Colony to buy 65% of Tamoil

Colony Capital, a Century City real estate investment company, said Tuesday that it had agreed to pay $5.4 billion for a majority stake in a European fuel refining and retail company owned by Libya.

The deal, which is worth 4 billion euros, gives Colony 65% ownership of Tamoil, a refiner and gas-station operator based in the Netherlands and owned by the Libyan government. The oil company’s holdings include more than 3,000 service stations in Germany, Italy and Switzerland; oil refineries in Italy, Switzerland and Germany; and an operation in Africa that includes oil and natural gas production and retail fuel sales.

Libya, which in 2005 said it would sell Tamoil parent Oilinvest as part of a privatization strategy, would keep a 35% stake under the Colony deal, according to a brief statement issued late Tuesday by Colony. Speculation about the ultimate buyer had continued over the last year, with companies such as acquisition-hungry U.S. equity firm Carlyle Group named as potential bidders. Colony spokesman Owen Blicksilver said the company would not comment beyond the press release.

For Colony, the transaction adds the oil and gasoline business to its wide-ranging portfolio of international operations and investments, which already includes casinos, hotels, resorts, property firms, home builders and mortgage companies. Many of Colony’s investments come with a large real estate component.

Colony was founded in 1991 by Thomas J. Barrack Jr., whose personal fortune in March was estimated at $1 billion by Forbes, which put him in a tie for No. 891 on the magazine’s list of the world’s wealthiest people.

elizabeth.douglass@latimes.com