With a penchant for upscale properties, the American bank thus owns a hundred or so hotels and 40,000 rooms for a value of 15 billion dollars. At the same time the investment bank entered into the capital of NH Hoteles in Spain and Motel 168 in China. The paroxysm of this trend was reached with Blackstone’s buyout of the Hilton group for the record sum of 18 billion euros. “The size is important. The work we do for a small deal is exactly the same as for a major deal,” explains Marco Rosenbaum, VP Real Estate Investment Banking at Bank of America, explaining the race for gigantism that has driven investors in recent years.In addition to pension funds and other institutional investors, a new "big player" is making its way into this market: sovereign wealth funds. Middle Eastern States, Norway, Russia are taking advantage of the dramatic rise in the price of the barrel, while China of its trade surpluses. And all these countries have increasing cash reserves that are just waiting to be invested in sure and profitable values. And why not to the benefit of hotel groups that nearly all show strong growth in performance?All was well until the clap of thunder that foreshado wed the subprime crisis resulting from high-risk loans on the American market where the vacillations put a damper on the world of finance. The munificence of American banks to allow real estate loans to households with low revenues, a risk that was then shared out among new financial products invested in by a high volume of players, was penalized when borrowers ran up against their first setbacks. According to most estimates, the impact of the collapse of these mortgage loans has created losses reaching 300 billion dollars. IKB in Germany, Northern Rock in the...