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Less than two years after acquiring a high-end D.C. hotel from The Trump Organization, reportedly for millions above the next-highest bid, the new owner has defaulted on its loan.
CGI Merchant Group this month defaulted on a $285M loan tied to the Waldorf Astoria hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The Miami-based investor obtained the loan from MSD Partners, a group that includes billionaire Dell Computers CEO Michael Dell, when it closed on the $375M acquisition in May 2022. CGI's investors include celebrity athletes Alex Rodriguez and Floyd Mayweather.
That $375M price tag was tens of millions of dollars more than other offers, and that high price contributed to the buyer missing payments on the loan, the WSJ reported, citing anonymous sources.
The owner is working to hold on to the asset. CGI CEO Raoul Thomas told the WSJ he is lining up $100M in new financing, and Bloomberg reported that CGI has a deal with Mavik Capital Management for $75M.
Any new financing would need to be approved by Hilton Worldwide, which manages the hotel through its Waldorf Astoria brand, and MSD Partners.
The D.C. hotel deal with Trump was CGI’s highest-profile acquisition to date. The hotel sits within the historic Old Post Office building five blocks from the White House, and its restaurants include The Bazaar by José Andrés and Michelin-starred Sushi Nakazawa.
CGI owns the hotel through a ground lease with the General Services Administration, which approved the acquisition from The Trump Organization in March 2022. Trump had retained JLL to put the hotel on the market in 2019, but the sale process was delayed due to the pandemic.
The sale represented a record price per room for a D.C. hotel deal, the Washington Business Journal reported at the time, and the WSJ reported that Trump netted tens of millions of dollars in profit from the deal.
This came despite calls from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in early 2022 for the GSA to terminate the lease with Trump. The committee claimed that Trump concealed over $1B in debt when applying for the deal, and it pointed to the disavowal from Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, of the financial statements it provided to him over 10 years, including for the D.C. deal.
Trump now faces $355M in fines and a ban from doing business in New York after a judge ruled he submitted fraudulent financial statements. He filed an appeal of the verdict on Monday.
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