Hotel chain £1.8bn swoop

A Singaporean billionaire has made a bid to buy Millennium & Copthorne hotels, valuing the chain at £1.8bn.

kwek Leng Beng, who already owns 65.2pc of the group through his investment vehicle City Developments Limited, has offered £624m to take control of the firm outright.

the offer, at 552.5p per share, is a 24pc premium to M&C’s share price before talks began.

CDL said the proposed offer would see M&C shareholders get 545p per share in cash and a 7.5p per share special dividend. It will maintain the chain’s business model and does not intend to sell any of M&C’s hotels in London or new York. Shares in the firm jumped 23pc, or 105p, to 560p on news of the offer.

M&C, which is being advised by Credit Suisse, said it considers the financial terms of the proposed bid to be fair.

M&C was formed in 1995 when kwek bought Copthorne Hotels from Aer Lingus – floating the company on the London Stock exchange a year later.

Speculation that kwek, who is also the chairman of M&C, would seek to take the company private has been rife amid mixed trading. In February the group said the weak pound and a slump in demand caused by the Paris terror attacks had put ‘intense’ pressure on earnings.

It currently owns seven sites in the capital, including the Millennium in Mayfair.

the four-star hotel hit the headlines in 2006 when russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned at its Pine Bar.

City Developments has until november 6 to make a firm takeover offer for the group.