Blackstone snaps up Mint Hotel chain in £600m deal

THE Mint Hotel chain, founded by Scottish businessmen Sandy Orr and Donald McDonald, has been sold for about £600 million to the investment house Blackstone, it was revealed yesterday.

City leisure analysts hailed it as one of Europe’s largest hotel deals since the credit crunch, and it includes the privately owned company’s eight hotels, which were branded as City Inn until late 2010.

The four-star hotels being sold include Mint’s property next to Glasgow’s conference centre, and two recently opened properties close to the Tower of London and in Amsterdam.

Mint, which was rebranded when its owners decided “Inn” had budget accommodation connotations at variance with its upmarket, boutique hotel offering, was founded by Orr, his son David, McDonald, and Bill Crerar in 1995.

The sale, handled by JP Morgan Cazenove, is understood to include about £570m of estimated debt at Mint and also includes undisclosed transaction costs, with analysts believing some millions of pounds would be shared among the former owners.

The first hotel opened in Bristol in 1999, a year after the founders agreed a financial joint venture with Uberior Ventures Ltd, a subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group. David Orr, group chief executive of Mint, said: “After nearly 16 years building Mint into the brand that it now is, a transaction has been agreed that gives the business a new future.

“In Blackstone, the business now has a global investor with a strong and expansive track record in the hospitality sector. We feel confident that they will continue to manage the hotels in a manner that is true to its business identity. We wish the new managers every success with the business and are hugely proud to have built it up to the position it now is in.”

In recent times Mint has pioneered innovations such as its Skylounge bar concept on the roofline of its hotels in Amsterdam, Leeds and the Tower of London. The company has won architectural awards and Civic Trust recognition.

The chain employs 1,500. Sandy Orr, the group’s executive chairman, said the company had created a highly successful business “from scratch” and had then developed it with strong financial performance “despite the headwinds in the economy”.

Nigel Moss, managing director of Uberior Ventures, said: “For us, this large scale transaction marks a great outcome for stakeholders reflecting a highly successful and market changing rollout strategy.

“We have worked closely with a well-regarded and entrepreneurial team over a number of years to build and deliver a very successful and growing pan‑European hotel business which in turn provides an excellent opportunity for the company’s new investor.”

Blackstone, which is understood to have outbid private equity group TPG in the final round of a Mint auction, will run the hotel chain as part of the investment firm’s Hilton Worldwide business.