Doyles move to keep public eyes off hotel accounts

The company behind the Doyle Collection hotel group, which had €662 million of total assets at the end of last year, has moved to keep its financial affairs private by converting itself into an unlimited company.

Doyle Hotels (Holdings) Limited re-registered as an unlimited company last week, according to documents filed with the Companies Registration Office, meaning it will no longer have to lodge annual accounts with the office in Carlow. This will serve to shield its financial performance from public view.

The move comes within weeks of the luxury hotels group reporting that its net profit surged 55 per cent last year to €31.1 million, at more than three times the pace of revenue growth, to €133 million.

A spokeswoman for the company, owned by the Doyle and Beatty families, declined to comment on its change to unlimited status. The newly renamed Doyle Hotel Group Unlimited Company joins some other well-known Irish companies, including Dunnes Stores, stockbroker Davy, financial services firm Fexco and a number of companies owned by beef baron Larry Goodman that enjoy such status.

However, shareholders in unlimited companies are personally liable for the debts of the business.

The hotels group has changed vastly from the then publicly-quoted company taken private in 2005 in a €1.1 billion deal led by Bernie Gallagher, daughter of the group's late founder, PV Doyle. It went on to sell a 6.8-acre parcel of land housing the Berkeley Court and Jurys in Ballsbridge to Sean Dunne for €380 million and its Jury's Inn chain to Quinlan Private for €1.16 billion – before the property crash.

The Doyles subsequently rebranded Jurys Doyle as The Doyle Collection in 2008, before selling off its three US hotels five years later. The company, which currently has eight hotels, recently completed a €200 million investment programme across its hotels spanning seven years.

The Doyle Collection operates three hotels in Ireland (the five-star Westbury and Croke Park in Dublin, and the River Lee in Cork), four in Britain (three in London and one in Bristol) and the Dupont Circle in Washington DC.

The hotel chain undertook a revaluation of its properties the end of last year, revising them up by almost €54 million since the last such exercise was carried out at the end of 2012. Shareholder funds stood at €329 million on December 31, up 26.5 per cent on the year.

Its loan facilities amounted to €238.4 million, of which the “substantive amount” falls due for repayment in November 2017.