THE historic Hilton Glasgow Grosvenor has been snapped up by London-based Indian multimillionaire Joginder Sanger, The Herald can reveal.
His company Mastcraft stumped up £9.45 million for the property, sold by Royal Bank of Scotland.
The Edinburgh-based bank has now sold all but one of an 11-strong portfolio it acquired from the Hilton Group in 2001 in a £312m sale and leaseback deal. The property still to be offloaded is the Glasgow Hilton in the city centre which has a price tag of some £50m.
Mr Sanger moved to the UK in the early 1960s, launching his business career with a small travel agency in East London. He broke into the top-end hotel market with the purchase of the four-star Washington Hotel in London’s plush Mayfair district in 1997.
He has an established relationship with Hilton having signed franchise deals for other hotels in the capital in 2008.
His sprawling interests extend to properties and a life insurance company.
Accounts filed for the financial year ended May 31, 2010, show Mastcraft, which is headquartered in London, saw operating profit rise 163% to £1.2m on turnover of £2.2m.
Mr Sanger is chairman of Mastcraft and its biggest shareholder.
RBS was advised on the sale of the 96-bedroom Glasgow Grosvenor in the West End by property specialist CB Richard Ellis Hotels. Over the past year CBRE Hotels has advised RBS on the sale of several of the Hilton hotels, raising a total of £210m for the part-nationalised bank.
RBS chief executive Stephen Hester designated the Hilton portfolio as “non-core” two years ago as he set about cleaning up the bank’s balance sheet.
Mastcraft did not respond to a request for comment.
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