Hotel buyouts are proving a bonanza for mutual funds which snapped up Hilton, Marriott and other hotel stocks after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Private-equity firm Blackstone Group’s (BX.N) $20 billion bid for Hilton Hotels Corp. (HLT.N) on Tuesday sparked a 27 percent rise in shares of the second-biggest U.S. hotel chain over Thursday and Friday, [...]

Vector Hospitality, the hotel real estate investment trust (REIT), has had to cut its flotation price and delay the launch by 24 hours to get its £2 billion London listing off the ground.
The cut comes after pressure from institutions who voiced concerns over potential conflicts of interest in the role of director Richard Balfour-Lynn and [...]

Crescent Real Estate Equities Co. has completed the sale of several properties, including two in Austin, to Walton TCC Hotel Investors V LLC as it prepares for a buyout.
Fort Worth-based Crescent [NYSE: CEI] has sold the Omni Austin Hotel and Austin Centre office building at 701 Brazos in downtown, as part of a transaction announced [...]

The casino company run by billionaire Sheldon Adelson said Tuesday it expects about $1 billion in net proceeds from the sale of luxury condominium units under construction at its Palazzo property on the Las Vegas Strip.
Gross proceeds from the sale of 300 condo units are expected to range from $1.45 billion to $1.94 billion, while [...]

PARIS - Carrefour, the European answer to Wal-Mart and the world’s second-largest retailer, is in play.
It is a classic story, involving generational tensions, a senior executive summarily dismissed and pressure from powerful investors hunting for profit. But it is also a very French story because the value of the treasure at the tale’s core — [...]

Blackstone Group LP, the leveraged buyout firm that spent about $160 billion on acquisitions during the past two decades, earns higher returns from investing in real estate than from its takeover funds.
Real estate has been New York-based Blackstone’s best- performing investment since the company started buying property 16 years ago, with net returns averaging 29 [...]

HFF, Inc. announced that the underwriters of its recent initial public offering have exercised their option to purchase additional shares in full to purchase an additional 2.145 million shares of its Class A common stock at the initial offering price.
The joint book-running managers for the initial public offering were Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Morgan [...]

Hospitality Properties Trust announced that it has commenced a public offering of 4,000,000 common shares of beneficial interest. HPT expects to use the net proceeds to repay a portion of the debt incurred to fund its recently completed acquisition of TravelCenters of America, Inc.. The underwriters will be granted a 30-day option to purchase up [...]

PepsiCo Inc. may rebound from Thursday’s losses, as some analysts said the sell-off of the snack and beverage maker was premature.
Pepsi shares lost $1.19, or 2 percent, to $63.31 Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange. The Purchase, N.Y.-based company reported its fourth-quarter results before the bell, noting a 61 percent increase in overall profit.
Morgan [...]

A spate of analysts raised their profit forecasts for Federated Department Stores Inc., a day after the owner of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s said January same-store sales beat Wall Street expectations and raised its fourth-quarter forecast, but some remain skeptical about whether the strong results will continue.
Federated said same-store sales rose 6.1 percent in January, topping [...]

Japanese hotel and railway group Seibu Holdings Inc. said on Friday it has agreed to sell the Maui Prince Hotel, land and a golf course in Hawaii for about $575 million to a firm affiliated with Morgan Stanley .
Seibu has been selling off its properties as part of a restructuring and to cut interest-bearing debt.
Seibu [...]

Senior Housing Properties Trust announced that it commenced a public offering of 4,500,000 common shares. All of the shares will be issued by SNH. SNH expects to use the proceeds of this offering to repay borrowings outstanding under its revolving credit facility and for general business purposes. It is contemplated that the underwriters will also [...]