Accor to buy company owning London's Savoy

The French hotel chain Accor, which is the largest chain in Europe, will buy Canadian-based FRHI Holdings, which owns luxury hotel lines Fairmont, Raffles, Swissotel and the Savoy Hotel in London, for $2.9 billion, a company representative confirmed.

The owners of the FRHI are the Qatar Investment Authority, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal's Kingdom Holding Co and the Canadian Oxford Properties Group.

As a result, the largest shareholders of the combined company will be QIA (10.5%) and Kingdom Holding (5.8%). The merger of the two hotel operators must be approved by antitrust authorities, the statement of Accor says.

Accor has more than 3700 hotels around the world.