News & Stories

Berlin. Two days prior to anniversary celebrations at the Kempinski Hotel Adlon in Berlin, shareholders attending the Fundus shareholders meeting decided to place shares to the amount of 30 million Euros for the sister hotel in Heiligendamm at the Baltic Sea. Over 90% of the 1,900 shareholders were in favour of the motion that the new shareholders will get their dividens preferentially to elder shareholdes. Following the G8 summit and the budget-bed campaign, occupancy rates at the luxury hotel will in 2007 for the first time cross the 50% threshold.

London. The Austrian Jakob Forstnig refuses to accept the term "locust": His employer, the British Mountain Capital Ltd., was a serious private-equity partner with a considerable interest in the German-speaking and European markets. Actually, there is a connection to Germany: Mountain Capital is backed by two Jewish families of German origin. They have bought and repositioned hotels in Germany and fetched the German luxury hotelier Thomas Althoff as operator to London in the meantime. Jakob Forstnig, who worked for private hotels and for Marriott in the operational hotel business, and was a consultant at Treugast in Munich and HVS International in London, represents Mountain Capital in continental Europe.

Berlin. DekaBank, the biggest provider of open real estate funds in Germany, wants to continue to conquer new markets and increase investment, above all in hotel property outside Europe. The plan was announced at the Expo Real in Munich.

Munich. When will the first hotel REIT appear and how will it be structured? While the panel of experts at the Expo Real weren't giving much away on the matter, renowned companies have been discreetly working on a hotel REIT for quite a while.

Munich Hotel real estate as investment opportunity is presently experiencing an all time high. But what buyers are currently active on the European market and where are they looking to invest? What types of contract will be used in future? Has the recent credit crisis already had ramifications on property prices? Questions such as these were addressed by numerous panels of experts at the 10th Expo Real in Munich.

Munich. Interest rates of the Bavarian Mittelstandskreditprogramm have been reduced by 0.25 percent for investments of existing companies. Even the clearly lower interest rates for business start-ups will be reduced by another 0.1 percent. This also includes the hotel industry.

Berlin. Thanks to the marked improvements in the world economy and favourable conditions on the capital markets, for the last few years German banks have been able to continue on their commercial expansion course and record positive yield trends; almost forgotten is the crisis from 2001/2002. The German financial economy, clustered around the Rhine-Main region and the city of Frankfurt, is strategically one of the world's most important business centres. A MasterCard survey on stock exchange locations placed Frankfurt in 7th position, before Paris, as direct competition on the European continent. All the same, the German banking industry has recently yet again come under the spotlight. Insiders talk of Germany as being "over-banked" and rigid - and the same words were used well before the recent turbulence surrounding the IKB and Sachsen LB. Yet both incidents are good illustrations of the current problem. A background report.

Chicago. For the first time in their history, Hyatt allows foreign investors to step in: Tom Pritzker, Chairman of Global Hyatt Corporation,
announced yesterday that Madrone Capital Partners, a private investment firm affiliated with Wal-Mart Chairman Rob Walton and his family, and entities affiliated with Goldman Sachs Capital Partners have agreed to invest a total of 1 billion USD to acquire equity securities in Global Hyatt Corporation.