Excerpted from “Treasured Island: The Story of St Barth…and its Barbarians, Billionaires and Beauties”, the new book by PALMER Editor-at-Large Michael Gross.
On St. Barthélemy in 1975, hotel manager Roger Lacour, descendent of a renowned Guadeloupean historian, met and married Brook Phillips, a daughter of an ad-space salesman from Block Island. Together, they opened La Société Immobilière de Saint- Barthélemy, aka Sibarth, a real estate company. It was born from their notion that undeveloped St. Barth had reached a watershed and they were determined to accelerate and profit from it. Inspired by early American adopters of their island, the St. Barth had started renovating or building and then renting then houses to visitors. By 1980, the couple had built a portfolio of fifty rental villas.
The Lacours became spokespeople for the island, quoted in the glossy magazines that “discovered” St. Barth in the early ’80s, often thanks to them. “They were just so in love with this island and could present it to people from big cities with stressed lives,” says Pascal Irace, an island caterer and wine merchant.
By 1983, describing villas to potential clients by Telex or over the telephone and sending photocopies of photographs by mail or, later, fax machines had become untenable. A family friend, Leroy Frantz, the former CEO of International Flavors and Fragrances, and owner of a marina in Stamford, Connecticut, offered to open a U.S.-based reservation desk for them. They called the new company WIMCO (for West Indies Management Company).
Roger and Brook Lacour. Courtesy of Ashley Lacour
At the same time, Brook Lacour’s sister Julie met Barclay Harding “Tim” Warburton IV, a Vietnam veteran and furniture manufacturer, and he took over from Frantz. His great-great-grandfather had cofounded the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph in 1864, and was succeeded at its helm by the first Barclay Harding, a commander in the Spanish- American War and chargé d’affairs for President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. Barclay I, who married into the Wanamaker retail family of Philadelphia, was later elected mayor of Palm Beach. Together, the Lacours and Barclay IV, a gregarious entrepreneur, created a new business model, not just for St. Barth, but for the world, setting the table for large-scale international vacation-home rental companies like Airbnb.
For the island, the Sibarth/WIMCO alliance meant jobs and wealth from servicing not just visitors but a new breed of homeowners who needed lawyers, architects, construction workers, and maintenance services. And rentals were not just a cash cow, they grew the market for Sibarth’s other business, home and land sales. The Lacours promised buyers their vacation homes could double as profit centers, paying for themselves and offsetting ongoing costs through rentals. Sibarth made commissions on sales and rentals and forged close connections to owners as a by-product of villa management.
In 1984, WIMCO moved to Julie and Tim’s hometown of Newport, Rhode Island, and for a quarter century, they all prospered. But just as success and wealth would inevitably change St. Barth, the casual friends and family feeling that nurtured Sibarth and WIMCO would also evolve, and the profitable partnership of the Lacours and Warburton would end in anger and litigation.
According to a timeline prepared by Tim’s daughter Heather during those lawsuits, he owned two-thirds of WIMCO. But years later the Lacours would charge that while he agreed to pay them $20,000 for those shares, he never did. Under their exclusive agreements, Sibarth agreed to pay WIMCO half of the 22.5 percent commissions they earned on villa rentals and services, even if renters booked directly through the St. Barth office. WIMCO collected fees from clients and then deducted its commission and paid Sibarth only when they checked out—an unusual arrangement. Over the years, Warburton also developed reservations software that would give him exclusive access to decades of data on villas, clients, prices, and revenues. Until 2010, WIMCO and Sibarth operated a “successful joint venture offering vacation villas for rent on St. Barth, with exclusivity over villa collection,” according to Warburton’s timeline. “WIMCO perform[ed] marketing, sales, information technology, and accounting. Sibarth broker[ed] rental agreements with St. Barth home owners, maintain[ed an] overview of properties, and handle[d] on-island requests (concierge services).” “It was all based on trust,” said the late Bob Brown, a longtime WIMCO executive, but eventually became “an ongoing nightmare.”
Warburton saw the deal as a gold mine: “He’s marketing, they’re management. Sibarth was the only game in town so he demanded exclusivity for WIMCO,” says Brown. “His job was to get clients there.” Traditional travel agents, Brown continued, “didn’t understand villa product” or how to manage availability, and were locked out. Warburton understood that WIMCO “controlled the calendar. Tim held that tight.” He also created what Vendome Guide–glossy, perfect-bound magazine-style portfolios with photos of the villas Sibarth offered, organized by the number of bedrooms to make it easy for couples, honeymooners, families, and groups to find houses to rent—and sold advertising in the guides.
Barclay Harding “Tim” Warburton IV
“The business was very good,” says Pascal Philippon, later the Lacours’ lawyer. Sibarth controlled “ninety percent of the business.” Despite an ever-increasing number of hotel rooms, the unique tourism ecosystem of St. Barth would favor villa rentals for decades to come, establishing its singularity in the Caribbean and turbocharging its economy. Hotel rooms became St. Barth’s entry-level drug, a gateway to the pleasures of island addiction.
The St. Barth villa rental business was grounded for decades in the stable, profitable, trusting relationship of the Lacours and Warburton. But by the early 2000s, Roger was at odds with Tim, who had long wanted to buy Sibarth; he felt he could do better than his in-laws. Warburton’s hope was to combine Sibarth and WIMCO and later sell them together.
Warburton “was larger than life but he could also be difficult,” says an early WIMCO employee. “He steamrolled the gentle culture of Sibarth. The child WIMCO grew up and became stronger than the founder.” And when that child took on its parent, it shook the foundations of St. Barth by altering the dynamic of a heretofore gentlemanly real estate business. The battle for control went on for years while Warburton’s yearning to buy Sibarth was unabated. Beginning in 2005, he regularly made offers, to no avail. Roger felt Tim’s bids were too low because Warburton thought Sibarth “was worthless without WIMCO,” according to one of the lawsuits that followed. It was hardly worthless to WIMCO, though. In 2004–5, WIMCO’s gross revenues reached $25 million on 2,800 Sibarth villa reservations.
That year, Brook began to show signs of cognitive decline caused by early-onset Alzheimer’s disease; it would sideline her long before she entered a care facility in 2015. “Villa rentals lost the strength” that sprang from “the spirit of Brook,” says a Sibarth executive, who believes that the tensions wouldn’t have metastasized had she been “at full capacity.”
Another alarming development was taking place in cyberspace, though it’s unclear if the Lacours and Warburton saw it as a threat; on St. Barth, their duopoly could have easily blinded them. “I came along as the internet was heating up,” Brown said of his arrival at WIMCO. “I told Tim it was what we had to do, but he was so stubborn, he only wanted print,” his beloved Vendome Guides. “We had heated battles because meanwhile, Caribbean Way,” an agency created in Canada in 1999 by Joe Poulin, a computer-savvy teenaged Canadian website designer, started renting Barbados villas on the internet. With that, the future arrived on an island where, a few years earlier, a boutique had been boastfully named Sorry, no telephone.
In 2010, Sibarth and WIMCO went their separate ways, each accusing the other of sneak attacks. Negotiations to disentangle their interests continued for years, as did skirmishing in the courts and over local villa rental business. Key employees fled Sibarth and the Lacours’ son Ashley and his wife Kristina stepped in to try and steady the ship.
When Roger died in April 2017, three months after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, the couple “jumped in a ship heading for rocks,” says Ashley, “everybody else jumped off and we managed to turn it around.” Sibarth almost hit bottom, but regrouped, cut costs, and rebuilt its decimated team. Says Bob Brown, “Ashley was dealt a horrific hand and had the tenacity and maturity to transcend it.” Then, in 2022, Brook Lacour also died and just after Warburton found a buyer for WIMCO, he contracted COVID and died, too, that in March. The extraordinary rise and fall of Sibarth/WIMCO ended in business divorce and family tragedy.
A tsunami was unleashed by the Sibarth/WIMCO split, which opened the St. Barth real estate market to all comers. A turbo-charged free-for-all ensued. “Big brands are like vultures,” said Bob Brown, pointing to the arrival of Corcoran, Sothebys, Christies, Barnes, Brown Harris Stevens, Coldwell Banker, and more on St. Barth. “It was a feeding frenzy. Kick ’em when they’re down. Tim’s decision totally changed the dynamics and culture of the island.”
Excerpted from Treasured Island: The Story of St Barth…and its Barbarians, Billionaires and Beauties by Michael Gross (Harper) – Out Now.
