STAKIS, the Cypriot-owned UK hotel and casino group founded 57 years ago has been taken over by British hotels and betting group Ladbroke.
Ladbroke, who also run the Nicosia Hilton, took control of Stakis’s 54 hotels and 22 casinos in a £1.6 billion sterling deal announced on Monday, the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday. The agreed takeover doubles the size of Ladbroke’s Hilton hotels chain in the UK.
Stakis founder Sir Reo Stakis, 86, spoke of his regret at the takeover of the company he founded in 1942, 15 years after emigrating to the British Isles. The takeover is the final chapter in Sir Reo’s rags-to-riches career.
“It’s a matter of great sadness that this event has come to pass, bearing in mind that I have spent the best part of my life, over 50 years, creating and developing the group,” Sir Reo was quoted as saying in the Telegraph.
Sir Reo arrived in Britain in 1927 with only a suitcase full of Lefkara lace and £60. He travelled the country selling his lace and used the proceeds to start up a restaurant chain. His first eatery opened in Glasgow in the early 1930s – legend has it he taught Glaswegians to use a knife and fork – and established Stakis in 1942.
Sir Reo’s personal stake in Stakis is put at £10 million sterling and his family’s at £40 million sterling.
Stakis chief executive David Michels, who is to rejoin Ladbroke as chief executive of Hilton International, said Sir Reo saw the business sense of selling.
Sir Reo had groomed his son Andros to take over Stakis, but when he did the company went downhill fast. Andros lost his job in the early 1990s, Michels moving over from Ladbroke to rescue the group.
“Eight years ago Stakis was on the edge of collapse with a market capitalization of less than £70 million (sterling). Now it is worth £1.2 billion (sterling)” Michels told the Telegraph.
No one was available for comment on the takeover at the Nicosia Hilton yesterday.
The Nicosia hotel has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons recently, with the government investigating allegations that the owners of the hotel building, the Cyprus Tour Development Company (CTDC), had overspent some £9 million on renovations. The cabinet is still considering a report on the matter. CTDC is 82 per cent government owned.
CTDC chairman Michael Erotokritos said yesterday the Ladbroke takeover would probably be beneficial to the Cyprus Hilton, though he added it was “too early to say.”
