CIP Property has acquired the Malmaison hotel in Aberdeen from MWB Group Holdings.
The property firm has purchased the 80-bedroom hotel on a sale-and-leaseback arrangement on behalf of Citibank International as trustee for Aviva Investors Property Trust, according to Caterer Search.
CIP Properties will be leasing back the hotel – for which it paid £16.1 million – to MWB Group Holdings on an initial 35-year period. MWB will pay an agreed annual rent of £1.2 million for the hotel.
The sale price will be put towards reducing MWB’s £272.1 million debt. Malmaison currently has 12 hotels located across the UK, and this latest Aberdeen deal is the fifth sale-and-leaseback to be completed across its portfolio recently. Other deals involved Malmaison hotels in Manchester, London and Birmingham.
Richard Balfour-Lynn, chief executive of MWB, told Caterer Search that the five deals had allowed MWB to lower Malmaison’s debt by over £100 million.
“At the same time we are achieving our goal of maintaining a high proportion of freeholds within the portfolio of approximately 80 per cent (by number), with the remainder made up of extremely long term operating leases,” he said.
“The Malmaison and Hotel du Vin brands continue to show great resilience in the current economic climate and remain a firm favourite of our loyal customer base. We are now creating a platform to further expand our business both nationally and internationally,” added Mr Balfour-Lynn.
