Five-star price for top hotel

LONDON - The taps are gold-plated and the royal suite comes with two butlers and a Bentley, but even the richest tycoon would baulk at this hotel's price of nearly £1.3 million ($4.6 million) a room.

The Lanesborough, the London hotel of choice for showbiz aristocracy from Michael Jackson to Madonna, and at least one United States President, George Bush, will be sold for £120 million.

If the deal to sell the luxury hotel to a Syrian investor proceeds, the 95-bedroom hotel will become the world's most expensive, at £1.26 million for each opulent suite.

The Hyde Park Corner hotel, was opened in 1992 after being converted from a hospital at a cost of £100 million. Room prices a night range from £311 for a deluxe single to £5,287.50 (excluding breakfast or dinner) for the royal suite. Simon Halabi, a Syrian-born British citizen who bought the former Naval & Military Club in Piccadilly last year, is understood to have proposed the winning £120 million bid.

The present owner, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, has seen a considerable return on its investment but no one will repeat the kind of bargain achieved by its previous owner.

When, in the late 1980s, the health service decided to shut St George's Hospital, as the building then was, it was found that the former Duke of Westminster, who sold the building to the state, had inserted a clause in the original deal allowing his estate to buy it back at the same sale price.

The present Duke duly paid the 19th-century price to buy back the £60 million piece of prime real estate from the Government.

He had to find £6000.

- INDEPENDENT