Whistler Blackcomb, the Canadian ski resort that will host some of the Winter Olympic Games next month, could be sold off in a struggle between Wall Street bankers and a private equity firm over the renegotiation of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans. Lenders to Fortress Investment Group, a leveraged buyout group, have posted notices of foreclosure in several North American newspapers, announcing a public auction of the assets of Intrawest, the Whistler Blackcomb resort operator.

Fortress bought Intrawest at the peak of the property market in 2006, paying $2.8 billion for the resort company, which also runs Winter Park and Steamboat in Colorado and Mont Tremblant in Québec. The deal comprised $1.7 billion in loans from a consortium that included Lehman Brothers and Davidson Kempner Capital Management.

The collapse in the North American real estate market and weakening consumer spending during the recession has been a blow for resort operators. Fortress has struggled to refinance the original loan and the lending group is believed to be pushing for repayment of the final instalment worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The foreclosure notice indicates that the lenders intend to conduct a public auction of 100 per cent of the Intrawest assets on February 19, which would mean the sale of Whistler Blackcomb in the middle of the Olympics.

Intrawest said yesterday that it was in negotiations with its lenders and suggested that the timing of the foreclosure notice to coincide with the Games was deliberate. “This is a negotiating tactic,” a spokesman for Intrawest said. “As far as we are concerned, it is business as usual at all of our resorts.”

The Canadian organising committee for the Games has been at pains to dismiss concerns that a sale of the assets would affect the conduct of the event.

http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/

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