A view of Astir Palace, a beachfront resort in Athens that twice hosted the Bilderberg conferences of political and business leaders (file). Qatar has held talks with Greece to buy the Astir Palace, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Bloomberg/Dubai
Qatar has held talks with Greece to buy the Astir Palace, a beachfront resort in Athens that twice hosted the Bilderberg conferences of political and business leaders, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Representatives of Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Co, part of the country’s sovereign-wealth fund, discussed the sale with Greek officials and the resort’s owners when Prime Minister Antonis Samaras visited Doha last month, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.
Greece is striving to attract foreign investment as the economy faces its sixth straight year of contraction and an unemployment rate that reached 27% in November. An Astir Palace deal would mark the first sale of a property freehold in the country since the government announced a €50bn ($67bn) asset-sale plan in 2011. Greece is trying to raise €2.6bn this year.
The National Bank of Greece and the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, which own the property, put out an international public tender on January 16. The 120,000 square-metre (1.3mn square-foot) complex includes three hotels, private beaches and 58 bungalows on the Vouliagmeni peninsula 25km from Venizelos International Airport.
Since its opening in the 1960s, the resort’s guests have included Jackie Onassis, Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair, Jane Fonda and Frank Sinatra, according to its website. In 1993 and 2009 Astir Palace hosted the Bilderberg conference, an invitation-only annual gathering of European and American business and political leaders named after the hotel in Holland where the first meeting took place in 1954.
Spokesmen for the National Bank of Greece, and the state privatisation fund declined to comment on the matter. Qatari Diar didn’t immediately respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Greece’s plan to reduce public debt by selling assets is central to the country’s efforts to secure further financing from the European Union and International Monetary Fund. The disposal programme, which also includes stakes in utilities and mining companies, was delayed by months of negotiations over the country’s debt restructuring last year and two general elections that threatened Greece’s membership in the euro.
The Greek divestment plan has brought in €1.8bn so far. NCH Capital, a New-York based private-equity firm, will invest €100mn to develop a strip of land on the Greek Island of Corfu under a 99-year concession, the fund said in January. It plans to announce a bidder for a larger project on the island of Rhodes in the next several months.
“It’s difficult and challenging at the same time to estimate a figure for the asset due to its unique location,” said Ioannis Kaligiannakis, a senior appraiser at real estate consulting firm Colliers International in Athens. “The value is also underpinned by development potential including conversion of the existing hotel establishments to residential units, partial demolition, refurbishments and new developments including 3,000 square metres for a conference center.”
National Bank of Greece holds 85% of Astir Palace Hotel, the public company that owns the resort and has a market value of €286.9mn. It also owns a site where the other two hotels and 58 bungalows are located. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide operates the Westin Athens Astir Palace Beach Resort and the Arion Resort & Spa Astir Palace, which includes the bungalows. Among the resort’s restaurants is Matsuhisa Athens, a sushi eatery owned by Nobu Matsuhisa that overlooks the Aegean Sea.
In 2011, National Bank of Greece paid €43mn for a 40-year lease of the tourist port that connects the resort by sea to make the asset more attractive. It spent €70mn refurbishing the hotels before the 2004 Olympics, according to the bank’s annual reports.
Accords already in place with hotel operators, access to the marina and the additional development potential of the site will all be factors in the price, according to Colliers’ Kaligiannakis.
