English swoops to buy Mount Juliet resort for €50m

Barry English, founder of the data centre developer Winthrop ­Technologies, is swooping to buy the Mount Juliet resort for nearly €50 million.
English is believed to be in exclusive talks to buy the Kilkenny estate from the investment group Tetrarch Capital and the businessman Emmet O’Neill.
The estate agents JLL Ireland gave a guide price of €45 million for the ­­­125- bedroom hotel, which has a Michelin-starred restaurant and 500-acre estate.
Tetrarch, which also owns CityWest Hotel in Dublin, is understood to have paid €15 million for it in 2014 but has since made substantial investment in the hotel and estate.
English is one of Ireland’s wealthiest men thanks to Winthrop’s success in —providing engineering consultancy services to the data centre sector globally. In the year to April 2022, he earned €187 million in dividends and share ­buybacks, and he was the largest ­beneficiary this year when Blackstone bought a 50.1 stake in Winthrop, valuing the business at €800 million. English was the largest shareholder, controlling 65 per cent of the company.
He has substantial and growing interest in the hotel sector. This year, he bought Trim Castle hotel, a 68-bedroom four-star property in Co Meath overlooking the town’s medieval fort for between €10 million and €15 million.
He also owns the four-star Johnstown Estate in nearby Enfield. English was in talks to buy the four-star Killashee Hotel in Kildare from Tetrarch for about €25 million in 2021, but the property was bought by FBD Hotels. English also owns RevUp Management, a hotel and leisure sector consultancy set up by Anthony Smiddy, a former general manager of Johnstown Estate.
Developed by Tim O’Mahony’s Killeen Investments, owner of the Toyota ­franchise for Ireland, Mount Juliet is a serious statement of intent. Its golf course, designed by Jack Nicklaus, hosted World Championship of Golf events in 2002 and 2004, the Irish ­Seniors Open in 1999 and the Irish Open on five occasions, the last in 2022.
Last May, the estate hosted a meeting of the 26-member governing council of the European Central Bank. The sale of the estate, for more than its guide price, indicates the strength of the hotel market in Ireland, one of the few bright spots in the property sector.
CBRE, the estate agents, has forecast that up to €1.2 billion worth of hotels will change hands this year, and Ireland is one of the few markets in Europe to show ­positive growth in transactions in the 12 months to the end of March. There were only €350 million worth of hotel sales in 2023, below the annual average of €500 million. This year’s sales include two outsized deals: Archer Hotel ­Capital’s purchase of the Shelbourne Hotel, in Dublin, for about €260 million, and Lifestyle Hospitality Capital Group’s €350 million purchase of the eight Dean hotels from Paddy McKillen Jr.
The sale of the Slieve Russell Hotel in Co Cavan is believed to be advancing toward the preferred bidder stage, and other properties being prepared for sale include the Grand Hotel in Malahide, Co Dublin, which is expected to be marketed with a guide price of €60 million.
The previous peak year for hotel deals was in 2006, at the height of the Celtic Tiger, when more than €1 billion worth of properties were sold, many of them for redevelopment as flats.