(Bloomberg)—Former Guggenheim Partners President Todd Boehly’s Cain International bought a stake in the Beverly Hilton and adjacent Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, a storied hotel complex that hosts Hollywood and Wall Street royalty as the home of the Golden Globe Awards and Milken Institute Global Conference.
Boehly’s firm acquired the interest from Beny Alagem’s Oasis West Realty LLC, said Harvey Englander, a spokesman for Oasis. Alagem first bought a stake owned by 54 Madison Partners, Englander said. The sale values the complex at $1.2 billion, with Cain International -- owned by Eldridge Industries, a private investment firm co-founded by Boehly -- investing $345 million and assuming debt associated with the property, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.
Representatives for Cain, Eldridge, 54 Madison and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., which manages both hotels, declined to comment.
The Beverly Hilton opened in 1955 as a showpiece for Conrad Hilton’s growing empire and quickly gained a following among Hollywood and political elite, including Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. In the 1980s, Michael Milken gathered his band of corporate raiders there for the annual Predators’ Ball gatherings. The hotel gained fresh attention when singer Whitney Houston was found dead at the property in 2012.
Alagem, who founded a computer company that used the Packard Bell name, acquired the hotel from talk-show host and media mogul Merv Griffin in 2003. A few years later, Alagem gained local approval to develop a new hotel next door on Wilshire Boulevard, leading to the opening of the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills last year.
The latest deal moves a stake in the property between investors with ties to Guggenheim Partners, which Boehly left in 2015 and where Henry Silverman, chief executive officer of 54 Madison Partners, once worked. Silverman was also a co-founder, with Boehly, of Cain Hoy Enterprises, which later changed its name to Cain International.
Cain International will contribute to hotel renovations, according to two people with knowledge of the plans. Silverman’s 54 Madison Partners received $283 million of the purchase price for the stake, with the balance of the $345 million going to other investors. Boehly is a minority partner in the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, whose controlling owner is Guggenheim CEO Mark Walter.
To contact the reporters on this story: John Gittelsohn in Los Angeles at [email protected]; Patrick Clark in New York at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Taub at [email protected] Christine Maurus
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