Heeton Holdings
A consortium led by Heeton Holdings announced yesterday that it has added two more hotels to its portfolio in Britain.
One is a budget outlet with 87 rooms close to the centre of Bradford City, while the other, in Gloucester City, has 127 rooms. Both hotels are managed by French operator Accor.
The consortium had bought an apartment-hotel (a hotel cum service apartments) in London's Hammersmith last March, as well as a mixed development site near Leeds city centre in July.
The three other partners in the consortium are KSH Holdings, Lian Beng and Ryobi Kiso, through its subsidiary Leeds Investment and Development. Heeton holds an effective interest of 55 per cent while the other three have effective interests of 15 per cent each.
Rickmers Maritime
Container ship operator Rickmers Maritime went into the red for the fourth quarter due to huge impairment charges.
The mainboard-listed trust reported a net loss of US$129.6 million (S$182.4 million) for the three months ended Dec 31, compared with a net profit of US$11.2 million in the same period a year earlier. This was due to non-cash impairment charges of US$128.4 million in the light of the depressed charter market, said its trustee-manager in a Singapore Exchange filing yesterday.
It has continued to suspend distributions to unitholders for the quarter in order to conserve cash, said the trustee-manager.
Millennium & Copthorne Hotels
Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C), the London-listed hotel arm of Singapore's City Developments, reported dismal fourth-quarter earnings due to impairment losses, though these were partially offset by revaluation gains.
Net profit for the three months ended Dec 31 plunged 88.6 per cent to £5 million (S$10.1 million), compared with £44 million a year earlier. Revenue inched up 1.3 per cent to £232 million. Earnings per share tumbled to 1.4 pence from 13.7 pence.
"In 2015, global hospitality markets were impacted by falling commodity prices, mounting concern with regard to terrorism, health advisory travel alerts and uncertainty regarding growth of the Chinese market," said M&C chairman Kwek Leng Beng. "These external factors... are expected to continue in the current year."
