- Blackstone Group (NYSE:BX) is down 1.8% in late trading as it's putting up $1.2B-plus to buy three hotels from a Paulson & Co. consortium, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.
- The hotels -- the Ritz Carlton and J.W. Marriott in Orlando, Fla., and the J.W. Marriott in Scottsdale, Ariz. -- aren't small properties, with more than 2,500 rooms and 472K square feet of meeting space in total.
- The sales consortium includes Paulson, Winthrop Realty Trust (NYSE:FUR) and Capital Trust (now the Blackstone Mortgage Trust, BXMT).
- It's the dissolution of the CNL Hotels & Resorts portfolio that the group had picked up via foreclosure and distressed sales, and could mark a jump-start to transactions in the group-travel segment.