Industry sources familiar with the development told dna that Puri, managing director – India and regional vice president – South Asia, has already been offered a severance package by Marriott International that is acquiring the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc in a deal roughly valued at $13.6 billion.
Dilip Puri, who has been heading the regional operations of global hospitality major Starwood Hotels & Resorts since January 2011, will not be part of the top management once the Marriott-Starwood merger comes into effect in the coming weeks.
Industry sources familiar with the development told dna that Puri, managing director – India and regional vice president – South Asia, has already been offered a severance package by Marriott International that is acquiring the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc in a deal roughly valued at $13.6 billion.
"He was offered a severance package and the latest on this is that he has accepted the offer. Accordingly, he will not be part of the senior leadership in India and or South Asia operations post the Marriott-Starwood merger," said sources.
Puri was not reachable for a comment and India executives at Starwood Hotels & Resorts said they wouldn't want to comment on this topic.
Thus, in most likelihood, Rajeev Menon, who was elevated in March 2015 from the post of area vice president – South Asia to chief operations officer (COO) for Marriott International in South-East Asia and Pacific, will lead the operations once the merger gets effective in the coming weeks.
In fact, the top leadership of Marriott International has been holding meetings with executives who are part of Starwood's India / South Asia operations in the last few months. The exercise by Marriott is basically to evaluate who to keep and vice-versa.
"It's obvious this would have happened as a result of the merger. Marriott will surely have to let go of a lot of Starwood executives considering there is no point in having two people handling the same role and set of responsibilities. I don't think the situation in India will be any different," said another source.
In fact, another reason for Marriott to not include Starwood executives in the merged entity is that Starwood is the second highest paymaster in the Indian hospitality industry after the Oberoi Group. "The ranking for top five paymasters goes like this – Oberoi first followed by Starwood, Hilton, Marriott and Taj.
"So while Marriott is a great hospitality company, they are not very good paymasters. That's more the reason for Marriott to keep their employees versus holding on to the Starwood executives unless they are very good and Marriott really needs them in the team," sources said.
As for latest updates on the Marriott-Starwood merger, which was to be completed by June this year, the European Union (EU) has cleared the acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts by Marriott International saying the takeover would not adversely affect competition in Europe.
Commissioner for Competition, Margaret Vestager, said, "This is an important merger for the hotel industry and its customers. Our investigation confirmed that the hotel sector will remain competitive for customers in Europe following the merger, so I am pleased that the Commission was able to clear the transaction quickly."
Both Marriott and Starwood are mainly active as managers and franchisors of hotels worldwide. At the global level, more than 4,500 hotels in 85 countries operate under a Marriott brand and about 1,300 hotels in nearly 100 countries under Starwood.
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