Nomura buys Le Meridien hotels for £1.9bn

Nomura Principal Finance Group, Britain's biggest pub owner, has expanded its portfolio of hotels with a £1.9m cash deal.

It has bought the 150-strong Le Meridien hotel group, which includes the Grosvenor House, Waldorf and Café Royal in London, from Compass Group.

They will be run by Grand Hotels, a new business set up by Nomura, which owns 6,000 pubs through companies including Unique Pub Company, Inn Partnership, Voyager Pub Group and Inntrepreneur Pub Company.

The Japanese bank's London-based principal finance group is currently headed by Guy Hands, who separately owns his own small hotel company, Hand Picked Hotels.

The latest deal means that Compass, which owns franchised pubs, bars and takeaway outlets, has sold all of its hotels for a total of £3.26bn.

Previous disposals include its Posthouse hotels chain to Bass for £810m and its Heritage chain to Macdonald Hotels for £235m.

The assets were the combined hotel stock created in its original merger with Granada, before it decided to demerge again to create two separate foodservice and media companies.

Le Meridien is one of the leading international luxury hotel chains in the world, with four and five-star hotels in key city and resort destinations in over 55 countries, with more than 40,000 rooms.

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Bass spends £810m on hotels (April 5, 2001)