A luxury UK-registered hotel group at the centre of a dispute between developer Paddy McKillen and a Qatari royal lost £77.8 million (€91.6 million) last year despite an uplift in trading revenues in the first full year after the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions and the addition of a new wing to its flagship London property.
Coroin, which owns the five-star Claridge’s Hotel in London and the Maybourne Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, also wrote back an almost £19.7 million impairment charge it took in 2022 after revaluing its London properties, according to consolidated group accounts filed in London.
After tax losses at Coroin, which is owned by Luxembourg-registered entity Regis Investments, controlled by former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, increased by more than £10 million after tax in 2023 to £77.8 million.
It said the loss related to the interest payable on its almost £1.2 billion debt pile, which saw Coroin’s finance costs climb by more than 73 per cent to £86.3 million.
Last year, the group refinanced a £396.8 million loan with Qatari-based Dukhan Bank due for repayment last October. The deal pushed out the repayment date until October 2028, according to a note in the accounts.
Coroin’s parent and its US subsidiary, meanwhile, also took out an additional £194.8 million loan facility with Deutsche Bank – in which the Al Thani family are significant shareholders – last year, which also matures in 2028, the majority of which was used to pay off a JPMorgan loan last September.
Overall group revenues jumped by 20 per cent to £170.1 million in 2023 from nearly £141 million in 2022, the accounts show. Separate accounts for the operating company behind Claridge’s reveal the five-start hotel swung to more than £3 million after-tax profit from a small loss in 2022 on revenues of £119.3 million, which were up by more than 21 per cent.
In a report attached to the accounts, the directors of Coroin said the group also acquired “beneficial title” to a building adjacent to Claridge’s on Brook Street from one of its subsidiaries. “This has enabled Claridge’s to merge the refurbished building with the rest of the hotel to create a combined 269 bedroom hotel post development works,” which were completed in the final three months of last year, adding a new wing.
The directors said Claridge’s had recovered from the pandemic but the US market had been slower to return to pre-Covid levels. Maybourne Beverly Hills closed 2023 with a £16.9 million operating loss, they said.
Mr McKillen, the Belfast-born property developer, became involved in the hotel group in 2004 when he acquired a stake of just over a third in a consortium led by Irish investor Derek Quinlan. He subsequently battled for control of the hotels with the billionaire Barclay brothers, ultimately striking a deal with Qatar to back his position in 2015.
That agreement fell apart with Mr McKillen being removed from the board in 2022. He subsequently sued, claiming he is owed billions of pounds under an agreement to share future profits struck with the Qataris at the time of the 2015 sale, which valued Claridge’s and other hotels in the wider Maybourne group at £1.3 billion. The multi-jurisdictional legal row is ongoing.
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