THE Irish property tycoon who owns London’s Claridge’s and Connaught hotels, Derek Quinlan, fended off a late challenge to secure a deal to buy the Jurys Inn hotel chain, for €1.17 billion (£796m) in the early hours of yesterday morning.

The auction for the business, which was handled by Merrill Lynch, the investment bank, went to the wire with a consor-tium led by JP McManus and John Magnier, the horseracing tycoons, pushing Quinlan all the way to the finish.

But the property investor eventually succeeded. He is buying the business, which comprises 14 hotels in the UK and six in Ire-land, from Jurys Doyle, the Irish leisure company that was taken private less than two years ago.

Quinlan is expected to retain the Jurys Inn management team, and is understood to have big expansion plans for the group, particularly in eastern Europe. It is also thought to have a strong pipeline of new sites already signed.

Quinlan, a former Dublin tax inspector, will also have been attracted to the operation because it owns about two-thirds of the freeholds of its sites.

The business had been up for sale since January, when Merrill was hired to run a sale process. It was originally tipped to fetch up to €1 billion.

The auction was fiercely contested. As late as last week, Whit-bread, the leisure group behind Premier Travel Inn budget hotels, and Permira, a private-equity firm, had also remained in contention to buy Jurys Inn.

The Jurys Doyle group still owns a number of four and five-star hotels.

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