Getting bigger, getting better?
In the biggest British hotel takeover deal of the year, Ladbroke's Hilton hotel chain announced plans in February to take over Stakis with an offer worth £1.4b. In the same month two of Britain's biggest independent consortia, Best Western and Consort, announced they wanted to merge, making a group of nearly 400 hotels.
Not everybody was happy about the changes. At the Stakis annual general meeting many private shareholders said they didn't want the takeover, but the financial institutions did and they held 87% of Stakis shares. In April Irish group Jurys agreed to buy rival Doyle group for IR£187.6m. Unusually, staff at Doyle (but not Jurys) enjoyed a bonus of about IR£160 after the takeover to thank them for their loyalty.
Contract caterer Catering & Allied was swallowed by French giant Elior in May in a deal which left the French outfit holding 80% of the shares in the company. Throughout the year there was talk of Jarvis Hotels merging with another company, but nothing came of it. But the group did buy London's Regents Park hotel from Hilton for £72.2m in August.
Also in August came the final act in the long-running saga of who was to takeover Allied Domecq‘s pubs - Whitbread or Punch Taverns - which ended with Punch winning the battle with hefty backing from Bass. The deal was worth a whopping £2.75b. Smaller in scale was the £30m deal under which the London restaurant owners Hartford Group and Montana came together, also in August. Hartford ran the Pharmacy restaurant.
In September Millennium & Copthorne announced its intention to take over 29 hotels from US chain Regal International in a deal worth £395m. After some wrangling the deal was done, but for 28 not 29 hotels.
October saw Granada starting the talks that ended in the purchase of Harry Ramsden's for £20m. In November Whitbread agreed the takeover of the Swallow group in a deal worth £578m, which led to more predictions that other groups would face pressure to merge or expand in order to compete.
