THE saga surrounding the future ownership of the Maybourne Hotel Group in London has dragged on for months with several twists and turns along the way. The luxury hotel group, bought by Quinlan Private back in 2004 has been eyed up by the Barclay brothers as well as Malaysian and Chinese investors.

It comprises Claridge’s, The Berkeley and Connaught hotels and was one of the better investments made by Irish property investors during the boom.

Things looked like they had finally settled down in recent weeks into a stalemate of sorts but now there’s been another interesting development.

Documents lodged with Companies House show that a company called National Asset Loan Management, which was set up by Nama to acquire loan assets from the participating banks, owns shares in Coroin, the holding company behind the luxury hotel group.

Even more interesting is the fact that it owns about 15 per cent of the company’s special redeemable preference shares as of April 2, as these are the key shares in the group – because obviously they get priority in terms of repayment should the group be sold.

Unfortunately, Nama’s spokesman hadn’t returned a call at the time of writing so we don’t know at this stage if anything’s changed since April.

Companies House documents also show that Anglo Irish Bank issued a new debenture mortgage to Coroin last month.

Meanwhile, Davy’s Kyran McLaughlin, one of the investors in the hotel group, stepped down as a director of Coroin in March, the documents show.