The Inside Story of Anbang’s Final, Failed Attempt to Acquire Starwood
Photo Credit: Hotel Des Indes, a Luxury Collection Hotel, The Hague, is a member of Starwood's The Luxury Collection. Hotel Des Indes
Skift Take
We're going to miss the drama Anbang brought to what we all assumed would be your standard merger/acquisition between Starwood and Marriott. Instead, what we got was a story the likes of which the travel industry has rarely seen before.
On March 31, the final chapter of a nearly month-long saga seemed to have been written. China's Anbang Insurance Group, who had for so long desired Starwood Hotels & Resorts, abruptly withdrew itself from contention in its long pursuit of the American hotel company.
Citing "various market considerations," Anbang and its consortium partners, J.C. Flowers & Co. and Primavera Capital Ltd., departed as quickly as they had entered into the fray of a bidding war for Starwood on March 10.
Thanks to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings made public on Dec. 22 and March 25, we know that Anbang had its eye on Starwood as far back as May of last year, and that it made several attempts to buy the company since then, with offers ranging from nearly $15 billion to $13 billion, all in cash, over the course of this past year.
The problem with most of those offers, however, was that Anbang had failed to provide enough financing details for the majority of them. That, however,
