Jurys to acquire Doyle Group in $338m deal

By Harry Keaney

Hotel groups Jurys and Doyle have decided to check in together.

The publicly-quoted Jurys Group is to acquire the privately-owned Doyle Hotel Group in a deal that values Doyles at about £250 million or $338 million, in cash and stock. The transaction includes the assumption by Jurys of about $80 million in debt.

The acquisition is conditional on Jurys shareholder approval in May, the Irish Stock Exchange’s admission of new Jurys shares and regulatory clearance.

Jurys said the acquisition will involve the issuing of 14.8 million shares, representing 25 percent of the issued share capital of the enlarged group.

The enlarged group will, subject to shareholder and Irish government approval, be renamed Jurys Doyle Hotel Group PLC. The Doyle family will retain a 25 percent equity interest in the new enlarged company.

The combined operations of the new group will feature 19 hotels and nine inns with more than 5,200 bedrooms in Ireland, the U.K. and the U.S. The group’s 3,500 employees will generate total revenues of approximately $190 million annually.

The company’s U.S. presence is in the Washington, D.C., market where it owns and operates three hotels, the Washington Courtyard, the Normandy Inn and the Doyle Washington Hotel, its most recent $45 million flagship addition to the group which was officially opened by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last St. Patrick’s Day.

The three Washington hotels have a total of 536 bedrooms.

Peter Hilary, regional vicepresident in the U.S. of the Doyle Hotel Group, said the successful conclusion of the deal with Jurys will enable the combined group to take a major step forward and create a powerful Irish-headquartered hotel group with sufficient scale to compete internationally.

The Doyle Hotel Group is Ireland’s largest privately-owned hotel company. It has seven hotels in Dublin comprising a total of almost 1,400 bedrooms together with conference and banqueting facilities.

The five-star Westbury Hotel and Berkeley Court Hotel are two of the city’s leading hotels. The four-star Burlington Hotel is Ireland’s largest hotel property with more than 500 bedrooms and a convention center accommodating 1,200 delegates. The group has four three-star hotels in Dublin, the Doyle Skylon Hotel, the Doyle Green Isle Hotel, the Doyle Montrose Hotel and the Doyle Tara Hotel, all located on main thoroughfares in the city.

In London, the four-star Clifton Ford Hotel is located in the West End near the junction of Bond Street and Oxford Street. The Clifton Ford has 186 bedrooms.

Jurys Hotel Group plc, a public company, listed on the Irish and London stock exchanges, is an international hotel operator with headquarters in Dublin. It has eight hotels and nine inns with 3,125 bedrooms in 12 cities in Ireland and the U.K.

In Ireland, the group has hotels in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford and in the U.K. it has hotels in London, Bristol, Glasgow and Cardiff.

It has also developed and branded a chain of three-star hotels, Jurys Inns. In Ireland the inns are located in Dublin, Galway, Cork, Limerick and Belfast. In Britain, the inns are located in Edinburgh and in London.

PricewaterhouseCoopers was the sole financial advisers to the Doyle family for this transaction. The sale of the Doyle Group to Jurys is the largest ever disposal of a family business in Ireland. It is also the largest transaction executed by the PricewaterhouseCoopers Corporate Finance & Investment Banking Services team in Dublin.

St. Vincent Milone & O’Sullivan, based in New York, are public relations consultants for the Doyle group.