Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL) will soon take a final call on its relationship with Orient Express Hotels Ltd. IHCL holds a 6.9 per cent stake in the luxury US hotel chain, which spurned a USD 1.86─billion acquisition bid by the Tata group company in late 2011.
"We are exploring different ways of working together," Cyrus P Mistry, Chairman, Tata Sons Ltd, said at the recently held 112th annual general meeting. "Our board will review this again in the short term to see if there is any opportunity to continue," he said, as per a PTI report.
"When we acquired shareholding in Orient Express, the board had considered it as a strategic investment," Mistry added. In October 2011, IHCL made the USD 1.86─billion bid to acquire all outstanding class A shares of Orient Express Hotels, which termed the offer "unsolicited".