Family Office
Bill Gates' Investment Group Buys Four Seasons Majority Stake
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The story is an example of how the investment entities of ultra-wealthy individuals buy and hold hotels as important real estate and income-generating assets.
Bill Gates' investment firm has bought a controlling stake in
Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, another example of how family
offices and similar structures invest in the hotels and
associated types of real estate assets.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Prince
al-Waleed bin Talal has agreed to sell half his stake in Four
Seasons Hotels and Resorts to co-owner Bill Gates. The deal
values the luxury hotel operator at $10 billion. Under terms
announced earlier this week, Gates’s Cascade Investment would pay
$2.21 billion for a 23.75 per cent stake in the Four Seasons held
by Prince al-Waleed’s Kingdom Holding Company.
A few days ago, this news service reported that Beemok Capital,
the family office of South Carolina businessman and
philanthropist Benjamin Navarro, had agreed to buy a 433-room
hotel and conference building in downtown Charleston, South
Carolina, from luxury hotel and travel firm Belmond.
A number of family offices hold hotels as investments, such as
Wenaas Group (based in Norway); RB Investments (Harsh Bothra
Family Office in Singapore); Lamont Companies (Lamont Single
Family Office, South Dakota, US); MID (Europe), and Elysium
Management (Black Family Office, New York), according to FINTRX,
a US organization that tracks family offices’ investments.
(Another group, with which this news service has an exclusive
partnership, is Highworth
Research, has chronicled developments in family offices'
investments,
such as here.)
Kingdom and Cascade have held equal stakes in the company since
the partners took it private in 2007. When the sale is complete,
Cascade will hold 71.25 per cent of the hotel operator, while
Kingdom will keep a 23.75 per cent stake. Four Seasons founder
and chairman Isadore Sharp is retaining his 5 per cent holding,
the report said.
Like other hospitality business sectors, the hotels group has
been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
