Dublin’s Gresham Hotel attracts final bids of up to €85m

Dublin's landmark four-star Gresham Hotel is understood to have attracted final offers of up to €85 million as four shortlisted bidders met a deadline yesterday.

It is expected that the bidders – Spain's Riu Hotel Group, private equity firms Cerberus and Apollo, and investment banking giant Goldman Sachs – will have to wait until next week to learn who has won, given the complicated nature of the transaction.

Goldman Sachs is bidding through Irish hotel company Tifco, in which the New York bank took a controlling stake in 2014.

Bidders were asked to submit separate offers for the Gresham Hotel and for the asset plus a number of corporate entities.

The O'Connell Street hotel, comprising 323 guest rooms including 10 individually designed suites, is being sold by Precinct Investments, a company controlled by housebuilder Bryan Cullen, which paid €117 million for the business in 2004.

The sale, being managed by CBRE and Christie & Co, is a consensual one according to a plan drawn up by Precinct and the National Asset Management Agency, which took over its bank loans during the financial crisis.

Former Burlington hotel Separately, private-equity group Blackstone, advised by Savills, is set to draw first- round bids in the middle of next week for the former Burlington hotel in Dublin. The world’s biggest private-equity firm is poised to double its investment in four years as the hotel, now operated by the Hilton Worldwide’s DoubleTree brand, is expected to achieve a price of a

bout €180 million.

The renewed interest in the Irish hotel market comes after the industry recorded a 20 per cent increase in revenue last year – the highest of any European country – with the prospect of even better returns ahead due to an acute shortage in bedrooms in the city.

The Gresham, a distinctive cut-stone building, has been synonymous with the social, commercial and tourist life of the city since it opened in 1817.

It was the most popular and stylish hotel in the city for decades, helped by an art deco classical fit-out in the late 1920s.