Whitbread, the owner of the Costa Coffee chain and Premier Inn hotels, has boosted its ambitions to expand overseas by agreeing to buy 19 hotels in Germany for an estimated £250m.
It is acquiring 13 trading hotels and half a dozen pipeline sites from Foremost Hospitality Group, a privately owned German company that runs them under the Holiday Inn Express franchise.
Alison Brittain, Whitbread’s chief executive, said that the leasehold hotels would be converted to the Premier Inn brand at a cost of about £30m to £40m over the next two years.
The international push comes as Brittain fights a rearguard action against the activist investor Scott Ferguson, founder of New York-based hedge fund Sachem Head and a protege of Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman.
He is seeking a split of the UK company and a sale of some Whitbread property assets, according to the FT.
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