Donald Trump close to selling Washington hotel

CGI Merchant Group is poised to buy the lease for Donald Trump’s Washington DC hotel for more than $370m. The Trump International Hotel Washington, also known as Old Post Office, is owned by the US government but extensions to the lease run to almost 100 years. CGI is in talks with the Hilton and Waldorf Astoria hotel chains about removing Trump’s name from the building, to be replaced with another brand. Details of the potential sale come days after it was revealed that Trump suffered losses of more than $70m on the hotel over four years, while claiming publicly that the property had generated huge profits. Documents released by the House Oversight Committee last week showed that the Trump Organisation injected at least $24m into the hotel to prop it up. The Times (£)