Indian billionaire acquires majority of NYC Mandarin Oriental from Dubai fund valued at $195M

Reliance Industries, controlled by the billionaire Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani, through the entity Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited, acquired a 73.37 percent interest in the Mandarin Oriental New York hotel at 80 Columbus Circle, in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. The transactions was valued at $195.2 million for the hotel condominium unit. The seller was the Investment Corporation of Dubai.
The deal closed on May 11, 2023 and was recorded on June 8, 2023. The property has 213,125 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $915 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
This is an entity level purchase, not a deed transfer. The New York Post reported in 2021 that the hotel condo was up for sale. , and could sell for as little as $100 million, and was valued at $340 million in 2007.

Reliance Industries on January 8, 2022 announced it had agreed to buy the entire 73.37 percent stake owned by the Dubai Investment Authority for “an equity consideration of approximately” $98.15 million. At the same time, a loan with an original principal of $130 million was paid off.

The January 2022 announcement said the deal was expected to close in March 2022, but instead it closed May 13, 2023. The buyer was Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited. A JLL team brokered the sale for the seller.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Reliance Industries had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Investment Corporation of Dubai had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The hotel condo in Lincoln Square has 213,125 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has a total lot size of 213,125 square feet. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $161.3 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

The neighborhood

In Lincoln Square, The majority, or 61 percent of the 19.1 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 24 percent of the space. In sales, Lincoln Square has the 8th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.9 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Lincoln Square has 1.3 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 22nd highest in Manhattan. It had 1.3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 7 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

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