The Rohatyn Group, New YorkThe Bridge | 22 May 2025
Michigan hopes to limit foreign land ownership. In UP, it’s already too late
One of Michigan's largest commercial forest owners has amassed more than 540,000 acres in the Upper Peninsula, making it the largest land holder in Keweenaw, Houghton and Ontonagon counties, home to some of the state’s most beautiful and rugged wilderness.
The firm has reported owning more than a sixth of the land in Gogebic County, along the Wisconsin border — and it’s also disclosed ties to Singapore, which is increasingly used to shelter investments from other Asian countries.
But who are the owners gobbling up these wide swaths, where do they reside and what are their plans for the property? That’s far less clear.
As Michigan lawmakers attempt to limit foreign land ownership in the interest of national security, the obscure ownership of the land in the western UP demonstrates how difficult those efforts may be.
A proposal approved earlier this month by the Republican-led Michigan House would bar entities from “foreign countries of concern” — China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Russia — from purchasing agricultural land in Michigan. Current foreign land owners would have to register with the state.
But without a robust way of tracking down ownership and strong enforcement mechanisms, “it sounds like it might be fairly easy to evade,” Mathew Collin, a senior researcher at the EU Tax Observatory, told Bridge Michigan.
“Once you go offshore, things become very complex very quickly,” he said. “You have ownership changes that stretch across many jurisdictions, and it can be very hard to know that you've reached the end of it.”
According to federal data, more than 1.9 million acres of the roughly 28 million acres of agricultural land in Michigan is tied to substantial foreign interests, though watchdogs have raised concerns about the reliability of the information.
More than a fourth of that reported land — the 540,000 acres in the UP — is controlled by The Rohatyn Group (TRG), a global private equity firm based in New York, which has been acquiring timberland in the area since at least 2017.
Michigan companies purchased by TRG more recently began reporting to the federal government that they have foreign ownership in Singapore, where the company has an office and lists a single employee.
As of the end of 2023, TRG’s holdings represented about 5% of all of Michigan’s privately-owned forestland and made the company the largest owner of agricultural land with substantial foreign ownership in the state.
“The land sale certainly raises questions,” US Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who has introduced federal legislation that would reform how foreign entities report ownership of agricultural land, told Bridge in a statement.
Under her federal proposal, the complex land transfers that resulted in TRG ownership would have triggered a national security review.
TRG, which did not respond to multiple Bridge Michigan interview requests, allows its land to be open to public hunting and fishing in exchange for state tax breaks, has easements for amenities like an ATV trail open in the Keweenaw Peninsula and most of their acreage is certified for sustainable forestry practices.
‘Countries of concern’
The foreign land ownership package approved earlier this month by the Michigan House was inspired by Gotion Inc., a China-linked firm whose plans to build a state-subsidized electric battery plan near Big Rapids have sparked controversy.
But experts say the land sales like those in the UP point to a potential shortcoming of the legislation: By using shell companies and subsidiaries, firms can obscure their true ownership.
Firms owned by TRG have reported to the US Department of Agriculture foreign ownership based in Singapore, but that country has in recent years increasingly touted itself as a banking haven for foreign wealth.
So-called “Singapore-washing” — where Chinese companies and investors base assets in the city state to circumvent regulations elsewhere — has reportedly increased. Close to half a trillion dollars came into the city-state for wealth management purposes in 2021, and it is a popular investment destination for family offices of the ultrawealthy.
David Ortega, a Michigan State University professor who has researched foreign ownership of US agricultural land, told Bridge that transfers offshore “may be motivated by tax planning strategies or a desire for investor privacy, though the specific reasons in any given case are often difficult to determine.
“However, these arrangements can obscure the true beneficial ownership of land and complicate efforts to track and monitor foreign holdings,” he added.
Under the state House legislation, already-owned land wouldn’t have to be forfeited under, but firms would have to register with the state. But by routing ownership of Michigan farmland through companies based in countries that aren’t blacklisted, experts say prospective buyers could avoid the restrictions.
State Rep. Gina Johnsen of Portland, the Republican sponsor of the House legislation, said the proposal “is going to make it a lot harder for (foreign actors) to get away with” concealing their ownership.
“There will have to be some investigations done if it's suspected that a certain business has principles as owners that fall into the category that these bills address,” Johnsen said.
She said she hadn’t discussed with the attorney general’s office how state law enforcement could investigate the ownership of shell companies overseas.
The paper trail
In the UP, local officials say they’ve had no communication with TRG, which works with a management firm that did not respond to Bridge inquiries.
TRG had purchased the land in 2017 from a firm that reported Dutch ownership, but a series of shell companies have masked any information that might be available about the land’s investors, including if their foreign investors even reside in Singapore, which has become a magnet for foreign capital.
A much larger asset management firm, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC, known as GMO, had previously owned much of the forestland. But in mid-2017, TRG, announced it was acquiring a GMO subsidiary, GMO Renewable Resources, which included all of that firm’s timber holdings.
The deal closed later that year, and in early 2018 the companies that held much of the UP forestland, GMO Threshold Timber 1, 2 and 3, had changed their names to TRG Threshold Timber. `
Little changed until 2022, when county land records showed that the TRG Threshold Timber companies transferred ownership of the land from those companies to a new set of LLCs, called variations of Sage Timber and Verdant Timber, in cost-free transactions.
Business records filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the state showed that the new companies were still managed by Rohatyn’s firm, and records with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, a forest management certification nonprofit, indicate Verdant Timber is still owned by TRG and managed by American Forest Management.
The companies, however, began reporting to the USDA that they had foreign ownership in Singapore.
That’s where the trail runs cold. The disclosure means that 10% or more of the forestland is owned by a person, multiple people or a company based in Singapore, but little else is available through public documents.
The companies are registered in Michigan, but are incorporated in Delaware, a state known for its widespread use by companies looking to obscure information.
The Rohatyn Group does have an office in Singapore, and list a single employee at that location, but Singaporean business records do not tie that individual to any investment vehicles that appear related to the firm’s land in Michigan.
‘Very troubling’
Much of the concern driving Michigan’s foreign influence legislation is the specter of Chinese interests buying up US farmland and natural resources — a frequent topic that concerned policymakers insist is a major national security threat.
Sen. Ed McBroom, a Vulcan Republican who represents the majority of the UP in the state senate, said TRG’s Singapore disclosure is also “very troubling.”
While the USDA does require foreign ownership reporting, the rules only go so far. Filers are required to disclose three “tiers” of ownership, but not “beneficial ownership” — a legal term for who ultimately controls a company.
It means that if the Singaporean entity has ownership outside of that country, TRG is not required to report it.
“The use of layered or shell entities and offshore ownership makes it more difficult to identify who ultimately controls these assets, raising concerns about transparency and in some cases national security,” Ortega, the MSU agricultural economist, said in an email.
For those in the UP, the land deals have turned heads.
Greg Ryskey, the director of the Gogebic County forestry and parks commission, told Bridge, “It used to be the paper mills owned the land, and now it's investment companies.”
That shift toward private equity ownership, McBroom said, “threatens everything.”
“I think it's a very scary part of what's going on in America's economy right now,” he added.
The forestland is overseen by American Forest Management, a national company. Ryskey told Bridge local officials have never interacted with representatives of TRG.
Reporting problems
In many cases, the ownership behind some obscured foreign holdings have only come to public light in major leaks, such as the Panama Papers in 2016.
Further complicating the picture is the federal government’s own records. In the most recent publicly available data on foreign ownership from the USDA, for 2023, GMO Threshold Timber still owns 430,000 acres of forest in Michigan.
But the company no longer exists under that name. It was renamed after TRG’s purchase and no company by that name owns land in the reported counties.
A 2024 report by the Government Accountability Office, an internal federal watchdog, criticized the program, noting the USDA failed to share relevant information on land transactions with national security officials and “does not sufficiently verify and conduct quality reviews” to ensure their data is accurate.
“Without improving its internal processes, USDA cannot report reliable information to Congress or the public about where and how much U.S. agricultural land is held by foreign persons,” the report said.
For a time, the federal government had moved to force companies to divulge their true ownership.
In the final weeks of President Donald Trump’s first term in 2021, Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act, which would’ve required every company in the country to divulge their true owners to the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, with the goal of uncovering money laundering and corruption through shell companies.
The new law was quickly tied up in litigation arguing it was an undue invasion of privacy, and faced a widespread outcry from small businesses who viewed the reporting requirements as burdensome paperwork.
In March, the US Treasury department reversed course, and announced they would exempt nearly all companies — like Sage and Verdant Timber — from having to report their ownership, effectively neutralizing the law.
Slotkin, with Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, introduced the FARMLAND Act, which would require some of the reforms recommended in the GAO report.
“Under our current law, there’s no requirement that foreign buyers be vetted for national security concerns,” Slotkin said in a statement.
“That’s why I have made protecting Michigan farmland a priority, writing the bipartisan FARMLAND Act, which strengthens our laws, requires a national security vetting for countries of concern, and ensures bad actors aren’t buying up Michigan’s precious resources.”