Ashkenazy Acquisition purchases London's Grosvenor House Hotel

Ashkenazy Acquisition has acquired London's Grosvenor House Hotel from India's Sahara Group, after, in collaboration with Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal, coming into control of The Plaza Hotel in New York, which was also owned by Sahara.

Financial terms were not disclosed. 

The Grosvenor House Hotel, which was constructed in the 1920s, opened in 1929 as a luxury hotel near near Hyde Park, Oxford Street and Buckingham Palace. The eight-story JW Marriott hotel has 420 guestrooms and 76 suites, 64,110 square feet of meeting space across 26 rooms, a fitness center, a renovated lobby and many dining options.

Ashkenazy currently owns of portfolio worth more than $10 billion with retail, hospitality, office and residential properties. The group's recent acquisition is included in its plans to spend an additional $2.2-billion of equity in acquiring global iconic assets by 2019. Ashkenazy also owns Union Station in Washington D.C., Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, 625 Madison Ave and the Nylo Hotel in New York, Barneys New York in New York and Beverly Hills and Bayside Marketplace in Miami. 

In a buyout deal with the Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal, Ashkenazy acquired the iconic Plaza Hotel on Central Park from Sahara Group at the end of May. The Saudi prince already owned a 50-percent stake in the Plaza Hotel at the time. Ashkenazy and Al-Waleed were looking to acquire the hotel from Sahara Group founder and Chairman Subrata Roy, who was fighting charges of scamming investors out of billions of dollars.

All previous deals for Sahara Group’s Plaza Hotel, Dream Hotel in New York and Grosvenor House Hotel fell through. In March, Texas’ MG Capital offered to purchase the Plaza Hotel for over $550 million. Afterward, a $1.5 billion deal with Al-Waleed and the Qatar Investment Authority failed in September 2016. The group has been struggling to sell the three hotels since August 2012 in order to pay India’s Supreme Court Rs25,000 crore and deposit it with market regulator SEBI.