Investor group to buy $1-billion stake in Hyatt

Global Hyatt Corp., the hotel company controlled by Chicago’s Pritzker family, said Wednesday that it would sell a minority stake to a group of investors including Goldman Sachs Capital Partners for $1 billion.

Goldman and Madrone Capital Partners, a firm affiliated with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chairman Rob Walton, will appoint members to the board, Chicago-based Global Hyatt said.

“The addition of these sophisticated investors with long-term horizons will allow us to further our restructuring efforts,” Chairman Thomas Pritzker said.

Global Hyatt was formed in 2005 when the Pritzkers gathered various Hyatt holdings under one name. The family has discussed the breakup of its holdings since the death in 1999 of Jay Pritzker, who began the hotel company by buying the Hyatt House in Los Angeles in 1957.

Greg Penner, a general partner of Menlo Park, Calif.- based Madrone and a former senior vice president of Wal-Mart, and Byron Trott, vice chairman of investment banking for Goldman, will join Hyatt’s board.