A Qatari-backed investment vehicle, Constellation Hotels, has scooped up the Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane for a reported £400m.
The deal announced today will see Constellation pay some £301m for the Intercontinental’s 57-year lease on the luxury London property. A further £100m will go to secure the freehold, owned by the Crown Estate, the property company controlling many of the Queen’s assets, Reuters reported. The hotel first opened its doors in 1975 and has almost 500 rooms.
The acquisition is the latest in a long line of Qatari-led London investments, and the small oil-rich nation now owns a host of London landmarks including Harrods and the Shard. They also own a stake in Heathrow Airport owners BAA and are reportedly in talks to sink £10bn into UK infrastructure, such as roads and possibly £14bn into an EDF Energy nuclear reactor in Somerset.
Qatar is estimated to have spent 3.5 billion euros on European real estate acquisitions in the 12 months to mid-August 2012. According to Reuters’ calculations this is the equivalent of just six weeks’ revenue from the country’s liquefied natural gas exports.
As part of the Intercontinental Park Lane agreement, the international hotel chain will keep managing the hotel for 30 years – more than the 25 years initially reported.
Intercontinental is undergoing a worldwide offloading scheme, and has been striving to sell many of its hotels including the New York Barclay. In the last decade it has sold over 190 hotels for an estimated $6.1 (£4bn).
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