Global luxury hotel chain Orient- Express, which has rejected an alliance offer from Tata group, announced on Friday a quarterly cash dividend for its shareholders, including the Indian conglomerate.
Tata Group's Indian Hotels is the second largest shareholder in OEH with a 11.5 per cent stake, after Bermuda-based Orient-Express Holdings 1 Ltd that owns 29.8 per cent equity.
Indian Hotels would get $1,22,019 (Rs 49 lakh) by virtue of the latest dividend announcement. This takes the total dividend payout to Indian Hotels to over Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million), given three cash dividend of USD 0.025 each announced by OEH since October last year.
NYSE-listed OEH said in a statement that its board of directors on Friday declared a quarterly cash dividend of 0.025 per share on its Class A common shares, payable May 5, to shareholders on record as on April 21.
Similar dividend payouts had been announced on January 4, 2008 and October 5, 2007
as well.
Indian Hotels had said late last year that it has raised its stake from 10 per cent to 11.5 per cent in OEH through open market purchases between September 17 and December 7.
While the 10 per cent stake had cost Tatas $211.3 million, further 1.5 per cent equity was acquired for $35.7 million.
While disclosing its 11.5 per cent holding, Tatas also made an alliance offer to OEH, which was rejected vehemently by the management of the luxury hotel chain.
Later, Indian Hotels Vice Chairman R K Krishna Kumar wrote a letter to OEH CEO Paul White seeking a formal apology for making 'libellous' remarks while rebuffing the alliance proposal, but the demand was termed as bizarre by the OEH management.