Hotel financing

Our Real Estate Finance and Hospitality practices work together to bring a unique service to our borrower hospitality clients – transactional real estate investment and development advice across the capital stack, combined with advice on how such debt arrangements may impact upon and be required to conform to the borrower’s covenants in its underlying operational contracts and leases.

For instance, we review and advise upon:

• the LTV and debt servicing covenants parameters under which debt packages are to be concluded;
• the obligations to procure non-disturbance agreements, or hold harmless comfort letters (and we will furthermore take the lead on the negotiation and completion of such documents);
• any required variations to be made to the suite of underlying lease, management or franchising agreements, again drafting and leading the negotiations of any required amendment agreements.

Our team members are uniquely placed to provide this cross-departmental advice through having gained years of first-hand experience having worked on many Real Estate Finance hospitality transactions including the following:

• Acting for a US based private equity firm on a c.£60m facility in relation to the acquisition of an award winning luxury hotel in Birmingham
• Acting for a global investment company and asset manager on a £32.7m forward funding of a hotel site in Newcastle, including a review and commentary on the construction procurement package, title and planning
• Acting for an investment bank on a £103m refinancing of a renowned central London hotel including dealing with the funder’s detailed enquiries on a very complicated planning background including a partially implemented consent for an extension to the hotel, compliance with s106 requirements, and assessing the impact of lawful use certificates obtained by retail tenants
• Advising a joint venture on a c.£70m facility in relation to the acquisition of a prestigious hotel in West London
• Acting for an institutional landlord on a pre-let to a leading UK based hotel group in North London, with forward funding with a value of £10.5m
• Acting for the trustees of an investment bank as corporate director of a borrower on the refinancing of debt in relation to a London hotel
• Advised an investment bank owner on the hotel management agreement (HMA) suite of documents for the operation of one serviced apartment operation and one hotel operation with different international operators in Djibouti
• Advised an investment bank owner on the HMA suite of documents for the operation of a hotel in Mauritius by a leading global hotel operator
• Advised a US-based client on the restructuring of its franchisee entity to accommodate a refinancing of a hotel operation in Florida under the flag of a major global hotel franchisor
• Acting for an investment bank on a c.£60m refinance of an existing investment facility in relation to a London hotel