SAM, Cleary, Veritas lead on Brookfield acquisition of key Leela Hotels for 3,950 crore

Canadian alternative asset management company Brookfield has bought the assets of Hotel Leelaventure comprising key hotel properties in Delhi, Bangalore, Udaipur and Chennai for Rs 3,950 crore..The transaction also includes assignment of all Hotel Management contracts currently in operation as well as all management contracts for hotels which are currently under development, along with the employees of the hotels, as per the stock exchange filing..Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP acted for Brookfield..The SAM team was led by Partners Jay Gandhi, Roopal Kulsrestha, and Arka Banerjee, along with Senior Associates Aditi Tralshawala and Puloma Mukherjee and Associate Natalee Nanda..Veritas Legal acted for Hotel Leelaventure and the promoters and the team was led by Partners Abhijit Joshi and Kunal Doshi along with Senior Associate Kanisha Vora, Associate Vyoma Mehta and Paralegal Shyamolie Parikh..The real estate leg of the transaction was led by Partner Vineet Nalawalla with Associates Tejas Shah, Nainaaz Irani and Varun Marwah..The deal comes just before the NCLT’s admission of a case for bankruptcy resolution under IBC. In February, the deal had hit a roadblock when JM Financial ARC Ltd approached the bankruptcy court against Hotel Leelaventure..Hotel Leelaventure will use the amount to repay its debt. The company had a debt of Rs 3,800 crore as on March 2018, its annual report for 2017-18 shows. This has risen to more than Rs 6,000 crore, reported VCCircle..Read the Leela Stock Exchange Filing:.Bar & Bench is available on WhatsApp. For real-time updates on stories, Click here to subscribe to our WhatsApp.