Dalata Hotel Group revealed in its interim results on Wednesday that it racked up €6.2 million of transaction costs in the first half relating to a strategic review and sales process, which culminated in a €1.4 billion deal for the company in July.
The cast of advisers sharing the fees is sizeable enough.
The main beneficiary is believed to be investment bank Rothschild, which led the review and formal sales process.
Dalata’s corporate brokers Davy and Germany-based Berenberg, law firms A&L Goodbody, Proskauer Rose in the US, and UK-based Morton Fraser MacRoberts and Osborne Clarke, tax advisers at KPMG Ireland, and public relations firm FTI Consulting are each listed in deal documents as having worked with the hotel group on the accord.
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Additional transaction costs will also be incurred in the second half, but we are unlikely to learn the final amount.
The Nordic bid consortium – comprising Oslo-based investment firm Eiendomsspar and Swedish hotel company Pandox, in which it owns an almost 25 per cent stake – will likely have sealed the deal and taken Dalata off the market sometime in October, subject to approval from Dalata shareholders at investor meetings on September 11th.
The costs, together with an €5.7 million total increase in hotel lease liabilities and other interest and finance costs in the first half, drive a 44 per cent decrease in Dalata’s pretax profit for the period, to €19.6 million.
Eiendomsspar, which has a history of large investments in hotels, first emerged with a disclosable stake above 3 per cent in Dalata at the end of October. The wider bid consortium had accumulated a 9.7 per cent interest by the time the €6.45-a-share takeover deal was agreed in mid-July.
A week later, it bought out the 17.5 per cent stake – or 37.06 million shares – of Dalata’s previous largest shareholder, London-based hedge fund Helikon Investments, to bring its holding above 27 per cent. Those shares were bought at €6.39 a piece – some 6 cents below the takeover bid price, according to stock exchange filings. It saved the Nordic consortium a little over €2 million in the process.
