Swedish hotel investor Pandox has been selected as the preferred bidder to buy Lone Star’s Jurys Inn portfolio for around £800m.
The company fought off competition from investors including Queensgate Investments and London & Regional.
The portfolio includes 36 regional Jurys Inn hotels comprising around 8,000 bedrooms as well as the 368-bedroom Hilton Garden Inn, Heathrow.
Pandox has long sought to make a major investment in the UK market. It currently owns only the Hilton London Heathrow Airport.
The Stockholm-listed firm owns 122 hotels across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands and the UK.
It typically undertakes a sale-and-leaseback model with blue-chip operators, but also has its own boutique brands that it occasionally uses.
Pandox has teamed up with Leonardo Hotels to operate the portfolio, but it is understood it intends to continue to operate the hotels under the Jurys Inn brand using the existing management team, which includes managing director Jason Carruthers.
In August, Berlin-based Leonardo – ultimately owned by Israel’s Fattal Hotels – bought Portland Hotels, which operates five Scottish hotels.
In the UK, it also operates the Leonardo Royal Hotel Edinburgh and Leonardo Hotel London Heathrow Airport.
Lone Star bought Jurys in 2015 for £680m. The company had previously undertaken a series of restructures in the wake of the financial crisis due to its large debt pile. It was purchased from a
consortium including Royal Bank of Scotland, Quinlan Private, Mount Kellett Capital and Oman Investment Fund.
Under its Amaris hotel company, Lone Star also owns a further £600m of UK hotels. These are currently not on the market and are operated as Mercure or Hilton.
Last year, Lone Star sold the Atlas portfolio, made up of 46 Holiday Inn Express hotels and a Hampton by Hilton, to London & Regional for £575m.
JLL and KPMG are acting for Pandox; Eastdil Secured and Credit Suisse are advising Lone Star.
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