Property developer Craig Gore has three companies placed in receivership

Gold Coast property developer and motor racing identity Craig Gore says he is shocked and disappointed that three of his property companies have been placed in receivership after defaulting on loans of $145 million.

Fellow Gold Coast finance and property company City Pacific – which is itself in trouble – placed Gore’s Atkinson Gore Group, Atkinson Gore Agricultural and AGG Treetops in receivership late yesterday.

Mark Korda and John Park of insolvency firm KordaMentha have been appointed as receivers.

Korda says City Pacific’s actin against Gore sends a “clear message” that it will exercise its rights when borrowers default.

But Gore argues that the decision is not in the interests of City Pacific unitholders. He says that Atkinson Gore was in negotiations with City Pacific to repay all of its loans.

“I think this is a knee-jerk reaction to something that has happened to them, and I have become the scapegoat,” Gore told The Australian Financial Review.

Gore is the son of Queensland property developer Mike Gore, who built the Sanctuary Cove development in the 1980s.

Craig Gore was valued at $180 million of BRW’s Rich 200 list in 2007.

As well his property interests, Gore also owns a financial planning firm called Wright Patterson Shakespeare and a stake in a wine company called Aussie Vineyards.

Gore has also invested heavily in motor sport, both in Australia with the V8 Supercar series and in the United States, where he has been involved in the IndyCar and NASCAR competitions.

While the downturn appears to have hit Gore’s property interests hard, he has been active in the market in recent months. Last year Gore bought a complex Bowen Marina in Mackay for $12 million from collapse company Asset Loan Group as well as a site in Townsville, which had been put on the market by City Pacific.

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