Geld Zug: “HISTORY DOESN’T REPEAT ITSELF, BUT IT DOES RHYME.”
We were reminded of Mark Twain’s assertion when we read that the Chinese insurance group Anbang (安邦) had bought the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York city (Financial Times 06 Oct 2014), making it the most expensive single hotel transaction ever. Anbang has paid USD 1.95 billion to buy the historic 1,413-room hotel, which was built in 1931 and covers an entire city block. The sale price is equivalent to USD 1.4 million per room or 33x the hotel’s historic EBITDA. The seller was the Hilton hotel group (HLT:NYQ), which will retain management rights for the next hundred years. Why did [...]