A Singapore-based investor bought 197,000 acres in Oregon’s High Desert.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
A Singapore-based investor bought 197,000 acres in Oregon’s High Desert for $855 million.
Fidelity National Financial Ventures announced the transaction Wednesday. According to a report by the Portland Business Journal’s Wendy Culverwell, the deal — which yielded FNFV a $63 million cash distribution — reconciled the assets of its portfolio company, Cascade Timberlands LLC.
From Culverwell’s report:
“We are excited to monetize the value of Cascade for our shareholders,” said FNF Chairman William P. Foley, II. “We have been owners of Cascade for approximately eight years and believe it is in the best interest of our shareholders to monetize the value of this land at this time and seek another use for this cash in the hopes of maximizing the value of our FNFV assets.”
Whitefish Cascade Forest Resources is registered as an Oregon company with a Salem address, but its principal address is in Singapore and its mailing address is in Seattle.
Meanwhile on the ground in Southern Oregon, a forestry workshop was held by the Oregon State University Klamath Basin Research Extension Center.
The event’s title was “How we can partner to increase the pace and scale of forest health and restoration across ownerships,” according to a report in the Herald and News.
According to Daniel Leavell, a professor of forestry and coordinator at KBREC, the workshop’s goal was to brainstorm methods for successfully increasing the scope and scale of forest restoration, thereby reducing fire susceptibility, within Klamath and Lake counties. “Fires and forest health go hand and hand,” Leavell said.
Representatives from federal and state agencies, as well as nonprofit organizations and industrial and private landowners, attended the event.
