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Asian Hotels (West), a leading hospitality group that owns 5-star hotel Hyatt Regency with 401 rooms near Mumbai airport, is in a state of disarray.
Sources told BusinessLine that the infighting among the company promoters has reached the corridors of market regulator SEBI and multiple complaints have been filed with allegations ranging from mismanagement, funds siphoning to prohibited related party transactions and sketchy shareholder-related disclosures.
In 2010, Asian Hotels (West) was born out of the demerger of the Asian Hotels group — the other two entities being Asian Hotels (North) and Asian Hotels (East), both of which are traded on the stock exchanges with a respective market capitalisation of ₹165 crore and ₹219 crore. Then, Asian Hotels (West) turned the most sought-after stock since it owned the marquee properties at Mumbai and Delhi.
J W Marriott near New Delhi international airport is owned by Aria Hotels and Consultancy Services, a subsidiary of Asian Hotels (West). The American multinational hospitality chain Hyatt Hotels & Resorts was the brand partner for Mumbai’s Hyatt Regency but it had shut the hotel in June 2021 since the promoters had stopped extending the funds. Still Delhi’s J W Marriott is up and running and there were reports that Asian Hotels (West) had diluted its stake in Aria but the details are sketchy, the sources said.
SEBI investigation
SEBI is now investigating the matter involving Asian Hotels (West) and it is likely to freeze the promoter holding in the company, the sources said. Trading in the company’s shares was suspended on January 3. Sudhir Gupta, an Executive Whole-time Director in the company, has dragged Asian Hotels (West) to the NCLT, which is yet to come up for hearing. Two independent directors of Asian Hotels (West) had resigned last year and the audit committee of the company has not been functional since June 2021.
Series of resignations
On December 21, 2021, Sudhir Gupta, the Executive Director of the company, told the stock exchanges that Asian Hotel’s company secretary Vivek Jain had resigned. He also said that the company did not have a functional board of directors and hence he was sharing the information in his personal capacity.
Prior to this, the company’s statutory auditors SR Batliboi & Co LLP told SEBI in September 2021 that they were resigning. The auditors told SEBI and the bourses that they had not received the required information from the company to conduct an audit for the financial year 2020-2021.
Nobody from Asian Hotels (West) could be reached for comments.
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