IMHO I think the company will be fine. Take a look at the rest of the leadership, they are all from within the company, have been with it for a while, and will hopefully keep the amazing culture that Isadore Sharp founded the company on.

Thankfully, hoping chains like Peninsula Hotels doesn't sell out and change their philosophies.

no problem with pen. although upcoming paris and burma are not 100% ownership.
what this really comes down to is good owners of independent establishments. that is what saves hospitality.

one could argue MO already made the change.
if zecha sold the entire company a few years after starting, that confuses the heck out of me.

FWIW, this guy is pretty well regarded within Prudential as a long-term thinker. Who knows how that translates into an operating role, but at least long-term was used to talk about him. He is a Cornell Hotel School grad, too. Albeit some time ago, the few graduates from there that I know personally - even though not in the lodging business today - do all appreciate the intangibles in lodging far more than the average Joe.

It is a very interesting choice that I would not have expected- too soon to say how it will bode for the company- I just hope they don't go the way of some other chains recently. Four Seasons is still one of my first choices for quality in many cities.

Peninsula is going into Burma?

MO made what change?

Yoma Holdings owns the property in Myanmar. Pen will manage it.

hmm, ill have to correct my comment re pen (although they have not gone MO direction with rapid expansion primarily management-only and recently including reflags)

paris - 20% (with qatar)
london - 50% - had forgotten this

yangon - can anyone clarify?
http://www.hshgroup.com/en/~/media/F...roject_EN.ashx
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/20715317-post620.html - my original post on burma

just added something re rosewood here > http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/21208521-post26.html

how long would it take to negotiate a contract for this level of exec?

23 September 2013 - roughly 7 weeks from now. (signed a week before announcement?)

6 months between departure and replacement announcements. how fast is that? any chance they had him in mind?

I suspect Prudential were happy to break their contract with him and let him leave early, as he must have had a 3-6 month contract at that level.

What concerns me is that Smith has spent just about all of his working life at Prudential (27 years) so how worldly is he?

I know very little about what Prudential actually does- are they a competitor perhaps of Lloyds? If so perhaps Mr. Smith could be very worldly? I really don't enough to make any judgement at all.

the point is not being worldly nor running the company, but supposedly knowing what owners want

i wonder what kind of factor alwaleed's ownership of various hotels and stake in fairmont/raffles is
that was my point. this is the whole do luxury hotels make money question.

Knowing what owners want and understanding what high-end guests want are very different matters.

Prudential in the US is a publicly owned insurance company, mainly focused on life policies. There are four main areas in an insurance company: sales, underwriting, claims and investing.

The investing part is what they do with the premiums and their firm capital ... And hope to make money off of it. In fact, many insurers (particularly p&c insurers) price their policies to expect net losses just so they can have more dollars to invest...and hope those investments outperform the insurance losses.

Pru has a general account in the hundreds of billions...they invest in nearly everything under the sun. They are one of the larger investors in direct property (owning buildings outright). Smith ran the property investing area.

Why do you say this, about being "happy"? Indeed, in finance in the NY area, 3-month gardening periods/etc are very standard for senior staff (I've "gardened" more than once....I highly recommend it). Against that, unless you are going to a direct competitor, more often than not gardening is waived. Such waiver is at the unilateral option of the former employer. The majority of Smith's compensation would have been in variable comp, not paid while gardening. Salaries aren't the big driver of total comp.


Are you saying this because you assume someone who works for an insurance company for a long time is not worldly? Many investing roles at Pru, Mass Mutual, etc, give individuals a decent set of global exposure. Without being super current on their details, though Pru is mainly US-focused, they would have tens of billions invested in non-US markets. Smith would have been responsible for the non-US direct property portfolio.

While I agree a property investor is an unusual choice for this position, he seems to have been well regarded internally...and I give a lot of credit to his Cornell days. As I mentioned earlier, those that I know from that school, even those who are not at present in the hospitality business, still have a special appreciation for a well run hotel. (That said, two+ decades as a mercenary profit-oriented investor may have neutered that gene in Smith. )