Nine Group Buys Best Western Plus Reading Moat House off £12.5m Guide Price
Date: May 2017
Location: Reading, Berkshire, UK
Name: Best Western Plus Reading Moat House – four star
Holiday Inn Cannock
No. of Keys: 129
Seller: MCAP Global Finance, Marathon Asset Management – They acquired 11 Queens Moat House hotels in 2014 for £135m from Goldman Sachs.
Queens Moat Hotel (QMH) started an interesting concept, under the leadership then of John Bairstow, whereby they invited their GMs to state a profit for the year and either keep or pay-back any amount below or above the budgeted profit figure! Very ill-fated concept….After 11 years the British government found the accounting scandal, dating back to 1993, so bad that the assets were overstated by £1.34bn! and revaluation left the group with negative shareholders funds of £389m and crippling debts….
Buyer: The Nine Group, who now (2018) own 18 hotels (as well as residential and commercial), so maybe time for a name change. The group, started by the energetic Vivek Chadha in 2012 has done fabulously well in acquiring a portfolio of like-minded hotels in the South of England (and Manchester) and runs them under brands such as IHG’s Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Accor’s Mercure, Novotel & Ibis, Hilton’s DoubleTree and BW.
JLL advised on this deal.
Price: circa £12.5m
Price per Key: £96,899
THPT Comment: As stated above the Nine Group have had a considered and wise strategy of buying good, middle of the road assets that trade very well, at sensible prices – so perhaps they should now be The 25 Group!
First Seen: The Caterer