Jurys price tag could reach as much as €1bn

A bid for the Jurys Doyle Hotel Group could cost up to €1 billion and would need the support of a number of key shareholders if it was to succeed, market sources said last night.

The company, which operates 33 hotels in Ireland, Britain and the US, is tightly controlled with close to 30 per cent of the equity in the hands of just four parties, all of whom are represented on the 14-person board.

Bernadette Gallagher, who owns 8.3 per cent of the company, is a non-executive director of Jurys, along with her sister, Eileen Monahan, who has a 6.8 per cent stake.

The 6.8 per cent stake held by Ann Roche, another daughter of the late hotelier PV Doyle, is represented on the board by her husband, Tom Roche, the chairman of - and a major shareholder - in NTR.

Meanwhile, Walter Beatty, whose father has a 7.2 per cent stake in the group, is also a director of the company.

Jurys said yesterday that the approach was preliminary in nature and there could be no certainty that an offer would ultimately be forthcoming

While it was not clear who was behind the approach, speculation centred last night on property developer Bernard McNamara who, along with David Courtney, Jerry O'Reilly, Bernard Doyle and the Galway hotelier John Sweeney, paid €120 million for the Shelbourne Hotel late last year. Mr McNamara could not be reached for comment.

Shares in Jurys rose 10 per cent last week amid speculation about the Ballsbridge site and possible takeover activity. They closed at €14.00 last night, up nearly 5 per cent on the day.

At last night's closing price, the hotel group was valued at €882 million, but one fund manager noted that a buyer might have to pay as much as €15.00 per share for the company.

Shares in Jurys traded as low as €9.30 just last year as it faced difficult trading conditions in its four-star hotels, which have continued to disappoint this year, prompting the strategic review that has triggered the current interest in the group.

However, in addition to the troubled Irish hotels, any buyer would gain control of the prime Ballsbridge site, which is valued at some €200 million, and the company's highly successful British and Irish inns business which could be sold off.

Jurys Doyle, which reported pretax profits of €45.5 million on turnover of €285 million last year, operates hotels and inns in Ireland, Britain and the US.

In Dublin, the group operates five hotels in the four- and five-star sector. They include the Westbury, the Berkeley Court, Jurys Ballsbridge, the Towers and the Burlington.

A new four-star hotel in Cork, to replace its existing property, is under construction and is due to open next year. It is also scheduled to open a new four-star hotel in Croke Park in the autumn.

The hotel group also operates six three-star inns in Ireland, three of them in Dublin and one in Galway, Cork and Limerick.

In the UK, the group owns six hotels - three in London along with properties in Cardiff, Bristol and Glasgow.

It operates 11 inns in Britain with a presence in most of the major cities, including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow and Belfast.

The group is due to open two new inns in Southampton and Nottingham this year.

These will be followed by inns in Milton Keynes and Brighton next year, and an inn in Liverpool in 2007.

The group's US interests consist of three hotels in Washington DC and one in Boston which opened in July last year.