Accor in win-win situation over Queens Moat Houses

French hotel group Accor will be the overall winner in the battle for troubled hotel group Queens Moat Houses (QMH) when the victor is announced within the next two weeks.

Bidders for QMH have now been whittled down to two and Accor has apparently teamed up with both, putting itself in a win-win situation. The French company has joined forces with US investment firm Colony Capital and UK property firm the Pedersen Group. In its deal with Colony Capital, Accor will operate all the hotels, while Pedersen will retain ownership and operation of about a dozen of QMH's UK hotels, with the remainder being operated by Accor.

Debt-laden QMH was put up for sale in January, two months after the group appointed investment bank Morgan Stanley to conduct a review of the business. A sale of the entire portfolio was one of several options QMH said it was investigating in a bid to pay off its £640m debt. The sale is not expected to fetch much more than £600m, however.

QMH has about 90 hotels in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.