Colony Capital and Accor Win Control of French Maranatha Hotels
Date: October 2018
Location: 52 hotels throughout France
Name: Several brands under Maranatha – mostly four & five star.
No. of Keys:
Seller: Receivers for Maranatha, created by Olivier Carvin, with some 6,000 investors
Buyer: US investment group Colony Capital and Accor have won control of French hotel group Maranatha. A Marseilles court-approved bid gives the pair 52 four and five star French hotels.
Maranatha fell into receivership in 2017, after trying to buy a number of the properties it operated.
The court chose the offer from Colony as a financial investor and AccorHotels to operate the hotels over other offers, for which there was much interest.
Colony are a major investment player with US$43bn assets under management, operating in 19 countries, led by Thomas J Barrack, Executive Chairman. They have interests in over 100 hotels, many under the Hilton & Marriott brands, as well as 7 hotels in MENA. Colony were part of the consortium that acquired 900 odd hotels off Accor in 2018.
Maranatha, which employs 1,300 people, ran into financial difficulties when it tried to buy its assets following a series of sales after terror attacks in France in 2015 and 2016, according to Reuters.
The hotels included five luxury hotels in Paris, and one in Nice, all under the brand, Hôtels du Roy.
Maranatha, bought the six hotels, comprising 500 rooms, for 360 million euros from the Leroy family in 2015.
To finance that project, Maranatha obtained 25% of funding from private investors — ranging from 100,000 euros to 10 million euros each — and the remaining 75% from a loan and a 5-year bond financed by foreign funds.
THPT Comment: Maranatha ran the hotels in France, owned by some 5,500 private investors through 135 companies, which must also approve the sale. That will be joyful!
First Seen: Reuters