Clive Palmer’s company Palmer Leisure Coolum has pleased guilt to a takeover breach. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled
One of mining billionaire Clive Palmer’s firms has pleaded guilty to breaching takeover laws more than 14 years after a promised buyout to hundreds of owners.
Palmer Leisure Coolum Pty Ltd pleaded guilty in the Brisbane Magistrates’ Court over a 2012 announcement it would buy out all shareholders and villa holders in The President’s Club – but never made the required offers to those members. The club was the timeshare operator at what is now Palmer Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast.
Palmer Coolum Resort is prime land in a strong position in one of the fastest growing places in Queensland.
Villa owner Chris Shannon in a file image from 2020 on a wood fence Mr Palmer’s firm put up to separate timeshare owners from the golf course (to the left of frame). Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen
Shots from the Palmer Coolum Resort in November 2020 – eight years after Mr Palmer’s firm bought it. Picture: Patrick Woods.
Under Australian corporate law, a company that publicly announces a takeover bid has two months to follow through with formal offers to shareholders. No such offers arrived.
As the five-star Hyatt Regency Coolum, the resort was once home to the Australian PGA Championship and hosted a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting opened by Queen Elizabeth II.
Mr Palmer purchased the property in 2011 and closed it four years later, putting 600 staff out of work and leaving 310 villa shareholders with an uncertain future.
The timeshare dispute saw a resolution in November 2020 when the Sunshine Coast Daily reported Mr Palmer’s firm agreed to pay the 310 owners $65,000 each – a total of $20.8 million.
In 2020 when accepting a settlement offer, villa owner Chris Shannon had said Mr Palmer’s firm “tortured the owners for nearly seven years and I just want it finished”.
The Federal Court approved the settlement, following which in 2021 a major redevelopment of the site was launched.
At one stage a dinosaur theme park – Palmersaurus, featuring more than 160 life-size replica dinosaurs – was operating on the same grounds where golf champions once played. The golf course remained open throughout.
Final day of the Australian PGA Championship at Palmer Resort, Coolum: Jeff the dinosaur. Photo: Brett Wortman / Sunshine Coast Daily
Work on the villas in the Palmer Coolum Resort when it underwent a $100m refurbishment.
Jeff the dinosaur after a fire at Palmer Coolum Resort. Picture: Glenn Barnes
The criminal prosecution was a separate matter entirely – and kept going, with the guilty plea entered by the company’s lawyer on Monday.
The matter has been sent to the District Court of Queensland for sentencing on a date yet to be fixed.
The maximum penalty for a company found guilty of the offence is a $55,000 fine.
The case was investigated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and is being prosecuted by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
Since charges were first laid in April 2018, the case wound through almost every court in the country.
The Queensland Supreme Court, the Queensland Court of Appeal, the Federal Court and the High Court of Australia all declined to stop the prosecution from proceeding.
On two separate occasions – in 2020 and again in 2024 – the High Court declined to hear appeals, in one instance noting the proposed appeal had no reasonable prospects of success and raised no legal principle worth considering.
In 2022, a Queensland Supreme Court judge ordered Mr Palmer and the company to repay the full legal costs of ASIC and federal prosecutors – after civil proceedings which sought to permanently stop the criminal prosecution were themselves permanently stayed by the court.
In March 2026, Justice Hindman of the Supreme Court of Queensland ordered that it was inappropriate to answer questions referred from the Magistrates Court under Queensland’s Human Rights Act.