Investment firms Shore Capital and Dawnay Day have bought the Paramount Hotels Group for £215m via investment vehicle Dawnay Shore Hotels.
Anglo Irish Bank funded the deal to buy Paramount from Alchemy Partners Nominees, which owns around 90% of the group, with the remainder being owned by management.
The Paramount Hotels Group comprises 13 four- and five-star hotels across the UK – including in Edinburgh, Oxford and Cardiff – and has a total of 1,803 bedrooms.
The hotels will continue to be managed by Michael Purtill and Ian Goulding, who formed the Paramount Hotels Group in 1994.
Mark Wynne Smith, managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, which acted for Dawnay Shore Hotels, said: “This transaction confirms a trend away from sale-and-leaseback transactions towards sale and management-back, which avoid the balance sheet commitments of leases and higher transaction costs linked to the changes in stamp duty that came into effect at the end of last year.”
Several national newspapers reported this morning that Dawnay Shore Hotels is in talks to buy two more chains of four-star hotels in a bid to become the UK’s largest four-star operator.
References: EGi News 13/07/04
