 "Not buying Sahara's New York, London hotels, says Sultan of Brunei")
Remember the reports over the weekend indicated the super-rich Sultan of Brunei had bid $2 billion for Sahara’s three hotels in New York and London? Turns out he didn’t.
“Neither His Majesty, the Brunei Investment Agency, nor the government of Brunei are involved in any way in the purchase of the Grosvenor House in London or the Plaza and Dream Downtown hotels in New York,” a spokesman at Bell Pottinger, acting on behalf of the Sultan of Brunei, wrote in an email to Reuters.
Reports of the Sultan’s alleged bid first surfaced on the website of the Wall Street Journal.An investment firm affiliated with Brunei has offered to pay $2 billion for the three hotels, and after discussions throughout the summer with Sahara, the two firms could come to an agreement by September,WSJ.com reported.
This wouldn’t have been the Sultan’s first foray into the hotel industry. He already operates several properties in the US and Europe through his luxury hotel operator, the Dorchester Collection.
However, the Sultan’s Beverly Hills Hotel and Dorchester Collection properties in the United States have been subject to a boycott by many, including Hollywood personalities, following the Sharia penal code – which levies harsh punishments like flogging, the severing of limbs, and death by stoning for homosexuals and adulterers – that was instituted in Brunei in early May.
Sahara’s stakes in these three hotels in London and New York were valued at around $1.72 billion.
Grosvenor House was valued at $879 million, the Plaza was worth $592 million and the Dream Downtown was valued at $252 million. But Sahara’s lawyer last week told the court that some buyers had now valued these assets at $2.58 billion.
Subrata Roy has been negotiating a sale of the company’s luxury hotels from a makeshift office in prison, having been held for more than five months after failing to appear at a contempt hearing in a long-running dispute over his group’s failure to repay Rs 24,000 crore to investors who were sold bonds.
With inputs from agencies.
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