Jim Murphy - PREM Group’s Managing Director

Some of my colleagues have quite rightly pointed out that I have ignored the UK in my blog so far. This oversight was not on purpose; in fact I was waiting until after the England versus Ireland Rugby International on the 15^th March to indulge in a little gloating on this blog.  But why wait? And besides Ireland might lose and I would be left without something to write about. Last September PREM Group opened our first boutique Hotel in Sheffield. This Hotel was a work in progress for three years and when it opened there was a huge sense of satisfaction at what we had achieved. Leopold is truly a special Hotel as you can see from the Hotels website www.leopoldhotel.co.uk A lot of planning went into this Hotel as we felt that if we got it right, the concept was such that we could repeat the process elsewhere. A lot of credit is due to Evelyn Haran, our UK Operations Manager who took ownership of this project from day one.  We have taken the Leopold Hotel Sheffield and have created a new brand which we plan to roll out throughout Europe over the next few years. Leopold Hotels will be 4 star city centre property with a maximum of 150 rooms, the focus will be on great rooms with an emphasis on providing each guest a personalised service. We expect to have the second Leopold Hotel open in Belgium in 2008 followed by Dublin and other major cities in 2009. So, if you happen to be in Sheffield for the World Snooker Championships at the Crucible Theatre in April, why not stay a short walk from the championship at the Leopold Hotel. I will give regular updates on our exciting expansion plans for Leopold Hotel over the coming weeks.

Welcome to the PREM Group blog where you will find regular news about PREM Group as well as news and views about things that are important to us. I will be making regular contributions while various members of our team will be making their views known on an ongoing basis.

Reading the business pages of the newspapers over the last few weeks has been pretty depressing. All this talk of an American recession, sub prime mortgages, stock market crashes, etc. can be difficult reading at a time when as a business you are trying to look forward in a positive way to a new business year.That’s why when there is some good news out there we should be shouting it from the rooftops. Last September PREM Group launched a joint venture with Goodbody Stockbrokers called the European Hotel Consortium. The purpose of the EHC was to raise €44.70 million from Goodbody investors and PREM Group investors to invest in Hotel opportunities in Europe.

The EHC now owns 11 hotels and 2 management contracts in Belgium and France, all of which are managed by PREM. It is anticipated that the group would be sold after 5 years giving a projected return on investment of 20% per annum.The good news for our investors is that the value of the investment has increased by 33% since its launch in September 2007. That is an impressive return in such a short period of time. We are working hard to ensure that this trend is maintained over the coming years.