Ex-Pat Val boss Johnson lands £12m in hotel deal
ELEGANT Hotels skyrocketed after Marriott International swooped on the AIM-listed firm in a £101m deal.
Serial entrepreneur Luke Johnson, who was chairman of Patisserie Valerie which collapsed amid an accounting fraud investigation this year, is in line to pocket an estimated £12m from the sale.
Elegant said it will recommend investors vote in favour of the 110p per share offer, which was lodged by a subsidiary of the group that owns brands such as Ritz-Carlton. The hotels minnow, formed in 1998, owns seven luxury hotels and a fancy beachfront restaurant in Barbados.
Johnson bought 12.5pc of Elegant’s shares in 2016 and became a non-executive director in 2017.
Marriott’s offer is 57pc higher than Elegant’s average share price over the last three months.
And news of the deal sent shares surging 57.1pc, or 40p, to the offer price of 110p each last night.
Budget chain Easyhotel, which is also subject to a takeover offer, rose 3pc, or 3p, to 102p, after warning that trading would be difficult in the next few months.
Revenue in the year to September 30 jumped 56pc to £17.6m.
The FTSE 100-listed owner of the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza brands, Intercontinental Hotels
Group, had a less-than-stellar Friday after it told the market its third-quarter sales had been hit by the political unrest in Hong Kong.
Shares fell 4.6pc, or 217p, to 4520p after the revenue it made for each room fell by 0.8pc across the group and dived 36pc in Hong Kong.
Aside from being inundated by news from hotels groups, the
Footsie lost 0.4pc, or 31.75 points, by the close, ending at 7150.57. The FTSE 250 just about ended
in the black, up 0.04pc, or 7.42 points, to 20228.53.
The London Stock Exchange
Group added 0.8pc, or 58p, to 7102p, as it said its takeover of Refinitiv is on track and that income rose 10pc in the three months to September 30. It also announced that finance boss David Warren, who joined from the US stock exchange Nasdaq in 2012, will step down next year. Footsie consumer goods giant
Unilever (down 0.6pc, or 26.5p, to 4626p) and Guinness-maker Diageo (down 0.9pc, or 29.5p, to 3116.5p) tracked lower after downbeat earnings and forecasts from their respective rivals in France, Danone and Remy Cointreau.
Burberry, which has been hammered by the troubles in Hong Kong, lost ground after RBC Capital Markets trimmed it price target from 1975p to 1925p, sending shares down 2pc, or 39p, to 1876p.
NMC Health closed 1.5pc, or 39p, higher at 2650p, after brokers at Morgan Stanley started coverage of the Middle East-focused private hospitals group with an ‘overweight’ rating. Analysts said its ‘outlook remains bright’ and that it would benefit from a boom in regional healthcare spending and the growing prevalence of ‘diseases of affluence’ such as diabetes.
Premier Oil was also in the black after Barclays raised its price target from 95p to 100p, a day after the energy group said it was ‘delighted’ to find gas in North Sea well Tolmount East. Shares rose 2.3pc, or 1.88p, to 83.04p.
Elsewhere among the mid-caps, builders’ supplier Grafton Group rebounded with shares up 5.6pc, or 41p, to 822.5p, after a profit warning triggered a steep fall in the previous session.
And cyber security group Avast rallied as its third-quarter revenue rose 5pc to £170m. The anti-virus software specialist’s stock jumped 8.6pc, or 31.8p, to 401.2p.
Gambling software and online games provider GAN edged up 4.7pc, or 5p, to 111p, after it revealed that internet gaming surged in Pennsylvania last month, according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.