Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL) is working on a revised offer to acquire British hospitality group Orient Express, sweetening the price 10-15 per cent in the coming days. The renewed offer could be more than USD 15 per share as IHCL readies the backing of an expanded lenders consortium to power the bid, after Orient Express last month turned down the USD 12.63-a-piece offer valuing it at USD 1.86 billion.
IHCL,
which operates hotels and resorts under the Taj brand, has opened discussions with lenders like BNP Paribas to expand the USD 750-million financing armoury from Standard Chartered Bank, ICICI Bank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The line of credit could be closer to USD one billion depending on how aggressively Tata Sons, the parent company of IHCL, wants to chase Orient Express, according to a report by Reeba Zachariah and Boby Kurian in The Economic Times.
Sources said the revised offer was still at works and has not gone to the IHCL board yet, and hence still not a certainty at this point. Indian Hotels has batted the game with an opening price and would increase the bid for the cruises-to-hotels company. They, however, cautioned that the company wouldn't stretch beyond a particular price, which it thinks is a fair valuation of Orient Express.