Madison Capital Eyes Jailed Sahara Group Boss Subrata Roy's New York Hotels

American real estate investor Madison Capital has tabled an $800m bid for two New York hotels - Plaza Hotel and Dreams Downtown Hotel - controlled by jailed Indian businessman Subrata Roy.

A deal would help Roy raise funds to post $1.7bn bail in Delhi.

Madison has forwarded its $800m (£472m, €595m) bid, for the US hotels, to India's market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and the same will be sent to the Supreme Court, a Sebi official told The Economic Times.

Roy's troubled financial services group Sahara India Pariwar owns a 70% stake in The Plaza and an 85% stake in Dream Downtown through a Mauritius-based company.

The Madison offer is 21% higher than the $628.6m valuation for Sahara's stake in the two hotels as determined by real-estate consultants CB Richard Ellis and Jones Lang La-Salle.

Grosvenor House

Roy has also put London's Grosvenor House Hotel on sale in a bid to raise the $1.7bn needed to pay Sebi to get out of Delhi's Tihar jail, Asia's largest prison complex.

The Sultan of Brunei, an investment arm of the Qatari royal family and Indian pharma billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla have all offered to buy the British property, which is located in the Mayfair area and managed by J W Marriott.

Earlier in the month, India's Supreme Court gave Roy permission to leave prison for a few hours a day, under police escort, to negotiate the sale of his hotels.

Roy has been in jail since 4 March after two group companies - Sahara Housing and Sahara Real Estate - failed to comply with the Supreme Court's order to refund $3.9bn to 30 million investors.

Roy acquired the New York hotels for close to $800m in 2012 and had purchased the Grosvenor for $725m in 2010. The acquisitions were financed through borrowings from Bank of China.