Private equity juggernaut Blackstone Group has elevated its plans to take Hilton Worldwide Holdings public to a whole new, record-setting level.
Blackstone initially filed in September to raise $1.25 billion through an initial public offering of the global hotel chain, but has now upped that figure to $2.25 billion.
The hotel chain intends to file price terms for the IPO at the start of next month, Bloomberg News reported, citing unnamed sources. The IPO would surpass Twitter’s $2.1 billion offering earlier this month, and beat Hyatt Hotels Corporation’s $1.09 billion public offering in 2009 for the title of largest lodging IPO.
“They’ve timed it very well, and that’s not by accident,” Arthur Adler of brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle’s hotel division told Bloomberg. “The fact they’re going public now demonstrates the interest investors have in a wide swath of hospitality.”
Blackstone paid $18 billion for Hilton in 2007, and also assumed about $7 billion in existing debt, making the deal one of the largest leveraged buyouts at the time. Blackstone then went about an aggressive revamp of the company by recruiting new management, restructuring the company’s debt and aggressively expanding Hilton brands internationally. [Bloomberg News] — Mark Maurer