Bloomberg is reporting that the attempted sale of London's Grosvenor Hotel and New York's Plaza and Dream hotels by an Indian conglomerate, part of a bid to pay the bail of the company's jailed majority owner, hit another snag this week when a Hong Kong investment company claimed it was unfairly shut out of the deal.
JTS Trading Ltd.’s U.S. lawsuit seeks to block Sahara India Pariwar from going ahead with the sale of the hotels. JTS Trading claims it struck a deal with a United Arab Emirates private trust to finance the purchase of the three hotels, with JTS trading getting a 70 percent stake for its $850 million investment. The company said it was shut out when a Sahara subsidiary made a separate deal with the UAE company, Trinity White City Ventures Ltd.
The move may hinder Sahara’s effort to raise $1.6 billion bail for controlling stakeholder, Subrata Roy, who was jailed in India last year for failing to comply with a court order to repay investors $3.9 billion for selling a convertible debt instrument without approval. Roy failed to convince an Indian court that Sahara had refunded the money raised from 30 million investors.