The POWER 30: Samuel J.H. Sigelman

Lighthouse Management Group Inc

A lighthouse provides guidance to ships and helps them navigate safely. So it is an apt name for a turnaround business for distressed companies. Lighthouse Management Group gets companies through workouts, assignments for the benefit of creditors, receiverships, and bankruptcies, with Samuel J.H. Sigelman as its director and general counsel.

Lighthouse was appointed a receiver for the Wabasha Tower, once the home of Ecolab in St. Paul. Reportedly, lenders and city officials became alarmed that $472,000 in insurance and basic utilities like heating, water and electricity had gone unpaid. The property was sold on Dec.29, 2022, to a company that plans luxury apartments for approximately $18 million. There were reportedly $2.5 million in contractor liens on the property.

The Minnesota Chapter of the Turnaround Management Association recently named the transaction, which eventually did succeed, its Transaction of the Year.

During due diligence, numerous issues arose relating to the method in which the owner/borrower (a twice-convicted felon’s entities) acquired the property and a related parking facility. Its website stated Lighthouse, along with their counsel the Taft Law Firm, and lender’s counsel Winthrop and Weinstine, worked diligently to hold the deal together which necessitated 24 amendments and several court hearings in order to enforce the terms of the purchase agreement and original court orders.

The final sale price was multiple times higher than estimates provided to the receiver from three national real estate brokerage firms at the time of the appointment of the receiver.

Lighthouse doesn’t restrict its counsel to towering office buildings. It brought Soderberg Flowers back to its employees and its Lake Street neighborhood when it closed abruptly in December. Lighthouse took over the shop, nearly a century old, and sold it expeditiously, preserving some jobs and satisfying its regulars when it was open for business for Valentine’s Day.

And, in other news, Sigelman is likely the only lawyer named to the Power 30 by Minnesota Lawyer who has been nominated for a sports Emmy, for his former career as producer of baseball broadcasting for ESPN.