NEW YORK (May 22): Brookfield Asset Management Inc. and Fortress Investment Group are among the bidders for a portfolio of 15 hotels owned by Anbang Insurance Group Co., according to people familiar with the sales process.
Blackstone Group LP, South Korea’s Mirae Asset Management, and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, are also among the bidders for the hotels, the Financial Times reported earlier today, citing unnamed sources.
Representatives for Fortress, owned by Japan’s Softbank Group Corp., and Brookfield declined to comment. A Blackstone representative also declined to comment.
Anbang, under temporary control of Chinese government regulators, received offers of as much as US$5.8 billion ($8 billion), the paper said.
Anbang hired Bank of America Inc. to sell the hotels, which include Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, the Fairmont in Chicago, the JW Marriott Essex House in New York and the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Anbang initially agreed to acquire Strategic Hotels from Blackstone in 2016 for about US$6.5 billion, about US$450 million more than the New York firm paid just three months earlier. Anbang ended up paying about US$1 billion less, or about US$5.5 billion, after US national security officials opposed the sale of the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego -- due to concerns regarding its proximity to a US naval base.
Anbang, whose former chairman was sentenced to prison for fraud, has been accelerating efforts to sell assets and deleverage, including offloading China’s Hexie Health Insurance Co. and Belgian insurer Fidea, Bloomberg has reported.
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