Land Securities to hang on to Trillium hotels

FTSE 100 property giant Land Securities is expected to keep hold of a £400m hotels business as it considers offers for Trillium, its outsourcing and infrastructure division, this week.

Although Land Securities has been attempting to sell the complicated business in bulk, it is understood that chief executive Francis Salway is happy to retain hotels run by Trillium. These would complement the group's other property holdings.

A consortium comprising William Pears, Macquarie and Goldman Sachs' Whitehall fund is favourite to snap up Trillium and is thought to have bid around £900m. This, though, does not include the hotels and so values the division at around £1.3bn.

Another consortium of Middle East investors and fund manager aAIM was reported to have made a late bid of around £1.2bn on Friday.

Land Securities will hold an annual general meeting on Wednesday when it will update shareholders on the sale. Before then, it is believed that the board will decide whether to accept an offer provisionally, retain Trillium or demerge it from the rest of the group.