Behind the Curtain of the Marriott-Starwood Hotel Deal: What About Lenders?

Marriott. Starwood. Today the largest hotel company in the world. Although there has been a lot of talk about Marriott’s Acquisition of $ 12.2 billion from Starwood, the share price and the typical fallout from mergers and acquisitionsWhat was missing was to talk about the impact on properties, especially the many large loans behind them.

It may seem obvious that mergers and acquisitions can have substantial effects on which companies buy and which ones are acquired – examples include organizational restructuring as well as changes in what the integrated business focuses on, how it operates. and how it is valued.

But another issue that doesn’t always get the same attention is the relationship between each company and its suppliers, and what will happen to those relationships when the two companies come together.

Hotel chains can obviously work with many suppliers, from food and beverage providers to telecommunications providers. On the real estate side, the sellers are the banks providing the capital and issuing the loans for each hotel belonging to the Marriott and Starwood chains.

We assume that the hotel chain that has an existing relationship with a particular lender is likely to revert to the same lender. Since Marriott, whose hotel brands include Renaissance and Courtyard, acquires Starwood, whose brands include Sheraton, W and Westin, this is good news for the banks that have provided funding to Marriott, but could be less good news. for banks that have focused their efforts on Starwood.

Who benefits and who could lose now that Marriott is taking the lead?

To answer this, we took a sample of over 2,000 loans issued over the past decade for Marriott and Starwood hotels across the country, totaling just under $ 65 billion in debt. We looked at which lenders were behind the deals and, among these, which will benefit the most from the merger and which are most likely to lose.

Here’s what we found:

Marriott Lenders

Wells Fargo and Credit Suisse appear to be the two biggest winners from this deal.

From the sample we took, Wells Fargo appears to benefit the most. Wells Fargo (along with Wachovia, before its takeover by Wells) issued more loans and a much larger proportion of the dollar amount – $ 5.77 billion, or 11% – than the lender behind it: Credit Suisse and its subsidiary Colonne Financière.

While Wells was a major Starwood and Marriott lender, Credit Suisse / Column – which issued Marriott’s $ 1.96 billion in loans, or 4% – was more loyal to Marriott in the sense that it has issued a much lower proportion of loans to Starwood. Whether this will ultimately increase business with the expanded Marriott remains to be seen.

Over 40% of Credit Suisse / Column loans went to a single hotel, and $ 815 million went to the Courtyard Boston Downtown at 275 Tremont St. in March. The 315-room hotel, built in 1924 and renovated in 2010, is owned by real estate investment company Ashford Hospitality Trust, which is involved in direct hotel investment as well as hotel finance.

As for Wells / Wachovia loans, one of the factors in its diversification of loans to the two hoteliers is simply that until 2008, Wells Fargo and Wachovia were two separate entities. This can be seen in two loans made to competing hotels on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago in 2006 – both maturing in April 2016.

In March 2006, Wells Fargo provided a $ 140 million loan for the 752-room Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago hotel, a Starwood property built in 1963 and remodeled in 2005. The hotel is located at 909 North Michigan Ave., which is part of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. , a downtown avenue full of shops, restaurants and hotels. This year, the loan, which bears an interest rate of 5.75%, was allocated to a CMBS operation.

About a month after the Westin loan was issued and two years before Wachovia’s takeover by Wells Fargo, Wachovia issued a $ 195 million loan for the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile hotel located at 540 North Michigan Ave. in 2006. The 1,200-room hotel, which was built in 1978 and renovated in 2005, was assigned a CMBS deal in May of this year and has an interest rate of 5.86%.

If Marriott keeps both hotels for the time being, Wells Fargo will likely have the option to go ahead and refinance both loans over the next few months.

For the other top lenders, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and JP Morgan round out the top five lenders by dollar amount in our Marriott sample.

Starwood Lenders

Among the banks that put their eggs in Starwood’s basket that could now lose to competitors with a pre-existing relationship with Marriott, include Citigroup. Citi is one of Starwood’s biggest lenders – but not Marriott’s – and could be left behind when it comes time for Marriott hotels to refinance.

Citigroup issued 2% of our sample of Starwood loans, amounting to $ 229.7 million, but only 0.1% of Marriott loans, or $ 43.5 million. It should be noted, however, that almost all of Citigroup’s loans to Starwood went to one hotel: the 803-room Westin Copley at 10 Huntington Ave., located across from Copley Square in Boston and renovated in 2012, for which he issued a loan of $ 225 million in July.

Barclays and Shanghai Commercial Bank were also favored by Starwood and could lose on future Marriott loans. Barclays may have less to worry about: They issued more in absolute dollars to Marriott than to Starwood.

Likewise, while Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, and JP Morgan are among the top Starwood lenders in our sample, we don’t necessarily expect them to be losers in the merger, as they are also the top Marriott lenders.

So here it is: among the lenders, Wells Fargo and Credit Suisse appear as the big winners of the Marriott-Starwood deal, while Citigroup, Barclays and Shanghai Commercial Bank seem to have favored the hotel chain which has just been acquired.