Abu Dhabi buys 10.9% share in Hyatt Hotels Corp

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the world’s top two sovereign wealth funds, has acquired a 10.9 percent stake in the Pritzker family’s Hyatt Hotels Corp.

The sovereign wealth fund holds 4.76 million Hyatt Class A shares, according to a filing on Tuesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The stake has a market value of about $140.4 million.

The Abu Dhabi authority is the second sovereign wealth fund to report having acquired Hyatt shares since the Chicago-based hotel chain went public last month, with the Government of Singapore Investment Corp disclosing last month that it had acquired a 6.9 percent stake.

Hyatt’s shares were sold through the IPO at $25 each and have since risen to $29.51.

Hyatt has “a really good balance sheet, so they are probably in a position to grow the company’s footprint” by purchasing hotel properties, lodging brands, or management contracts, said Smedes Rose, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc in New York.

“Other hotel companies are probably more focused on de-leveraging in this environment.”

Hyatt’s initial public offering raised almost $1.1 billion through the sale of 43.7 million shares. Hyatt received about $127 million of the proceeds with the remainder going to the Pritzker family, which controls 61 percent of the company’s voting rights through its ownership of Class B stock.

The Abu Dhabi investment authority said in Tuesday’s filing that it reached the ownership threshold that required public disclosure on November 4, the same day that Hyatt held its IPO.

That means Abu Dhabi may have acquired at least some of its shares through the offering rather than in the open market.

The emirate of Abu Dhabi owns more than 90 percent of the UAE’s oil reserves, almost 8 percent of the world’s total.

The investment authority, created in 1976, managed $328 billion at the end of last year, according to estimates by economists at the Council on Foreign Relations.