Local News in Brief : Japanese Bid for Hotel

Another Beverly Hills hotel soon may have foreign owners.

The Beverly Hilton Hotel, headquarters for the Hilton Hotels Corp., is on the auction block and a Japanese partnership has made the top bid, a spokeswoman for a losing bidder said Tuesday. Terms of the deal and identity of the Japanese consortium could not immediately be determined.

Hilton declined to confirm that negotiations were under way to sell the 578-room hotel, which it owns jointly with New York-based Prudential Insurance Co. But word of the bidding leaked from entertainer Merv Griffin, who was an unsuccessful bidder.

Griffin also was interested in buying the posh 260-room Beverly Hills Hotel, which recently was sold to the wealthy Sultan of Brunei for a reported $200 million by a group headed by businessman Marvin Davis.