There was Rand Araskog, chairman and CEO of ITT. There was Stephen Bollenbach, president and CEO of Hilton Hotels. And there was a 36-year-old “overachiever” upstart named Barry Sternlicht, chairman and CEO of a REIT called Starwood Lodging Trust.
Together, they were the key players in a bidding war that culminated in 1998 with Starwood outmaneuvering Hilton for ownership of ITT in what HOTELS called a “deal for the ages” in a special supplement that deconstructed the acquisition, from January 27, 1997, when Hilton launched an unsolicited US$55-per-share offer for ITT, to November 12 of that year, when ITT shareholders affirmed their support for a sale to Starwood.
Hilton’s CFO at the time, Matthew Hart, summed up Hilton’s reaction to the deal: “I think (ITT shareholders) were wrong and time will tell. The only solace we have is that many times the best deals are the deals you don’t do.”
The deal assigned Sternlicht supernova status in the galaxy of hotel executives. “If he stays the same, he will be a mammoth icon in this business over the next several years,” said one Starwood board member at the time. “He’s basically pretty solid. Unless it gets to his head, and I don’t believe it will, I think you’ve got a winner here for the next 20 years.”
#ThrowbackThursday is a weekly feature of HOTELS magazine as we celebrate our 50th anniversary in 2016.