Mozambican businessman pays €42 million for luxury hotel in Lisbon

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Mozambican businessman pays €42 million for luxury hotel in Lisbon

12:52 CAT | 18 Aug 2022

Photo: ECO – Economia Online

Carlos Camurdine, one of Mozambique’s most successful businesspeople, is the new owner of the Fontecruz Lisboa Hotel in Lisbon, ECO – Economia Online reports.

The Portuguese hotel market continues to move, attracting ever more foreign interest. Now, the Spanish chain Fontecruz Hotels has sold the Fontecruz Lisboa Hotel, on Avenida da Liberdade, for €42 million, in a deal closed at the end of June, ECO reports. The new owner is Carlos Camurdine, also owner of the Socimpex Wine & Spirit Merchants. and one of Mozambique’s biggest businessmen.

The five-star unit, which opened in 2012, sits at Number 138 on one of the Portuguese capital’s most exclusive avenues, and has 72 rooms, an interior garden, a fitness club and a restaurant.

The new ownership has already brought changes to the company that owns the hotel, the Hotel Project Lisboa SA. In June, Spaniards Diego Ortega Martin (CEO), Julio Ortega Zurdo and Julio Hugo Martin Ortega resigned from their positions on the board of directors, which now includes Carlos Camurdine as chairman and Socimpex partner Yasmin Camrudim as a member of the board, according to information published on Portugal’s Portal da Justiça.

ECO has also established that the hotel will change its name soon, and that the new owners have other developments in mind for the establishment. ECO contacted Fontecruz Hotels to solicit further details, but had received no reply by the time of publication.

According to the Mozambican press, Carlos Camurdine, aged 63, is one of the most influential businesspeople in that country, and came under the media spotlight when he was kidnapped in 2019. On April 3 of that year, the Socimpex partner was seized by three armed men outside his establishment in the centre of Maputo. He was released about two months later, after a ransom was paid.

READ: Kidnapped Mozambican businessman was released after ransom paid

Fontecruz Hotels was founded in Spain in 2004, and has properties in Seville, Granada, Toledo, Ávila and Lisbon. The feasibility of projects in destinations such as Madrid, London, Paris, Budapest and Brussels is currently being “assessed”, the hotel chain’s website [ https://www.fontecruzhoteles.com/en/] announces.

Source: ECO – Economia Online