AAPC to create investment firm in Indonesia, China
AAPC to create investment firm in Indonesia, China
SYDNEY (AFP): Hotel group Accor Asia Pacific Ltd. is to create a series of investment companies to fund hotel development in the region, the company said yesterday.
Accor Asia Pacific (AAPC Ltd.) spokesman Peter Hook said the establishment of funds in China, Indonesia and India was "certainly our intention" but plans for the Chinese company were much closer to completion than the others.
"We are actively working on a China fund and we hope to have it come to fruition in 1996," he said, adding that the Indonesia and India funds were long-term projects with no fixed completion dates.
Hook said the moves, which followed an announcement Tuesday that AAPC would set up a Singapore-based investment vehicle, were part of the company's plan to separate the asset-holding areas of the company from the management operations.
AAPC chairman David Baffsky said AAPC intended to establish these funds to develop mid-scale hotel properties in countries where major growth was anticipated and tourism infrastructure was under-developed.
AAPC announced Tuesday it had formed a Singapore-based investment company to acquire and develop hotels in Vietnam and Indochina.
The new company, Indotel Pte. Ltd., would initially hold assets worth US$76 million.
However, Baffsky said he would not be surprised if the new vehicle doubled its size "in a reasonable period of time."
Indotel would initially develop four projects -- three new hotels and a 135-room extension and commercial area for the Hotel Sofitel Metropole in Hanoi.
AAPC said the Hotel Sofitel, which would more than double in size as a result of the extension, was the most successful in Vietnam, turning over almost as much money as the combined effort of all other hotels in the country.
Baffsky said arrangements for funding the investment vehicle were already close to being finalized, with the debt financing approved and the equity funding nearly completed.
AAPC would hold a stake of up to 30 percent and the rest of the funds would come from institutional investors, he said, adding that a public float was envisaged "within a couple of years."
AAPC's push to establish region-specific, hotel property investment vehicles began late last year when it announced Tourism Asset Holdings, a trust into which it would transfer its 18 Australian hotel properties, worth about 245 million Australian dollars (US$182 million).
French-owned Accor SA is the major shareholder in AAPC, which was listed on the Australian and Hong Kong stock exchanges in 1994.