Mukesh Ambani, the Indian businessman and richest man in Asia, has acquired a majority stake in the luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York for just over $ 98 million. The CNN reports online specifying that the conglomerate Reliance Industries announced on Saturday the acquisition of the parent company of the hotel, a company based in the Cayman Islands controlled by the Investment Corporation of Dubai. That company indirectly holds a 73.4% stake in the property.
The deal is expected to close by the end of March. Reliance said it would plan to acquire the remaining stake based on the same valuation if the other hotel owners chose to sell their shares as well. The figure of 98 million is much lower than what Mandarin was still valued in 2007: 340 million.
The purchase, the newspapers write, took place under very favorable conditions. The Covid 19 pandemic has hit hard on the luxury hotel, the spearhead of the Manhattan hotel industry. According to Reliance, in 2020 the hotel would have earned just 15 million dollars compared to 115 and 113 in 2018 and 2019.