Easyjet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou plans to list his budget hotel chain on the stock market, the first flotation the tycoon has attempted since his airline floated in 2000.
His easyHotel business, which currently runs 20 hotels, wants to raise £60m to fund expansion.
Part of the cash raised will be used to repay a shareholder loan - believed to be a sum of £5 to £10 million from Sir Stelios.
However, the move comes as investor appetite for flotations shows signs of cooling after shares in over-50s focused holidays-to-insurance group Saga were priced at the bottom of their expected range and fashion chain FatFace shelved plans to go public.
Easyhotel, which was founded in 2004, said it wants to use the cash to build more wholly-owned hotels around the world.
The firm currently runs two hotels it owns, as well as having 17 franchised units. It operates in cities such as London, Dubai, and Johannesburg as well as Sir Stelios's native Cyprus.
Sir Stelios said: "I see easyHotel as one of the best, most natural extensions of the easy brand from the airline. Easyhotel is raising money to accelerate growth at a much faster rate than I could have grown it as a private company."
The business said Sir Stelios will retain a "significant minority stake" in the firm, believed to be around 35%, once it has gone public.
Easyhotel is set to float on London's junior AIM market, but is yet to set out a timetable or release detailed pricing plans.
Easyjet was founded by Stelio in 1995, floated five years later, and last March entered the FTSE 100 Index as one of the largest UK-listed companies. Sir Stelios and his family control a near-35% stake in easyJet.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article