Troubled Chinese firm Anbang Insurance Group is actively seeking a buyer for its portfolio of 15 high-end US hotels.
The Wall Street Journal claims the company wants to offload its luxury hotel collection which includes Essex House Hotel in New York and Four Seasons Jackson Hole.
It paid Blackstone Group $5.5 billion for the portfolio in 2016.
The sale will not include the flagship Waldorf Astoria in New York which is expected to reopen in 2021 after a major refit to include 350 condo residences, Anbang said.
Anbang is now under Chinese state control after former chairman Wu Xiaohui was jailed for fraud and embezzlement.
Anbang is apparently being forced to sell off assets by Beijing after the government spent billions to keep the company afloat.
The hotel portfolio covers various markets from San Francisco to Chicago and Miami but may be too big for a single entity to take onboard, other than a select few private equity firms.
The company has reportedly been in discussions for some time to sell off individual properties, however an Anbang spokesman dismissed the WSJ report as ‘pure market speculation.’
