Peel Hotels seeks £3m through share issue

Peel Hotels intends to raise £3m through issuing more shares.

It wants to issue 3.45 million shares at 87p each. It will use the money to buy two hotels.

Robert Peel and his brother, Charles, will purchase 2.41 million shares, worth more than £2m, to help raise the money.

This means the brothers will own more than 50% of the company's shares.

Robert Peel, chairman and founder of Peel Hotels, said the percentage of shares he and his brother would own was irrelevant, as the company would not change in any way.

He said: "What is relevant is that we need to expand our own hotels heavily, as the hotels that we are managing are getting less and less."

Peel admitted that now was probably a bad time to be buying hotels but said there would be certain markets that would be able to weather the economic downturn.

He said the hotels he wanted to buy were in city centres but was unwilling to comment further.