Last November, the Donegal hotelier brothers Sean and Brian McEniff sold their 6 per cent stake in Ryan Hotels to Israeli outfit Red Sea Hotels for €5.2 million (£4.1 million). The price was €1.14 a share, so the McEniffs made a tidy profit having bought in at around €1.00.
Red Sea Hotels however is sitting on a hefty loss with Ryan shares having slumped below €0.80 this week after disappointing the market with its full-year results and with doubts about the impact of foot-and-mouth disease in current year earnings.
Red Sea now holds almost 23 per cent of Ryan shares and Ryan's current difficulties could be the opportunity for the Israelis to spring a bid that many have been expecting for the best part of a year.
With Ryan going through a bad patch, Red Sea might not get a better opportunity that would give them the two Ryan hotels in Dublin and Dun Laoghaire and allow them to sell off the smaller hotels.
The latter - in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Killarney would probably be of interest to Irish hoteliers such as the McEniffs, Charlie Sinnott, Campbell Bewley or the Tower Group.
Interesting, wasn't it, to see how Ryan is going to spend more than €6 million rebranding eight of its hotels as Gresham hotels, while leaving the Killarney and Galway hotels as plain "Ryan".
No doubt it's a pure coincidence that the only hotels left out of the expensive rebranding are the two that have had the misfortune to have had recent problems with the health inspectors!
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