An Australian who made his iron fortune in Quebec has joined forces with one of Cascades’ founders and other businessmen to reopen the Bromont Equestrian Park, which has hosted the equestrian events of the Olympic Games since 1976.
• Also read: Quebec Iron Ore: Record production of 3 million tons of iron
Little known here, Michael O’Keeffe is a former managing director of Glencore in Australia. In 2011, he pulled off a feat by selling Riverdale, a coal mining company in Africa, to Rio Tinto for around $4 billion. Mr. O’Keeffe received approximately sixty million dollars in the transaction. Three years later, Rio sold Riverdale for…$50 million.
Michael O’Keeffe then became interested in Quebec irons. In 2015, his company, Champion Iron, spent $10.5 million to acquire the Bloom Lake Iron Mine on the North Shore. Four years earlier, the American company Cliffs Natural Resources had paid $4.9 billion!
Champion and the government have invested heavily to improve the efficiency of the Bloom Lake mine. Quebec has injected more than $100 million into the company since 2016, including $70 million in 2021.
He’s worth more than $260 million
Today, Mr. O’Keeffe’s roughly 9% stake in Champion is worth more than $260 million. The company’s shares, listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Australia, have risen more than 325% over the past five years.
Michael O’Keeffe, a passionate rider, is at the forefront of the group that acquired the Bromont Equestrian Park last year. According to Champion Iron’s regulatory documents, the businessman officially resides in Australia, although media reports in English Canada and Australia indicate he moved to Quebec in 2015.
The Bromont Olympic Equestrian Park MATHIEU BOULAY/AGENCE QMI
Through the voice of public relations firm National, Mr. O’Keeffe declined our request for an interview.
Two residencies in Quebec
His wife, Veronica King, owns a nearly $2 million vacation home on the edge of the equestrian park and a $3.3 million condo in downtown Montreal.
The other buyers are Laurent Lemaire, co-founder of Cascades; Marc Dorion, attorney at McCarthy Tétrault; Sam El-Chaer, Investment Advisor; Businessmen Dany Paradis and Derek Head and Roger Deslauriers, who has managed the park for several years.
“Bromont is an incredible area, but the facilities are a bit outdated,” Mr Paradis observed during a phone interview with Le Journal.
“I’ve lost the desire to come to Bromont”
“We want Bromont to remain a destination,” he adds. Today many people have lost the desire to come to Bromont because of the facilities. You go somewhere else.
The new owners are still deciding what their “modernization project” should include. There is talk of hosting “high level” international competitions and even making Bromont a national training center.
They are already considering asking the government for help.
“We have many dreams,” emphasizes Dany Paradis. We have to encrypt them. We know that you don’t just have to invest $500,000 there, you have to invest more than that.”
It should be noted that the previous owner of the equestrian park, the Société agricole du Comté de Shefford, entered into a lease and management agreement with a local entrepreneur, Marc-Antoine Samson, in January 2021. This has ended and is currently the subject of a lawsuit by Mr. Samson.