Hotel takeover revolt

A ROW over the future of Millennium & Copthorne hotels broke out last night after a trio of minority shareholders refused to back billionaire Kwek Leng Beng’s £2bn offer to take outright control.

International Value Advisers, MSD Partners and Classic Fund Management will not sell to Kwek’s City Developments Limited, which already owns 65.2pc of the company.

The trio, which together represent about 37pc of the shares, said an offer of 620p per share was ‘highly opportunistic and significantly undervalued’ the FTSE 250 company.