Bidco set to take contol of EasyHotel

A bid to take control of EasyHotel has been successful, despite founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou urging shareholders to "hang in there".

Investor consortium Bidco is set to take control of the board of the budget hotel chain, after one of its members agreed to acquire more than 2.5 million shares.

ICAMAP yesterday agreed to acquire 2,595,724 EasyHotel shares (representing approximately 1.78% of the issued share capital of the budget hotel chain) at 95p per share.

Bidco, a newly incorporated company owned by a consortium of Cadim Fonds, part of Canadian real estate company Ivanhoé Cambridge, and real estate firm ICAMAP, launched a £138.7m takeover bid for the company earlier this month.

Completion of the acquisition is expected tomorrow (23 August), after which Bidco and its associates will hold or have received acceptances for more than 50% of the EasyHotel voting rights.

Just before the announcement, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, owner of the EasyGroup family of brands and the second largest shareholder (27%) in EasyHotel, said the group was trying to "steal this company from under the noses of other investors" and the "real value" of an EasyHotel share was "well above" the offer. He urged fellow shareholders to "hang on in there" and "reject the offer".

EasyHotel is one of the spin-off brands from Sir Stelios' EasyGroup, best known for its budget airline EasyJet. The brand was launched in 2005 with its first property, a 34-bedroom hotel in London's Kensington, and now owns 11 hotels in the UK and franchises eight.