The landmark Grosvenor House Hotel in London with 420 bedrooms, 74 suites, 27 meeting rooms and the largest five-star ballroom has been put up for sale after its owner was placed into administration. The five-star hotel, on Park Lane, is expected to fetch more than the £470 million Sahara Grosvenor House Hospitality Limited paid for the building in 2010 - a record for the capital.
Deloitte was appointed administrators to Sahara on Monday night after it defaulted on debts tied to the hotel. Indian billionaire Subrata Roy, who runs parent company Sahara India Pariwar group, has tried to mortgage the Grosvenor and New York’s Plaza hotel in a bid to raise Rs 100 billion (£1bn) to bail himself out of prison.
Roy was jailed in March last year for contempt of court after he failed to return more than Rs 200 billion with interest to investors who were sold illegal bonds.
He bought the Grosvenor from Royal Bank of Scotland five years ago in the largest London hotel deal on record, although it fell short of the £ 600 to 700 million price tag that was being talked about at the time. RBS had purchased the property in 2001, when it paid £1.25 billion for 12 Le Meridien hotels as part of a sale-and-leaseback deal.
