European investor to acquire Dublin’s Conrad Hotel for €118m

The sale of Dublin's five-star Conrad Hotel is expected to be concluded shortly for around €118 million.

The hotel's current owners have entered into exclusive talks with European hotel investor, Archer Hotel Capital BV, with a view to completing the transaction in the coming weeks.

News of the Conrad’s sale comes just four months after it was offered by CBRE’s hotel division to investors in a targeted process at a guide price of €115 million.

The Conrad Dublin, as it is now known, is currently 47.8pc owned by both Hilton Worldwide (part of the Park Hotels & Resorts Group) and the Cashel Fund, a regulated investment fund based in Dublin. Life and pensions group Aviva owns the remainder of the shares. The interests of all three parties will be sold as part of the deal now under negotiation.

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The Conrad’s prospective purchaser, Archer Hotel Capital is a specialist European hotel investment vehicle jointly owned by affiliates of the Dutch fund manager, APG Asset Management, and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC.

Both CBRE and Archer Hotel Capital declined to comment on the matter when contacted by The Irish Times.

Archer Hotel Capital’s portfolio currently comprises 11 hotels in cities across Europe including London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid and Barcelona, with a gross asset value of €2 billion and revenues of nearly €400 million.

Outside of their partnership in Archer Hotel Capital, APG and GIC have already made a number of Irish investments in their own right.

APG, for its part, is in a joint venture with US real-estate firm Hines to bring a total of 3,000 new homes to the rental market in Dublin and the Greater Dublin Area in the coming years. The first phase of the estimated €1.1 billion investment will see 1,269 Build-to-Rent apartments being delivered as part of the new town centre now under construction at Cherrywood in south Dublin.

GIC meanwhile amassed a 20.6 per cent stake in Eir prior to its takeover in a €3.5 billion deal last year by companies controlled by the French billionaire, Xavier Niel.

The sale of the Conrad Hotel comes just two years on from a €13 million programme of refurbishment by its current owners, which saw all 192 of its guest rooms redesigned, and its presidential suite transformed. A new lounge bar, Lemuel’s, and an all-day brasserie, The Coburg, were also added.