pay off the mechanic's liens, not investors, over whom the vendors still seem to have some priority.
Nobody has discovered as yet just who comprises the White Oak identity, and there is an absence of explanation as to what legal bunko scheme permits White Oak to have total priority over all other debt holders. It is, indeed, a shell game that has not the slightest pretense of making an honest contribution to the economy.
In the bankruptcy filing, both White Oak and South Dakota Regional Center claim to hold the two EB-5 loan pools, another circumstance for infinite head-scratching. No one can figure out these maneuvers because they were not created to be figured out. They are matters of theft laundering through the maze of financial laws created to protect the thieves.
If there was a simple statement of how much money NBP took in and from whom and how much it paid out and to whom, we could have a somewhat coherent picture of what is taking place. But the layering of financial maneuvers with offshore companies, pseudonymous companies, such a White Oak, and deliberately incoherent ploys for reporting assets and liabilities will keep it all secret. One might call it deliberately disorganized crime.
So is this thirty million loan which is owed to the other creditors have an interest rate. Does it have a due date. I had expected one of the creditors to put in a low bid to buy it with real low debt so they could have a valuable asset at low debt. This is what Daugaard wanted so that the business would become profitable. This cleared out a lot of debt for the new owner.
It might not be possible but would be interesting to find out if the creditors gave bad credit ratings that may have cost the company on sales to make it go bad in the first place. Since so much was invested by investors rather than loans, the company should have floated the first time.
Huey Long and the Chicago Daleys must be so jealous! SD Republican insiders could lead seminars on crooked, very marginally legal money grubbing/cheating the taxpayers.
Hey people, all the answeres are decided in the judges chambers behind the court room between mr. king and judge nail and you will never know what goes on back there!!!!!! that is where the decisions come from and is decided!!!!!!
"Corporate strategic planning often involves bankruptcy." I haven't seen Epoch Star mentioned once in the responses to Cory's post. What's going on folks, that is key to them getting NBP for 12.35Mil, the difference of their 44.35Mil bid and the 32Mil residing offshore. I look at this as a bid of $400,000 under the Green Bay Packer opening bid. Packers should have won that game. We lose by the 32Mil still missing in this game.
Yes, Les. Someone made off with $32 million, but piecing together who got it and where is is now is being swept aside, I suspect, because it would be mighty embarrassing if some of that money would have ended up in certain election coffers. It would take a far larger investigation than the South Dakota AG has done to figure this out.
This is far, far larger than than the sewage ash scam, and, eventually the state decided to pursue a pretty decent investigation which resulted in criminal charges, even though some pretty connected folks were involved in pushing this fiasco. One of the folks who got paid off in that scam ended up as the Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. In South Dakota, the criminals are hard to tell from the officials.
Mr. Pay, you know darn well that Ms. M. wasn't paid off.
https://madvilletimes.com/2012/07/daugaards-anderson-solyndra-seeds-failure-says-vote-no-on-referred-law-14/
Now I find that White Oak got the state to get lien holders to take second place to White Oak so that they would not have to pay so much cash up front. This was an aquasition plan from the start. They set it up so they could put in a high bid with very little cash. It was planned this way ever since the whole thing seemed to have a problem getting enough financing. The state got many of the lien holders to take second place knowing that they would never get any money that way. The state intentionally let the investors get dropped also. So after spending so much talk time advertising South Dakota as a business friendly state, we now have the reputation of screwing investors and small business lien holders to the max.
Now that comment that Joop made that this will in time become a state of the art plant is proof that he knew this plan all along. So if he knew it the gov and others did also.
If that thirty million does not get paid to other creditors then this bid was not in the best interests of the creditors.
Are Korean investors (first in line) or Chinese investors (2nd group) getting any money back? If not, they got screwed big time by the RC. I am sure not many care about that. Where did all the money go? The foreign investors deserve to know where the money went.
As I understand it, White Oak made itself first in line. Joop Bollen and Jeff Sveen are fighting on behalf of some foreign investors via the SDIF LP 6 and SDIF LP 9 loan funds that SDRC set up to funnel the EB-5 investor money to NBP. But I don't know the China/Korea breakdown of those investors who may be asking for their money back.