£10B UK-Based Investment Giant To Buy £420M Hotel Portfolio

The hotel investment firm owned by the Livingstone brothers is in advanced talks to buy a UK portfolio for about £420M.

L&R Hotels is finalising heads of terms to buy the Bird portfolio from Netherlands-based Vastint, Green Street News reported. 

The portfolio comprises 15 assets and 3,230 rooms. It includes the largest collection of Moxy hotels in Europe, totalling 13 of the properties. Moxy is a midmarket lifestyle brand by Marriott. 

The portfolio has two hotels in London, two in Glasgow, plus outposts in Chester, Inverness, Edinburgh, York, Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Bristol, Southampton and London.

The portfolio was strongly bid, with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing submitting bids alongside joint venture partners.

Despite that, a sale at £420M would represent a 20% discount to the £500M price at which the portfolio was put up for sale in September. A student portfolio being sold by DWS is also set to trade at a significant discount to its asking price, if a deal is completed. 

L&R owns more than £10B of hotels globally, ranging from portfolios of Holiday Inn Express hotels across the UK to high-end properties like the Fairmont in Monte Carlo, Monaco, and the Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido, Italy. The portfolio comprises 128 hotels and 24,000 rooms, and the business is owned by billionaire brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone and run by Cody Bradshaw.

Vastint is based in the Netherlands but traces its roots to Sweden. It is owned by the Interogo Foundation, set up by the founder of Ikea, with the profits reinvested in Ikea’s retail business. Other projects it has in the UK include Sugar House Island, a mixed-use development in east London where there are plans for 1,200 homes and more than 600K SF of office space. 

JLL and KPMG are advising Vastint on the sale.