Award-winning hotel and lifestyle brand, citizenM, has secured a dual currency €243.3M and £201.7M Sustainability Linked Loan (SLL) facilitated by HSBC UK and HSBC Continental Europe, ABN AMRO Bank N.V., and Aareal Bank.

By refinancing existing debt as a SLL, citizenM has tied its funding to specific Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) targets, which include reducing operating CO2 emissions and improving existing green building certifications of its European owned hotel assets. The new deal underlines the company’s commitment to reducing its environmental impact, whilst also providing funding that will help drive continued sustainable growth. Its completion makes citizenM one of the first European hospitality businesses to adopt the SLL funding structure.

citizenM operates 31 hotels worldwide across 18 cities and 9 countries, with a further 14 in development. The company has a firm commitment to sustainability targets and continued improvement to its existing green building certifications.

Klaas van Lookeren Campagne, Chief Executive Officer at citizenM, said: “At citizenM, we take sustainability seriously. We seek to build and operate hotels that minimise our impact on the environment, and it is important to us that our ongoing commitment to sustainability is reflected in every facet of our business. For this reason, we are immensely proud to have secured sustainability-linked funding, particularly given the complexity of the transaction, completed by a diverse lender group across Europe.”

Elizabeth Davies, Head of Hotels at HSBC UK, said: “We’re very proud to have completed this deal with citizenM. With its high profile in the hospitality sector, we expect that citizenM’s relatively early adoption of the Sustainability Linked Loan will help to drive further market adoption, as hospitality groups seek to demonstrate a serious commitment to creating positive impacts on the environment.”

The funding was provided equally by ABN AMRO Bank N.V., Aareal Bank and HSBC (UK and Continental Europe), with HSBC UK acting as facility agent and HSBC Continental Europe acting as Sustainability Linked Loan Co-ordinator.

Nicolas Blache, Director Real Estate Structured Finance at HSBC Continental Europe, said: “It was a pleasure to support our client with this Structured Pan-European financing which includes the funding of promising new hotels. We are thrilled to have acted as Sustainability Coordinator.”

Michelle Weiss, Head of Hotel Properties at Aareal Bank, added: “As the Lender of the first citizenM properties in Amsterdam back in 2008, we are pleased that we can continue to strengthen our long-standing relationship with citizenM and support the company’s commitment to sustainability targets with the refinancing of this portfolio. Hotels remain a key growth driver for Aareal Bank's commercial lending portfolio.”

Fred Bos Head Commercial Clients Sector, Sustainability and E&E Expertise at ABN AMRO, added: “We see climate change as the greatest threat to humanity. We view this cooperation as a positive step towards the prevention of climate change and as an opportunity to grow our loan book in a responsible way. We look forward to scaling what we have achieved with this financing structure more widely across the highly attractive hotel industry.”

HSBC UK

HSBC UK serves around 15 million customers across the UK, supported by 26,000 colleagues. HSBC UK offers a complete range of retail banking and wealth management to personal and private banking customers, as well as commercial banking for small to medium businesses and large corporates.

HSBC Holdings plc

HSBC Holdings plc, the parent company of HSBC, is headquartered in London. HSBC serves customers worldwide from offices in 63 countries and territories in its geographical regions: Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Middle East and North Africa. With assets of $2,992bn at 30 September 2022, HSBC is one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations.

About citizenM

citizenM was launched in 2008 with a purpose – to disrupt the traditional, stale hotel industry. Rattan Chadha – the founder of the global fashion brand Mexx – was inspired by his employees to create a hotel for today’s frequent travellers, giving them everything they need and nothing they don’t. This means central locations in the world’s most exciting cities, but at an affordable price. Not just a place to sleep, but somewhere to work, relax and play – just like home. Somewhere with superfast free Wi-Fi, tech that makes life easy, and world-class art that isn’t ‘hotel art’. A room with an ultra-comfortable XL bed to crash in, and a powerful rain shower to wake-up in. Rattan Chadha called this ‘affordable luxury for the people’.

The first citizenM opened at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in 2008. As of January 2023, citizenM’s portfolio has 31 hotels in 18 exciting cities: London, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Paris, Copenhagen, Zurich, Geneva, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC, Chicago, Taipei and Kuala Lumpur.

citizenM intends to keep growing as a fully integrated owner-operator in selected gateway cities around the world. Its unique value proposition, delivering a high profitability per square foot, allows the brand to develop hotels on prime locations in cities with the highest barriers to entry. citizenM can acquire development sites and turnkey delivered hotels and is open to joint ventures on individual projects. citizenM considers new-build developments, office conversions, components of mixed-use schemes or conversions of existing hotels. The company will also selectively consider asset-light transactions.

In Europe the key target cities for new sites are London, Paris, Milan, Rome, Dublin, Munich, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Zurich, Geneva, and Barcelona.