Texas firm Westmont to buy Fairmont Le Château Montebello

Westmont Hospitality Group agreed to buy China Evergrande Group’s iconic log-cabin hotel in Canada out of bankruptcy proceedings after the Chinese real estate company failed to make payments on its debt.

Fairmont Le Château Montebello, which has hosted luminaries including Grace Kelly and Margaret Thatcher, was put up for sale this year by PricewaterhouseCoopers , the court-appointed receiver. The acquisition was approved by the Quebec Superior Court in a decision released Thursday, and the transaction is expected to close on Nov. 15. No financial details were disclosed.

A total of 30 bids were initially made and deemed admissible. A group that included Michael Andlauer, the owner of the Ottawa Senators professional hockey team, made an offer for the resort and had pledged to invest as much as $150 million.

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Another group had attempted to block the sale of the resort, arguing that it was sidelined despite making a higher offer because of its intention to remove Accor SA’s Fairmont Hotels and Resorts as manager of the hotel.

Evergrande’s collapse was by far the biggest in a real estate crisis that dragged down China’s economic growth for years and led to a record spate of distress among builders. The company, which first defaulted in 2021, was once the country’s largest developer by sales.

The firm’s insolvent subsidiary, Millennium Golden Jiachen Hotel Holdings Ltd., owed $58 million to creditors, including $11 million to an affiliate of Desjardins Group , a Canadian financial firm that was represented by law firm Gowling WLG in the legal proceedings.

Westmont Hospitality was founded in the 1970s and is based in Houston, according to the firm’s website and LinkedIn profile. It has more than 500 hotels under the brands of major chains such as Fairmont, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., Marriott International Inc., and InterContinental Hotels Group Plc.

Billing itself as the world’s largest log cabin, the 96-year-old Chateau Montebello opened as a private club near the beginning of the Great Depression.

The hotel, with more than 200 rooms and suites, is located around 130 kilometres west of Montreal and includes an 18-hole golf course, a spa and a conference centre. Evergrande bought it in 2014 from Oxford Properties Group, a unit of the Omers pension plan.