Henderson Park acquires Hilton Metropoles
Henderson Park, the European real estate investment platform founded by former Goldman Sachs partner Nick Weber, is to acquire the London and Birmingham Hilton Metropole hotels for a reported £500m.
The 1,059-bedroom Hilton London Metropole in Paddington and the 790-bedroom Hilton Birmingham Metropole (pictured), two of the UK's largest hotels, were put on the market in January 2016 for around £700m by the family-owned Tonstate Group. Tonstate acquired the hotels from Hilton in 2006 for £417m.
The acquisition marks Henderson Park's entry into the UK hotel market and follows investments into the sector in Paris, where it bought Le Méridien Étoile, the city's largest hotel, and the the Ledra, a five-star hotel in Athens it acquired in June.
The Hilton London Metropole is London's largest conference hotel by delegate capacity, second largest hotel by room count and one of Hilton's flagship hotels in the capital. The Hilton Birmingham Metropole is the UK's largest hotel outside of London and the UK's largest conference hotel by delegate capacity.
Hilton will continue to operate the hotels. Jones Day acted for Henderson Park; CBRE acted for Tonstate.
Weber said: "Through this transaction we have acquired two of the UK's largest hotels and conference centres and we're thrilled to mark Henderson Park's entry it to the UK hotels market with the purchase of such landmark assets. While these latest additions to our portfolio provide us with assets of substantial scale and pre-eminence in prime locations in the UK's top two cities, they also offer a number of opportunities to enhance value through our own asset management."
L+R expected to make £600m bid for two Hilton Metropoles >>
Two Hilton hotels, with nearly 1850 bedrooms, to be sold >>
Hilton Hotels sells Metropole sites for more than £400m >>
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