Sale of Marriott Assets
Whitbread PLC
21 April 2006
21 April 2006
Whitbread completes sale of Marriott hotel assets
Whitbread PLC announces today the sale, along with Marriott International, of
their interests in the Marriott Hotels 50/50 joint venture to Royal Bank of
Scotland ('RBS'). The joint venture, which owns 46 Marriott branded hotels, was
formed last year following Whitbread's announcement to exit from the operation
and ownership of its franchised four-star hotel business.
The transaction, which completes today, values the joint venture at £951.4m*.
Whitbread has also today agreed to sell the Leicester Marriott hotel development
to RBS for £30m, subject to satisfaction of conditions concerning the opening of
the hotel. Completion of this sale is expected in June 2006. Whitbread will
receive approximately £237m as its share of the proceeds from the sale of its
interest in the joint venture. This is in addition to the £710m that it received
last year upon establishment of the joint venture.
This transaction delivers the majority of the asset disposal programme that
Whitbread announced last year. Proceeds of the asset sales completed to date,
including Britvic and The Brewery at Chiswell Street, together with the
remaining assets yet to be sold, are on target to achieve £1.3 billion.
Alan Parker, Chief Executive, Whitbread PLC said. 'I am pleased that having
completed this transaction ahead of schedule we are now in a position to return
to shareholders the £400m that we previously committed. We will be giving
confirmation of the timing and method of this return at our Annual Results on
25th April. This means that together with the £400m special dividend last May we
will have returned a total of £800m to shareholders.
'This sale brings the excellent partnership that we have enjoyed with Marriott
International to a close. Following our decision last year to exit the four-star
hotel business we are now a more focused company, intent on delivering
improvements in operating performance, reducing costs and driving growth in our
best performing brands'.
*including the assumption by RBS of the joint venture's working capital position
For more information please contact:
Investor Relations:
Christopher Rogers, Whitbread PLC +44 (0) 20 7806 5491
Press Contacts:
Anna Glover, Whitbread PLC +44 (0) 1582 844 439
Andrew Grant, Tulchan +44 (0) 20 7353 4200
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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