When Mandarin Oriental shot up from USD1.50 to a peak of USD2.81 after it announced a strategic review for its The Excelsior Hotel in Hong Kong, I did not pursue the stock. But when City Developments announced that it was privatising its hotel subsidiary, Millennium & Copthorne, I decided to take a closer look at the hotel groups listed on SGX. As discussed in Some Hotels Could Be Very Valuable!, there are indeed hidden value in hotel stocks, arising from the fact that the hotels are sitting on the land for a very long time and are seldom revalued. Nevertheless, without a near term catalyst to sell or revalue the hotels, the undervaluation in hotel stocks will probably continue for a very long time.

Last week, I discussed about Stamford Land, a developer and hotel owner in Australia. This week's story is about GL (formerly known as ...