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THE DEAN HOTEL Group paid out €18.07m in cash for a Clarence Hotel company co-owned by U2’s Bono and The Edge in October 2023.
That is according to new accounts for the owner and operator of former U2 hotel, The Clarence Hotel, Vision Swipe Ltd.
In October 2023, the Paddy McKillen Jnr and Matt Ryan-led Dean Hotel Group secured a €43.5m loan from UK based Leumi UK Group Ltd to finance the purchase of the Clarence Hotel and the adjacent Dollard House from Bono, The Edge and Paddy McKillen Snr and finance its expansion.
Mr McKillen Jnr and Mr Ryan had held the leasehold for the Wellington Quay hotel since 2019 and had been managing its operations for a number of years before that and the October 2023 deal gave them outright ownership.
Now, the new accounts show that on October 11th 2023, Vision Swipe Ltd purchased Clarence hotel owner, Keywell DAC for €18.07m and paid out an additional €3.98m to Press Up Group firm and operator of The Clarence Hotel, Brushfield Ltd resulting in a combined €22m for the two firms.
A breakdown of the Keywell DAC purchase shows that the company had a book value of €30m on fixed assets, offset by creditors of €18.3m resulting in net assets of €12.44m.
The purchase price of €18.07m was arrived at after taking goodwill of €5.63m into account.
On the same date, a note states that the Vision Swipe group increased its investments in Keywell DAC and the total consideration paid amounted to €6.32m resulting in an overall investment of €24.39m in Keywell DAC. The spend on both Keywell DAC and Brushfield Ltd totalled €28.37m.
The Keywell deal ended Bono and The Edge’s connection with the four-star hotel after more than three decades of ownership.
The U2 musicians, along with Mr McKillen snr, the Belfast-born property investor, had owned the hotel since 1992 and it famously featured on BBC’s Top of the Pops in 2000 when U2 delivered a live performance from its rooftop of their song Beautiful Day.
However, the hotel continues to trade on its U2 association with the hotel website stating that the hotel is “also known as the ‘U2 Hotel’ in Dublin
The note states that for 2023, Brushfield Ltd, trading as The Clarence Hotel generated revenues of €6.65m in revenues and profits of €1.66m.
Revenues were made up of room accommodation of €3.82m, €2.39m in food and beverage and other revenue of €428,594. It employed 119 in 2023.
However, Vision Swipe Ltd recorded group pre-tax losses of €5.27m in the 11 months to the end of 2023.
The business recorded the pre-tax loss chiefly as a result of a loss of €4.06m on the sale of tangible assets.
The company in 2023 also benefited from an unrealised surplus of €28.76m from the revaluation in properties.
However, within six months of the Dean Hotel Group purchase, Lifestyle Hospitality Capital (LHC) purchased a majority stake in the Dean Hotel Group in March of last year, that included the boutique Clarence Hotel, from the Press Up Group.
The new owners currently have a planning application before Dublin City Council to almost triple the size of The Clarence Hotel by 104 rooms from 58 to 162 and add an extra floor to The Clarence and adjoining Dollard House as part of a major revamp.
At the end of 2023, Vision Swipe Ltd and shareholder funds of €20m.
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Big companies trying to screw workers for all they can get! €711 million profit last year, yet they’re complaining they’re not competitive!!! Shareholder greed again!
Irish Cement Limited has extracted its profits over the past few decades by over charging its customers and keeping the price of cement in Ireland artificially inflated.
CRH (Irish Cement’s parent company) has been found guilty on numerous occasions throughout Europe of price fixing and operating illegal cartels all to the detriment of consumers and taxpayers. Most recently in Poland in 2009 when it was fined €25 million for the above offences.
After the cement cartel was uncovered in Germany in 2003 prices decreased by over 50%. Imagine how much local authorities have been over charged for cement related products throughout the Celtic Tiger. CRH claimed an annual turnover of €18 billion in 2011. How much of that belongs to the Irish people?
Irish Cement Limited can well afford to pay its workers!
Irish cement workers in Platin (meath) were always very well payed. Before the tiger days it was one of the best jobs in the area and even through the tiger days. Have to say that through the years I’ve had the misfortune of working for subbies in platin and found most of the workers to be arrogant AS**oles. They never wanted subbies in their canteen, would not even look in your general direction. Not as if they were being done out of work, subbies had to do any dirty work as this was beneath them.
In their old sister plant, premier periclase in Drogheda, If a contractor brought a machine in, say a JCB, then premiers union insisted on one of their men standing beside the machine (not doing any work) as long as it was on the premises, as it was deemed to be doing a man out of work.
I for one have no sympathy for any of the (so called) workers in Platin.
They might find out what it’s like to have to work for a subbie and have dickheads looking down their noses at you
That was a long long time ago tom. Your rant seems to stem from a hint of jealousy. How many times did you apply and not get in i wonder? Icl have already slashed their wage bill in recent years by redundancies and early retirements. . That 100 people is across 2 plants remember. Go back 2 years and the numbers were 3 times that. The monies owed are for bonuses which they are quite entitled to considering the bankers are still getting them and the banks DONT make profits of over 700 million euro a year.
@Karl, not Jealousy, More that I was surprised at the arrogance and ignorance of the majority of the employee’s.
It’s not a rant either it is fact that subcontractors are used for any “dirty work” as this is seen as below any general operatives duties in direct employment.
They lived in a bubble for years, Jobs for life and being basically unsackable made work place snobs out of sadly the majority of them.
Not sure where you are coming from, but having dealt with them at all levels for many years now, I am very familar with their ways
so tom because you were mistreated by men that have long since left that place the current relatively young workforce deserve everything they get? your holding a bitter grudge. and yes you were indirectly doing people out of a fulltime job and thats why they treated ye like that. but that was a long time ago. you have no idea what it is like to work in in recent years. the “so called platin workers” you are talking about are fighting for money they are owed. mark o brien makes a point in the comments below. you should read it. platin was a good job and always looked after the surrounding towns and clubs. but thats all stopped now because of greedy executives. your still coming across as being bitter that you never got a job there.
Lucky to be alive with you around,
You big girls blouse!
They are bloody lucky to have jobs
For God’s sake, lucky to have jobs they are not getting paid for! Mong
This kind of wage slave mentality, taken to its logical conclusion would mean that we, the great unwashed, should be grateful to even be payed for the work we do for our social betters.
It’s a moronic and self-defeating stance to take.
Yet again. “You’re lucky to have a job”. So do as you’re told and take whatever’s coming to you. Dickensian nonsense.
What I would like to know is how many government projects CRH got during the Celtic tiger years and how many T.D.s had investments and vested interest in that company. These large corporations will continue to abuse their employees in the name of profit until the Workers of the world unite and take them down. The elites continue to get rich at the expense of the regular joe. It’s only a matter of time before this game comes to an ugly end. People were kept docile and content for the last twenty years or so with the utopia of cheap credit. This is no longer the case. Now that reality has dawned the masses have become very agitated and are asking questions. I believe some equality needs to return to society as a whole, otherwise we are heading down a very dangerous road. The elites might not like what they find if they continue these policies. The French revolution comes to mind. Just because we are in 2012 doesn’t mean that history can’t repeat itself. When human beings have nothing else to loose they do strange things.
Richard Bruton, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation is a former employee and current shareholder of CRH. He has refused outright to initiate an investigation into the anti-competitive practices occurring in the cement and concrete industry even though they are costing the State and consumers millions upon millions of euro. Richard Bruton is a very good example of a politician with vested interests which are to detriment of those he is supposed to represent!
On aggregate I reckon they have a fairly concrete case, however many old companies work practices are set in their ways, curing these workers grievances with a bit of flexibility by CRH might crack the issue and cement better future working relationships.
With the Worldwide economic boom I think they have a good case.
The reason subbies were not allowed into irish cement workers facilities was because some subbies were stuffing toilet roll down the toilets and flushing them so they overflowed and p*ss and s*hit went all over the floor. In your comment you neglected to mention that subbies were built brand new canteen facilities showers and toilet block but they refused to use them because they were “too far away”
What are they owed the money for?
Work I’d say
There is no 9500 euro bonus for anyone up there anymore thats gone years ago. Workers have already taken a 20% pay cut while management have not taken any pay cut. Workers have not recieved their production based bonus and management have. Workers have been made redundant (approx 65% of them) while no managers lost jobs. When they laid off their workers they took on contractors to do the work they claimed they didnt have for the workers they laid off. Running costs for the factory have been slashed they are being payed irish cement up to €40 per tonne to burn rubbish in the kilns thus saving €25 million on importing coal. Workers who were laid off or took redundancy last year got paid their bonuses up to the point of being laid off so the precedent is set on paying this bonus to the workers for last year. People should understand there are two sides to every story sometimes three. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story!!!!
This can get very messy… From the company’s point of view… If They don’t get pay cuts, then it’ll most likely be last in first out. Once they have it on the table that staff are costing “X” too much, then by hook or by crook that’s what’ll happen. Scary for those affected, but inevitable.
Regardless, If the labour court said the staff are owed money, that should be paid. Most likely a separate issue.
The key point here is that this is a profitable company looking for pay cuts. How can they possibly justify that? Another attempt to reduce the pay and conditions of workers in this country while shareholders (excluding those in the banks who got wiped when they were nationalised) the , bondholders and the high earners get rich off their backs.
The message from comments here seems to be this: unless workers are on subsistence wages, they should shut up and be grateful. Why do these people want to set back work conditions by a hundred years? Do they not realise such attitudes affect their own families, their children and their friends?
I’d be suspicious of these commenters’ motives. What’s in it for them?
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