Occidental Hotels said to be for sale in the Caribbean

SD. The Occidental Hotels chain of hotels, which has a presence in Santo Domingo and Punta Cana is analyzing the sale of their hotels in the Caribbean according to a publication in the Spanish digital newspaper El Confidencial.

According to this paper, the BBVA bank, headed by Francisco Gonzalez and the owner of Inditex, Amancio Ortega have asked Morgan Stanley to handle the sale of the four and five star hotels.

"Source close to BBVA, and to Ortega have confirmed the contract with the United States investment bank to "analyze different corporate options" in Occidental Hotels, which is a way to say that they are seriously weighing the sale after six years as a shareholder. This is the first alternative although they do not discard opening up for a partner who takes a significant share and takes over the administration," said the newspaper.

According to the version of El Confidencial, Morgan Stanley has begun the first job of assessing the value of Occidental Hotels, which was back in the black during the last year after several years in the red. They explain that the fall in the demand for vocational tourism, the damages cause by some hurricanes in the Caribbean, and the irregular of the evolution of the Miguel Angel Hotel, the flag bearer or emblematic hotel of the chain, carried the group to lose close to €200 million between 2008 and 2011.

"These are numbers that forced BBVA and Ortega to make new capital investments and these have not permitted Occidental Hotels to deal with the debt. To the contrary, they have had to extend twice the repayment times of their 270 million of debt, a loan that at its time was made by BBVA, La Caixa, Banco Popular, Banco Sabadel, Novagalicia, and HSBC, among others," the newspaper notes.