Chessington Zoo is sold (From Surrey Comet)

Chessington Zoo is sold

9:25am Friday 16th March 2007 in News

Chessington World of Adventures' (CWA) parent company Tussauds - a tourist attraction empire second only to Disney - has been sold.

Private equity group Blackstone has acquired Tussauds Group from Dubai International Capital (DIC) to create an empire which will operate 50 attractions in a dozen countries.

Attractions include CWA, Thorpe Park, the London Eye and the waxwork museums on Tussauds' side, while Merlin owns Legoland in Denmark and Germany and Italy's biggest theme park, Gardaland.

DIC received £1,028million for its attractions and retained a 20 per cent stake in the combined company.

Merlin chief executive, Nick Varney, said: "The combination of the Merlin and Tussauds brands, people and operating expertise, will create an exciting and world-beating global entertainment company.

"With such iconic brands, the expanded Merlin will not only have strong development potential, but also an amazingly robust and high value portfolio. Our ambition is to build on this to become the world leader in location based, branded, family entertainment."

The combined company attracted about 30 million visitors last year and employs over 13,000 staff.

Merlin is majority-owned by Blackstone, which purchased the company for £102million in 2005. Since then it has acquired Legoland and Gardaland.