Henderson Park, the European real estate investment platform founded by Nick Weber, announces that it is to acquire two significant and well located UK hotel assets through the purchase of the London and Birmingham Hilton Metropole hotels. This acquisition marks Henderson Park’s entry into the UK hotel market and follows investments into the sector in Paris, where it bought Le Méridien Étoile, the city’s largest hotel, and the purchase of The Ledra, a 5-star hotel in Athens in June. The purchase price was undisclosed.
The Hilton London Metropole is located on Edgware Road with close proximity to Paddington Station, which offers rapid access to Heathrow airport and, from 2018, the new Crossrail/Elizabeth line. It is London’s largest conference hotel by delegate capacity, second largest hotel by room count and one of Hilton’s flagship hotels in the UK Capital with 1,059 bedrooms and 42 conference and meeting rooms.
The Hilton Birmingham Metropole is the UK’s largest hotel outside of London with 790 rooms and the UK’s largest conference hotel by delegate capacity with 33 banquet and meeting rooms for up to 2,000 delegates. It is located at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre and adjacent to Birmingham International Airport and future HS2 train station.
Hilton will remain engaged as operator while Henderson Park’s asset management team looks at new ways to further enhance their value over the medium/long-term.
Nick Weber, Founding Partner of Henderson Park, said: “Through this transaction we have acquired two of the UK’s largest hotels and conference centres and we’re thrilled to mark Henderson Park’s entry it to the UK hotels market with the purchase of such landmark assets. While these latest additions to our portfolio provide us with assets of substantial scale and pre-eminence in prime locations in the UK’s top two cities, they also offer a number of opportunities to enhance value through our own asset management."
Jones Day acted for Henderson Park. CBRE acted for the Seller.
