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1. Pandox, Eiendomsspar propose €1.27 billion Dalata acquisition
Stockholm-based hotel owner and operator Pandox AB and Oslo-based Eiendomsspar AS have formed a joint venture to acquire Ireland-based Dalata Hotel Group. Together, the partners have proposed an offer of €6.05 ($6.90) per share, a 5% premium, which would value the Irish hotel firm at €1.27 billion. Eiendomsspar already owns 8.8% of Dalata and 24.8% of Pandox.
Dalata said earlier this year it was looking at different ways of adding value and was open for acquisition offers. It currently has a portfolio of 61 hotels, and as of press time it has a current market capitalization of €1.25 billion. Under Irish law, the two Scandinavian partners have until July 15 to make a formal offer, Reuters reports.
2. JVSPAC and The Philippines’ Hotel101 move closer to merger
Hong Kong-based JVSPAC — a publicly listed shell company that seeks to raise funds to merge with privately listed companies — and Philippines-based hotel operator Hotel101 have moved closer to a merger. The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission has approved Hotel101’s acceptance statement, according to an SEC release that added the parties value Hotel101’s equity value as being $2.3 billion.
If the merger is successful, Hotel101 will be the first Filipino-owned company to be listed and traded on the NASDAQ platform. Hotel101 is owned by Pasay City, The Philippines-based DoubleDragon Corp. and has a global business plan of offering identical, standardized hotel rooms. Launched in 2019, Hotel101 has 13 hotels with 2,001 rooms and a pipeline of 5,331 rooms. Most of its current hotels are in The Philippines, but it has one in Japan and in its pipeline are hotel in Los Angeles and Madrid. Its business model is based on individual owners owning one room in hotels it manages.
3. Takeaways from the first day of NYU IHIF
On the first day of the NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum in New York City, hoteliers in attendance said the U.S. hotels market is steady but mired in continuing uncertainty, writes CoStar News Hotels’ editorial team. Executives said that tariffs and tariff threats had them all “bracing for impact,” but that “dealmakers are wrapping their heads around transacting in spite of the uncertainty.”
According to CoStar data presented at the conference, revenue per available room is up 1.6% this year so far over all with most of the major U.S. markets seeing growth.
Michael Bluhm, managing director and global head of real estate, gaming and lodging at business advisory Jefferies summed it up: “Everything from fiscal policy to regulatory policy to monetary policy came into light this year and a lot of changes that drive investment today, like capital cost and the strength of the dollar, have been thrown into the ether. But in the long term, I think we're headed for lower rates, a weaker dollar — which is better for the economy — and we're going to be in a much better place.”
4. OECD claims tariffs will hurt global economic growth
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development’s latest "Economic Outlook" report states U.S. tariffs are set to hurt global economic growth. It predicts global growth to slow from 3.3% in 2024 to 2.9% in both 2025 and 2026, due to, in its words, “substantial barriers to trade, tighter financial conditions, diminishing confidence and heightened policy uncertainty.”
The OECD added decline would be “most concentrated” in Canada, China, Mexico and the U.S., the countries at the center of arguments and policy decisions around tariffs. It predicted that growth in the “U.S. is projected to decline from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.6% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2026. … China’s growth is projected to moderate from 5% in 2024 to 4.7% in 2025 and 4.3% in 2026.”
5. Eurozone on course to be first major trading market to curb inflation
The European Central Bank is celebrating a slight decline in Eurozone inflation in May to below its target of 2%, the Wall Street Journal reports. Inflation rose 1.9% year over year in May, down slightly from 2.2% growth in April, which is “a big step on the way to becoming the first major central bank to secure victory over the spiraling inflation that followed the pandemic and the start of the war in Ukraine.”
The Eurozone’s inflation rate in September and October 2024 fell below the 2% year-over-year growth target, but it has stayed above that level through April. EU economists predict that the rate will settle this time. For individual member countries of the Eurozone in May, Estonia had the highest inflation rate of 4.6%, while Cyprus (+0.4%) and France (+0.6%) had the lowest, being the only two among the 20 countries to have a year-over-year inflation increase of less than 1%.