The Sahara Group will pay $575 million, or Rs 3,200 crore, to buy New York's The Plaza, a hotel admired by Ernest Hemingway and used by Alfred Hitchcock to shoot his 1959 classic North by Northwest. The Group had bought London's Grosvenor House in 2010.
The deal may be signed this week. Subrata Roy, who owns a cricket team in the Indian Premier League and part-owns a Formula One racing team, is keen to expand his overseas hotels business by snapping up undervalued iconic properties in the US and UK.
In the past two years, Sahara has purchased Grosvenor House, another luxury hotel in London, and is on track to buy The Plaza and Dream Downtown Hotel, a property owned by the Sant Singh Chatwal family, for $87 million.
The group is also believed to be interested in other properties in the Big Apple.