Karachi’s Regent Plaza to be purchased by SIUT for Rs14.5 billion

Karachi’s iconic landmark, the Regent Plaza hotel on Shahrah-e-Faisal, owned by Pakistan Hotels Developers Limited (PHDL) might be changing ownership.

On October 9, Pakistan Stock Exchange received an offer letter of Rs14.5bn (almost $52 million) by the prestigious Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) which aims to convert the 47,00 square feet built structure into a tertiary healthcare facility within a period of an year. The letter was then delivered to PHDL on October 10. In response to it, a meeting of the Board of Directors was called urgently for October 12.

To put things in context, renowned financial wizard Shabbar Zaidi expressed, “Karachi badly needs another tertiary-care health facility and constructing a large health facility by acquiring land would take years. In these circumstances, it is the best option to acquire a built structure in the heart of the city and convert it into a health facility.”

The noble cause of SIUT was founded by Dr. Syed Adibul Hassan Rizvi nearly four decades ago with an eight-bed ward in the Burns Unit of Karachi Civil Hospital. It has expedited its projects from organ transplant surgeries to areas of research in urology and nephrology. The hospital has been run through charity funds and provides financial and medical support to patients.

Deliberation between the two parties has been going on since the mid of September but was not announced formally earlier. It is because in the first nine months of 2022-23, PHDL reported a net profit of Rs45.5 million, i.e. a 38.3 per cent decrease from the previous year. The occupancy rate of this 400 room space has dropped from 20 per cent for the year 2021-22 to 9 per cent in the previous year. The downward spiral can be credited to Covid-19 but has put the owners in a position to think otherwise of the property.