Far East Consortium Sells Hotel for $162mn

Far East Consortium (FEC) sold its four-star 267-room Dorset City London Hotel in Aldgate High Street for £115mn ($162.1mn). FEC units Mazuma Holdings and Dorsett Hospitality (UK) sold the property to Aldgate Hotel Bidco, a unit of US-based Highgate Hotels and Cerberus Capital Management. FEC is currently the largest operator of three-star hotels in Hong Kong, and the deal is likely to give the Hong-Kong based property conglomerate a gain of approximately £50mn ($70mn). FEC began operating the hotel in 2017. Chris Hoong, FEC’s managing director stated that the sale “is a good example of our proven track record of successfully monetising our hotel assets and is consistent with the group’s strategy”. He added that it “highlights the tremendous value hidden in our portfolio. We look forward to exploring new opportunities to deploy capital at attractive rates of return”. The sale will likely be one of the largest in value in London this year. When all of its projects become operational, FEC will own 44 hotels with around 11,350 rooms. According to Govinda Singh, executive director, valuation and advisory services for Asia at Colliers, “There are relatively few distressed assets currently despite the hit the hospitality sector took with the pandemic,” adding that Colliers predicts travel to hit “85 per cent of pre-Covid-19 levels by the end of 2022” and “the travel industry to fully recover between mid-2023 and early 2024”.