Historic Raffles Hotel set to switch hands

This would be part of deal that sees Qatar fund buy 40% of Fairmont Raffles

Sources say the Raffles Hotel is likely to change hands – for the third time in seven years – after shareholding changes at current owner Fairmont Raffles.

Toronto-based luxury hotel chain Fairmont Raffles said on Monday that Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund Qatari Diar has acquired a 40 per cent stake in the group, in a US$847 million deal that will also see it take ownership of one of the chain’s Singaporean hotels.

Fairmont Raffles declined to name the hotel but said it has three hotels in Singapore: Raffles Hotel, Fairmont Singapore and Swissotel The Stamford.

The unlisted hotelier will get US$275 million from the sale of the Singapore hotel the Qatari investors have agreed to buy by early 2011.

Market sources here identified Raffles Hotel as the property that will probably be signed over. Swissotel The Stamford and Fairmont Singapore are part of Raffles City Singapore, which is owned by two units of Singapore’s CapitaLand.

‘We wish to affirm that the Raffles City Singapore development is owned by CapitaCommercial Trust (60 per cent) and CapitaMall Trust (40 per cent),’ the two Reits said in letter to BT yesterday. ‘CapitaCommercial Trust (CCT) and CapitaMall Trust (CMT) have no intention of selling their respective stakes in, or any part of, Raffles City Singapore.’

Swissotel The Stamford and Fairmont Singapore are only operated by RC Hotels, a tenant at Raffles City, CCT and CMT clarified. RC Hotels’ long-term lease with Raffles City expires in November 2016, although there is an option to renew the lease for a further term expiring in December 2036.

Asked if there was a change in the tenant’s owner, CCT and CMT said discussions with tenants are confidential.

This leaves Raffles Hotel, which is more than 120 years old and gazetted as a national monument.

The hotel, built in 1887 on the site of a 10-room bungalow, has gained worldwide fame and is mentioned in the works by writers Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad.

The hotel was part of Singapore-listed Raffles Holdings’ portfolio until 2005, when the now de-listed company sold all of its hotel assets to US-based Colony Capital for $1.7 billion.

In 2006, Colony Capital teamed up with Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to buy Fairmont Hotels and Resorts in a US$3.9 billion deal that injected Raffles Hotel into Fairmont Raffles’s portfolio.

Now, with Fairmont Raffles’s decision to take on Qatari Diar as its newest and largest shareholder, the hotel is set to be transferred to the Qatar-based real estate firm next year.

Source: Business Times, 8 Apr 2010