Starwood Capital Group buys Four Pillars Hotels
Starwood Capital Group has snapped up UK hotel owner and operator Four Pillars Hotels in a deal believed to be in the region of £90m.
Integrated investment bank Canaccord Genuity advised HSBC, AIB and Bank of Ireland on the acquisition of debt from private equity firm JER, which had bought Four Pillars for £120m in 2007.
Included in the transaction is a portfolio of five owned and leased hotels and one managed hotel in Oxfordshire and the surrounding areas, comprising 863 bedrooms.
These properties are:
• Cotswold Water Park, 328-room modern hotel in the Cotswolds
• Tortworth Court, 190-room, Grade II-listed Victorian mansion hotel surrounded by 30 acres of parkland, South Gloucestershire
• Oxford Spires, 174-room hotel half-mile from Oxford's city centre
• Oxford Thames, 84-room recently expanded country hotel three miles from Oxford
• Oxford Witney, 87-room contemporary hotel near Witney
• Oxford Abingdon, 66-room hotel managed by Four Pillars in Abingdon-on-Thames
Kevin Colket, senior vice president at Starwood Capital Group, commented: "Four Pillars offers high-quality, full-service, four-star hotels in superb locations. We look forward to building on the company's operational excellence and its longstanding client focus."
Starwood acquired hotel firm Principal Hayley Group for an undisclosed sum last February. The private investment firm is also considered to be the likely buyer of De Vere Golf and Urban Village Resorts, as the De Vere Group looks to offload two of its core businesses in a bid to offset its original £1.1b debt with the Lloyds Banking Group.
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