Octogenarian entrepreneur Jack Petchey has started dismantling Hanover International, the hotel and conference centre group he took over earlier this year.
Trefick, the investment vehicle that now owns Hanover, has put the group's smaller hotels, those with fewer than 100 bedrooms, up for sale.
Insiders said that Trefick bought Hanover purely for its asset value and now planned to separate it into two parcels to realise this value.
The first parcel will be the collection of small hotels it hopes to sell off piecemeal, leaving it with the second parcel, a core of larger properties, such as the 100-bedroom Hanover International Basingstoke hotel in Hampshire and Eynsham Hall conference and training centre in Oxfordshire, which it hopes will be taken over by one of the big players in the industry.
Jarvis Hotels and Macdonald Hotels are both thought likely to want to take over the group, as are venture capitalists such as Alchemy Partners, which last week put its Paramount Hotels group up for sale but held on to the two-strong Quintessential Hotels.
Many in the industry are voicing concerns about the future of Hanover with Petchey in the driving seat.
The group's new managing director, Ron Mills, apparently has no experience of the hotel industry, and last week Hanover lost its second high-profile board member, finance director and company secretary Tony Kelly, who had been with the group for seven years.
Kelly's resignation follows that of founder and executive chairman Peter Eyles, who left the company in September.
Trefick refused to comment on the recent departures or on the new management of the company.
Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 16 - 22 October 2003