Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, Qatar Investment Authority, went shopping and returned with a swanky $623 million iconic Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South, New York. The Manhattan hotel, once caught up in the 1MDB scandal as Jho Low, had been part of a group that owned the 46-story property. Low was convicted by the US on corruption charges for stealing billions of dollars from the Malaysian investment fund 1MDB. They planned to size the Park Lane property as they once seized a $250 million megayacht, Equanimity, to recover $540 million in assets allegedly stolen from the 1MDB investment fund in 2018.
Steve Witkoff put the property up for sale in 2017 and sought a whopping $1 billion in a 2017 auction, “It’s the world’s greatest site for development,” the listing said. For obvious reasons, the Park Lane Hotel attracted no winning bids and had to lower their high expectations. They ultimately saw reason and lowered the offer only to have the affluent Qataris snap up the sought-after hotel with 442,000 square feet of built space.
According to Bloomberg, another Middle Eastern firm, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co., bought a $140 million stake in the hotel in 2019. The Qatar investment authority has not divulged any plans for its latest acquisition, which Harry Helmsley developed in the 1960s.
