Fraser Hospitality Acquires Malmaison and Hotel du Vin

Date: June 2015

Location: 29 boutique hotels across 25 cities in the UK

Name: Hotel du Vin (16 hotels) and Malmaison (13 hotels) – MHDV- mix of three and four star

No. of Keys: 2082

Seller: KSL Capital Partners. MHDV founded in 1994, initially as Hotel du Vin by Robin Hutson and sommelier Gerard Basset, with their first hotel in Winchester, Hampshire UK. Both had been senior management at Chewton Glen, one of the UK’s first “country house hotels” The concept was to offer quirky, well-appointed rooms with a bistro style restaurant with 20 wines under £20.

Buyer: Fraser Hospitality of Singapore, headed up by CEO Choe Peng Sum and Lim Ee Seng, Group CEO of FCL (Frasers Centrepoint Group), the parent company. Fraser had 412 residences (serviced apartments) in 1998.

With MHDV Fraser is now 129 properties across 77 cities with over 21,000 keys (2015). Barclays Bank PLC and Standard Chartered Bank acted as financial advisors for this acquisition. A full Analyst Deck can be found here

Price: £363.4m

Price per Key: £175,544

THPT Comment: KSL acquired both branded chains in 2013. Robin went on to start the Pig Group – even quirkier and funkier! and referring to it’s five hotels (2018) as “restaurants with rooms” Gerard meanwhile opened the Hotel TerraVina in 2007. Really two masters of the “boutique hotel” concept.

Malmaison meanwhile was developed by another fab hotelier – Ken McCulloch around the same time – 1994, with his first hotel in Leith, Scotland. Malmaison owner, MWB Group, who also owned serviced offices and the De Vere hotel group, went into administration in 2012 and KSL picked it up for around £180m in early 2013.

First Seen: Fraser website