As I understand it the bank guarantee is not a "bank guarantee" but an insurance policy as the funds were not kept in escrow. Therefore, the terms of the insurance policy should be scrutinised. I have reason to believe that the policy may not actually protect investors.
As for GS filing for "suspensión de pagos" they are effectively earning their cashflow some time to recover as they automatically cancel any payments due and can concentrate on selling assets / recuperating monies owed so that they can clear past debts and move on. So it is actually positive for them and negative for any company that they owe money to as it will severely delay paying of invoices. It is not unknown for companies to come back from this but you have to ask yourself would any clients buy at Grand Natal Golf now, knowing that the developer is in this situation? Also, would agents actually sell it in the future with the knowledge that GS are probably not going to be able to pay outstanding commissions due them at the moment?
The entire situation has arisen IMHO due to developers over stretching themselves with developments that are beyond their capacity... I mean to try to sell 20,000 + units when in your entire history you haven´t built 1/5 of those units even in Spain where the developer is from sounds a little over optimistic. And they are not the only Spanish developer guilty of doing that in Brazil..... although they are the FIRST to pay the price for it.
As I understand it (and from the local press) GS were a LONG way from having all of the pertinent licences (they had the initial Licencia Previa but not the Alvará which allows sales to take place LEGALLY, nor did they have the Licencia de Instalaciones or Constitución and by all accounts did not even have 100% land ownership). Therefore, they could not generate the income from sales as they could not proceed to sign full purchase contracts as the licensing was not in place to allow them to do so.
It is a great shame that such actions could tarnish investors / clients impressions of Brazil and several of the initial "landmark" developments are looking a bit shaky at the moment. Hopefully the industry will learn and move on from this. I also think that the agents should be honest and take some of the blame for not doing very thorough due diligence in the first place.
