Somerston Capital is in advanced talks to buy the Morethan Hotels regional portfolio from Royal Bank of Scotland.
The group has agreed to pay £70m for the chain of 12 Express by Holiday Inns, which includes assets in Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Bradford, Southampton and Stafford.
The offer is believed to have been made in a joint venture with US private equity fund Lone Star.
Lone Star took control of Somerston Capital’s hotel arm, Somerston Hotels, through its purchase of the IBRC Project Rock loan portfolio.
Somerston Hotels, a chain of three-star properties across the UK, had £339.5m of debt outstanding to IBRC in two loans.
A sale of Morethan Hotels has been mooted since August last year when RBS hired Canaccord Genuity to investigate a sale, as revealed by Estates Gazette ?(3 August 2013, p20).
The bank arranged and ?participated in a loan to the group in 2007. The portfolio was brought to market for around £65m.
Somerston Capital subsidiary St James’s Hotels Group last month acquired 14 hotels across England from administrators of Forestdale Hotels.
annabel.dixon@estatesgazette.com
