(Bloomberg) -- Qatar Investment Authority's hotel division said it doesn't plan to sell properties in Europe, after Bloomberg News reported it is weighing the disposal of two assets operated by InterContinental.
“There's no intention to sell any of these assets and it's not even a topic that was discussed,” Sheikh Nawaf bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani, chairman of Katara Hospitality, said. Katara is a hotels unit of QIA.
QIA has yet to appoint brokers for a possible sale of the properties in Cannes and Amsterdam, people familiar with discussion told Bloomberg earlier, asking not to be identified because the talks are private. A final decision about a sale has yet to be made, they said.
The fund, which has about $320 billion of assets, bought the properties in 2014 as part of a wider push into luxury hotels. The Gulf state has been drawing on its wealth fund over the last 11 months to help stave off the negative impact of a diplomatic and economic boycott led by its larger neighbors Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Representatives for QIA did not comment.
Katara owns a number of other hotels in Europe including Le Royal Monceau, Raffles Paris in the French capital, the Hotel Schweizerhof in Bern and The Westin Excelsior in Rome, according to its website.
--With assistance from Archana Narayanan and Mohammed Aly Sergie
To contact the reporters on this story: Zainab Fattah in Dubai at zfattah@bloomberg.net, Jack Sidders in London at jsidders@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Neil Callanan, Jon Menon
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
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