The Firm represents The Blackstone Group in its $3.3 billion cash acquisition of La Quinta Corporation. La Quinta is one of the largest owner/operators of hotels in the United States. La Quinta owns and operates 360 hotels and franchises more than 240 hotels in 39 states. La Quinta's common stock is paired with the non-voting common stock of its REIT subsidiary, and the paired shares trade as a unit on the New York Stock Exchange.
The transaction is the largest in a series of five recent public company hotel acquisitions in which the Firm has represented Blackstone, including Blackstone’s buyouts of Wyndham International, Boca Resorts, Prime Hospitality and Extended Stay America. These transactions have an aggregate value of approximately $12 billion, with four of them exceeding $1 billion.
The transaction will be financed with $3.0 billion of mortgage and mezzanine financing. The proceeds of the financing, together with equity from Blackstone, will be used to pay the merger consideration and refinance existing indebtedness.
The Simpson Thacher team working on the transaction includes: Brian Stadler, David Butow, Matthew Raben, Grenfel Calheiros and Jinghua Zou (M&A); Greg Ressa, Sas Mehrara, Amy Abbazia, Ari Stavsky, Nathan Hagerman, Alison Fagen and Esther Kim (Real Estate); John Lobrano (Capital Markets); John Hart and Thomas Gray (Tax); Jonathan Farkas (Employee Benefits); Mike Isby (Environmental); Noah Leibowitz (Intellectual Property) and Michael Naughton (Antitrust).