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With a hefty $507M cash offer, two Morgans Hotel properties might be sold to real estate investment firm Rambleside Holdings, which also owns 4% of Morgans stock.
In order to speed up efforts to "maximize shareholder value," Rambleside is prepared to put money down on two of Morgan’s nine North American high-end hotels: $313M for the Hudson Hotel in Manhattan (pictured) and $194M for South Beach’s Delano Hotel.
Morgans hired Morgan Stanley last year to explore strategic options (including sale)—and was actually close to merging with Sam Nazarian’s SBE last month—but Rambleside criticized the potential deal, calling it "blatant disregard" for shareholder value preservation.
Rambleside CEO Gregory Cohen wants to speed up Morgans’ “snail’s pace of the strategic process over the last 18 months,” he says. And considering that Morgans shares dropped 45% this year, his aggravation may have some merit. Rambleside also insisted Morgans sell their $200M management business. The company has even said it's willing to buy the whole company if Morgans continues to struggle. [Bloomberg]
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