Lalit Suri dead, reins pass to widow, brother

Hotelier Lalit Suri, 59, died of a cardiac arrest in London last night, leaving behind a huge unfinished business agenda that is now expected to be steered by his widow, Jyotsna, and his brother, Ramesh.

After buying the Great Eastern Hotel in Kolkata for Rs 52 crore from the Communist government of West Bengal, Suri had drawn up plans to take his brand, The Grand, to Hyderabad, Amritsar, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Noida at a cost of Rs 1,100 crore.

While he had invested Rs 75 crore along with DLF in a 4 acre site in Chandigarh, he had bought a 12,000 square metre plot in Jaipur from the Rajasthan government.

But the immediate priority for the new A-team will be to successfully market the Rs 600-crore initial public offer Suri had planned for his flagship, Bharat Hotels, and to complete the Rs 122 crore renovation of the Kolkata hotel.

Group functionaries said Suri's death would not affect plans for Great Eastern Hotel. The company had floated tenders for the hotel's renovation last week.

"We have already got all the necessary approvals from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. Now we shall start the civil and other works," said a Bharat Hotels executive.

An avid collector of Ganesh idols, Suri had branched out of his family's automobiles and components businesses to focus on hotels.

One of the brains behind Rajasthan's new tourism policy, he also had the hill state of Uttaranchal on his radar. He had recently acquired a small stake in Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines.