Montague hotel goes for £8.5m

Securum Hotels Holdings (SHH), the company formed to run and dispose of thehotel assets of failed Swedish bank Nordbanken, has sold a central London property for £8.5m.

The Montague hotel - a 109-bedroom townhouse property in Bloomsbury - has been snapped up by the New York-based group of investors that also owns the Chesterfield Hotel in Mayfair.

The group is now planning a £1m refurbishment of the hotel's bedrooms and guest areas, according to its UK-based managing director, Peter Wood.

Mr Wood also revealed that the investors were seeking other hotel investments in the capital.

The sale of the Montague reduces SHH's UK hotel portfolio to just two: the Holiday Inn Victoria, London, and the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, Edinburgh. Neither of these hotels is currently for sale.

At its height, SHH owned and operated 10 hotels throughout the UK.

Kai Ringenson, managing director of SHH, said: "The Montague sale represents another demonstration of Securum's strategy of adding value to the assets under its control before disposing of them to gain the maximum value for the Swedish government."

There are also four properties in continental Europe owned by SHH: the Park Hotel, Brussels; the City Garden Hotel, also in Brussels; the Guadalmina Hotel, Marbella, Spain; and the Sheraton München Hotel, Munich.