Tycoons rushing to check into hotels: Mittal, Ambani may diversify holdings

The Piramals have provided structured finance to many real estate developers that are putting up hotels and their typical exit route is through refinancing within 5 yrs

Sunil Mittal might be fighting a bitter telecom battle with Reliance Jio in India, but a few days ago he decided to invest over $1 billion to expand his hotels business in Europe and the US. This was done in partnership with London-based Sharan Pasricha, his son-in-law who runs Ennismore that develops, manages and runs the Mittal properties.  

Mittal is, of course, not new to the hotels business. He dabbled in it in 2004, when he bought the 150-room five-star beach hotel Le Meridien in the Seychelles through his telecom venture in the country. The telecom czar then followed