Ottawa's Fairmont Château Laurier included in $3B hotel chain purchase
Robert Sibley, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: December 9, 2015 | Last Updated: December 9, 2015 8:37 PM EST
One of Ottawa’s most prestigious hotels, the Fairmont Château Laurier, appears to included in a nearly $3-billion deal in which eight iconic Canadian hotels were sold to a French-based hotel chain.
AccorHotels SA announced Wednesday a share-and-cash deal worth $2.84 billion to acquire FRHI Holdings Limited, which operates 155 hotels and luxury resorts around the world under Fairmont, Raffles, and Swissôtel brands, including Manhattan’s Plaza, London’s Savoy and Raffles in Singapore. Another 40 are under development.
In Canada, Toronto-based FRHI’s properties include several Fairmont-branded hotels in Canada, including, among others, the Château Laurier, Quebec City’s Le Château Frontenac, and Toronto’s Royal York as well as Banff Springs, Lake Louise and Jasper Park hotels in Alberta.
The press release announcing the sale does not specifically mention the Ottawa hotel, but an Accorhotel spokeswoman, Anne-France Malrieu, said in an email exchange that “all” the Fairmont hotels in Canada were part of the deal.
FRHI Holdings is made up of Oxford Properties, the property arm of a major Ontario pension plan, and investment companies in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Overall, FRHI has hotels and resorts in 34 countries across five continents, with 42 properties in North America, two in South America, 26 in Europe, 17 in the Africa-Middle East region and 28 in the Asia-Pacific region. AccorHotels has almost 500 luxury and upscale properties.
AccorHotels said it will make a cash payment of US$840 million and issue 46.7 million new shares under terms of the agreement. Both the Qatar Investment Authority and Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Co. will become major Accor shareholders, with 10.5 and 5.8 per cent of the share capital respectively.
The announcement did not contain details on the payment to Oxford Properties, which is part of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System.
Paris-based AccorHotels, Europe’s biggest hotel operator, with 3,800 hotels in 92 countries around the world, described the transaction as an “outstanding opportunity” that offers the company “robust and global leadership in luxury hotels, a key segment in terms of geographic reach, growth potential and profitability.”
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