The Marriott-Starwood merger is back on track after Marriott sweetened the deal with a $13.6B offer—beating out Anbang Insurance’s $13.2B bid.
The new offer is up from Marriott's original $12.2B bid in November 2015. China’s Anbang Insurance tried to snag Marriott’s prize last week with a higher offer, just after heating up the hotel market a $6.5B deal for Blackstone’s Strategic Hotels & Resorts.
But it looks like this eastern insurance giant won’t be adding to its American trophy collection (one that now includes NYC’s historic Waldorf Astoria hotel), as Marriott took advantage of its window to make Starwood an offer it couldn’t refuse, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The Marriott-Starwood deal would create the world’s largest hotel chain, with 5,500 hotels and over 1.1 million rooms around the world. [WSJ]
