| Eurazeo Secures The Purchase Of Financière Galaxie |
| One week it is in exclusive talks, the next French investment firm Eurazeo is emerging from the conference room wreathed in smiles and announcing that, subject to necessary consents, it has secured the purchase of Financière Galaxie from Duke Street Capital for an undisclosed sum. However, an unnamed source suggested that Eurazeo had paid some €380 million for the company that owns the B&B hotel chain, the third-largest operator in France’s budget sector. B&B’s 111 hotels in France and its portfolio of eight in Germany have a total of 8,015 rooms. Duke Street Capital was said to have paid some €200 million when it acquired Financière Galaxie in summer 2003. |
| IHG Gives The UK Five Holiday Inns | Return to Headlines |
| Chardon Hotels made a friend in Hilton Group earlier this year when as one half of Stardon UK (the other being Starwood Capital) it paid £111 million for a portfolio of 11 Hilton hotels in the UK. Chardon has now used five of those properties to maintain a long-standing friendship with InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). The five, which are all to be refurbished, have been reborn as the 144-room Holiday Inn Leeds – Garforth, the 131-room Holiday Inn Brighton – Seafront, the 121-room Holiday Inn Norwich City Airport, the 105-room Holiday Inn Corby – Rockingham and the 101-room Holiday Inn Glasgow, East Kilbride after IHG signed a 20-year franchise agreement. | |
| Mövenpick Heads For Stuttgart; Rezidor Chooses Düsseldorf | Return to Headlines |
| Expect to encounter a throng of excited dignitaries at the airport in the German city of Stuttgart in autumn 2007 for not one but two ribbon-cutting ceremonies. The first snip will be made outside the doors to a 326-room, four-star Mövenpick hotel, which Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts will have on lease from Stuttgarter Finanz- und Beteiligungs-Aktiengesellschaft. The new hotel will partner the existing 229-room Mövenpick Hotel Stuttgart-Airport. The crowd will then shuffle across to the nearby Landesmesse exhibition centre, where the scissors will do their work once more. The citizens of Düsseldorf will have chance to vent their hurrahs this September as Rezidor SAS Hospitality arrives to open the 135-room Radisson SAS Media Harbour Hotel Düsseldorf. | |
| High Glory Aims For Glory In BIL Bid | Return to Headlines |
| High Glory Investments, a wholly owned subsidiary of Guoco Group, an investment holding company based in Hong Kong, has been obliged under market regulations to make a conditional cash offer for the remaining shares in BIL International. The offer of US$0.71 a share comes after High Glory’s purchase of the 10.12% stake held by Longleaf Partners International Fund took its total holding to 39.9% and thus past the 30% threshold and into mandatory bid territory. The offer price values BIL, the owner of Thistle Hotels, at a reported US$972 million. | |
| Precinct In Jurys Return | Return to Headlines |
| Precinct Investments has come to stand beneath Jurys Doyle’s window in a third attempt to win the hotelier’s heart. It will call out that its latest offer is €16.50 per share, and hope that this will be sufficiently seductive to send Jurys Doyle off in search of a ladder. Precinct has already pencilled in the caterers for the proposed wedding: Anglo Irish Bank, which will arrange debt financing, and Aldersgate Investments, the investment vehicle of Simon and David Reuben, which will provide equity financing. | |
| Mövenpick Will Now See Three Ships Come Sailing In | Return to Headlines |
| Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts is to manage its third Nile cruiser, which, like Radamis I and Radamis II, will ply the waters between the Egyptian cities of Aswan and Luxor. The luxury Royal Lotus, which is owned by the Nile Exploration Corporation, will have 62 cabins and two suites and is due to be commissioned this autumn. Italy’s Domina Hotel Group has a Nile cruiser in its armoury but the company has preferred to keep its feet on dry land on its latest visit to Egypt. The 128-room, four-star Domina Elaria Nuweiba Hotel & Resort is now ready to be enjoyed in the resort of Nuweiba, on the Gulf of Aqaba. | |
| Southern Sun, Something's Begun | Return to Headlines |
| Ah, those summer room nights in Dubai. South African chain Southern Sun Hotels will be able to enjoy plenty of them in the years to come, after it signed an agreement with Emaar Properties to manage and operate two hotels on Emaar’s Burj Dubai development. The two properties, which are due to open at the end of 2006, will offer 21 suites and more than 350 rooms and are Southern Sun’s first hotels outside Africa. | |
| HSBC And Prince Alwaleed United Over Africa | Return to Headlines |
| HSBC has opened a joint account in the names of its subsidiary HSBC Investment Bank Holdings and HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Alsaud, who is represented by a subsidiary of his Kingdom Group. Each party has a maximum of US$200 million to deposit and the intention is that money withdrawn will be invested, via a limited liability partnership named HSBC Kingdom Africa Investments (Cayman), in a broad range of growth companies in sub-Saharan Africa. | |
| Support For Corinthia's Expansion Plans | Return to Headlines |
| Hospitality Investors Group is to assist Corinthia Hotels International with its plans for rapid expansion worldwide. The strategic alliance the two will form will support Corinthia as it looks to sign management contracts and add some 30 properties to its current portfolio of 20 over the next three years. | |
| Another Portuguese Success At Chelsea | Return to Headlines |
| Portugal’s Grupo Pestana has been cleared to begin work on the construction of what will be its first hotel in the UK. The 218-room, four-star Pestana London, which will require a total investment of some €45 million, is due to open in 2008 on a site at Chelsea Bridge. Elsewhere in the city, Leverguide’s quest to find a manager for the St James’s Club has reached a successful conclusion with the appointment of Folio Hotels to the position. Leverguide recently acquired the property for £20 million through its investment vehicle Elanway; the 56-bedroom former members club is to be converted into a luxury hotel. | |
| One Hotel For Amhult 2 In Gothenburg | Return to Headlines |
| Swedish real estate firm Amhult 2 is to build an 85-room hotel as part of the new Amhult Centrum development on the outskirts of the Swedish city of Gothenburg. The company has signed a letter of intent with Torslanda Plaza Park Hotell, which will operate the property. Meanwhile, Amhult’s compatriot AP Fastigheter has sold the Scandic Sergel Plaza to fellow Swede Stena Fastigheter for around €60 million. The new owner will move into the 403-room hotel in Stockholm on 1 September. | |
| Sumahan On The Water: A New Hit In Turkey | Return to Headlines |
| Proof that a nineteenth-century distillery can be transformed into a luxury design hotel may be found on the shores of the Bosphorus in the Turkish city of Istanbul. Local architects Mark and Nedret Butler are the owners and designers of Sumahan on the water, which opened in May and now has 14 of its 21 rooms in operation. | |
| Elizabeth Makes Further Progress In East Anglia | Return to Headlines |
| Elizabeth Hotels is fast becoming queen of East Anglia, having secured its twelfth hotel in this region of eastern England. The company paid an undisclosed sum, off an asking price of more than £2.5 million, for the privately operated Mill Hotel in the Suffolk town of Sudbury. The 56-room property is now known as Hotel Elizabeth The Mill. A pretender to the throne as king of northeast England might be Best Western International, which has raised its flag in Middlesbrough for the first time with the opening of the 23-room Best Western Highfield Hotel. | |
Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 07/07/05-14/07/05
Sol Meliá - The share price remained buoyant after last week's takeover speculation, and was assisted in further gains by an 'Outperform' rating from Cazenove.
De Vere Group - Panmure Gordon placed a 'Buy' rating on the stock and gave a target price of 520p.
NH Hoteles - The share price rose on hopes that the company would not be making a cash call to finance any bid it might make for Occidental Hoteles.
