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Henderson Park to purchase two of the UK's largest hotels

Property investor Henderson Park has acquired two of the UK's largest hotels from London-based The Tonstate Group for about £500 million. The deal to purchase the Hilton London Metropole and Hilton Birmingham Metropole is the investment firm's first move into the UK hotel market and increases its buying spree total to about £1 billion in assets. Hilton will continue operating the two hotels while Henderson Park's asset management team looks to boost profitability over the long term.

With 790 guestrooms, the Birmingham Metropole is the UK's largest outside of London. At 1,059 guestrooms, the Hilton London Metropole is the city's second largest by room count. 

Weber has been involved in hotel investment in the past, including his purchase and sale of the Jurys Inn hotel brand in 2015 for £680 million, which was thought to have made a 3.25x return on equity. 

Before this purchase, Henderson Park bought Le Méridien Étoile, Paris' largest hotel, for £329 million and The Ledra in Athens for about  £30 million. The deal with U.S. group Mount Keller Capital Management and UK-based Cedar Capital to acquire Le Méridien Étoile, which was operated by Starwood, totaled about £299 million. Prior to this sale, the hotel changed hands from Starwood Capital in 2014 for about  £292 million. In a joint venture deal in June 2017 with international real estate firm Hines, Henderson Park acquired the 315-guestroom Athens Ledra Hotel (formerly the Ledra Marriott).

Jones Day acted on behalf of Henderson Park in the transaction while CBRE acted for Tonstate Group