Blackstone Buys LaSalle Hotel Properties for €4 Billion

23 May 2018

It is one of the year’s biggest deals in the real estate and tourism sectors. The US-based Blackstone Group L.P., an asset management company, founded in 1985, which has a major presence in Portugal, will buy LaSalle Hotel Properties for US$ 4.8 billion (€4 billion). LaSalle Hotel Properties has 41 luxury hotels in the US, which are operated by different brands.

Blackstone has been particularly active in Portugal, recently selling the Sintra Retail Park, Forum Sintra and Forum Montijo shopping malls to the Auchan Group for around €400 million. The U.S. asset manager is also in the process of selling Forum Almada to Merlin, an asset valued at around 450 million euros. Also, it recently completed the purchase of a large logistics platform in Brazil.

Blackstone’s market strategy has been to buy hotels and other properties at a good price, restructure them and sell over time, with significant capital gains.

Blackstone has been a particularly active player in Spain’s real estate and hotel market. In October last year, it bought Sabadell from HI Partners for 630 million euros. Moreover, recently, the fund expressed interest in acquiring the Chinese HNA’s 29.5% stake in the NH hotel chain. Earlier in April, Blackstone bought 16.56% of the capital of the Spanish hotel chain Hispania, a chain that owns 46 hotels, mostly in the main tourist areas of Spain, from the billionaire George Soros for 315.37 million euros. Another mega-operation by Blackstone in Spain was also announced in April, the acquisition of the Cirsa Catalan group, which has 147 casinos, 178 gaming rooms, 75,000 slot machines, 70 bingo parlours and 2,000 sports betting venues in Spain, Italy and America Latina. The value of this transaction was not disclosed.

Original Story: Diário Imobiliário

Translation: Richard Turner

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