Active Asset Investment Management (AAIM) has confirmed it bought a portfolio of six luxury hotels in a 25-year sale-and-leaseback deal from the private equity firm Permira for EUR 400 mln. Premira is backed by Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and music impresario Simon Cowell.
Active Asset Investment Management (AAIM) has confirmed it bought a portfolio of six luxury hotels in a 25-year sale-and-leaseback deal from the private equity firm Permira for EUR 400 mln. Premira is backed by Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and music impresario Simon Cowell.
The portfolio includes the Russell in London, the Royal York in York, the Met in Leeds, the Palace in Manchester, the George in Edimburgh and the Selsdon Park in Croydon. The four-star hotels, which provide a total of 1,310 guest rooms and 80 meeting rooms, were acquired by Permira from the Bank of Scotland last September.
AAIM's acquisition was carried out through the Symmetry fund joint venture that the group set up with the Bank of Scotland to spend close to EUR 3 bn on European property. Last October, the management group also teamed up with Robert Tchenguiz, the property magnate, to buy the regional hotel chain Menzies for EUR 282 mln.
The transaction forms part of AAIM's strategy to act as a consolidator in Britain’s provincial four-star market, property newspaper The Scotsman reported. AAIM said it intends to invest a further EUR 30 mln in the properties.
AAIM was founded in January 2003 by Mark Tagliaferri, Robert Whitton and Sturat Le Gassick. It completed about EUR 1.48 bn of commercial property transactions in the UK and Europe.