President and chief executive of Scandinavian airline Rezidor SAS, Jorgen Lindegaard, has confirmed that he is planning to sell off the group's hotel division, Radisson SAS.
At a conference in November last year Lindegaard let slip that the group was considering the sale, but the announcement was quickly played down by Radisson SAS.
However, in an interview in the Independent last Sunday, Lindegaard again said he wanted to offload the non-core hotel business, preferably through an initial public offering (IPO), but added that a sale was unlikely to be in the near future.
He said: "We haven't decided anything. We can sell; we can IPO; but there's not a big market for hotels right now, and the IPO market is not there either. And when the market is so terribly down, this is not top of the agenda."
The group, which operates more than 120 hotels in 37 countries, has been valued at about SKr5.7b (£436m).