parent company Lonrho Plc.

Two British newspapers have reported that there are plans to spin off Lonrho's mining and hotel divisions. The Princess Hotels are a part of the hotel division.

Mr. John Price of Princess Hotels International, speaking from his New York office, said that after Mr. Roland (Tiny) Rowland's announced departure from Lonrho's joint chief executive's chair to assume a non-executive role on the company's board, the remaining chief executive, Mr. Dieter Bock, spoke of change in the organisation.

Bloomberg Financial News has also reported that Mr. Bock had plans to "spin off the company's hotel division.'' They said that there were plans for a reported two-week discussion period with managers and other directors within the company before he would make a statement on what he would do to re-shape the company.

Mr. Price said yesterday by telephone, " Mr. Bock has said that there might be a flotation some time of part of Lonrho's hotel interests.

"He had made a number of announcements in Britain to shareholders, that Lonrho would in the future be concentrating on four core businesses. One of those four core businesses is hotel.

"Recently in interviews that he gave, subsequent to the announcement that Mr.

Rowland was resigning as joint managing director, which leaves Mr. Bock as the sole managing director on the 31st of December, Mr. Bock made the announcement that the hotel interests of Lonrho would be put into one hotel holding company, based in Britain. That hotel company then might be floated off. That was him speculating. I don't know if that will happen or not.'' There are three lots of hotel interests in Lonrho, including the Princess Hotels Group, a British hotel company and African hotel interests. " Those three separate companies,'' said Mr. Price," are owned by different parts of Lonrho. The ownership of those three will all be put into one hotel holding company in Britain. The management of them is not to be changed at all.'' Meanwhile, the Observer, under a headline that read, "Bock Will Float Lonrho Hotels'', said that some analysts have estimated the worth of the hotel division at 600 million ($928 million).

The British publication quoted Mr. Bock: "It is not true that I plan to break Lonrho up. What I want to do is unlock the value of certain assets. I did it with Ashanti (one of the world's most prolific gold mines), which we floated off, and this can happen with most of the other assets.

"All the hotel assets are in one entity, so why not float them?'' Lonrho is a 1.1-billion ($1.7-billion) trading empire, which Mr. Rowland founded and controlled for three decades.

He had engineered the acquisition of the Princess Hotel chain, which owns a hotel in Palm Springs, California, one in Scottsdale, Arizona, and two each in Mexico, Bahamas and Bermuda.

Lonrho Plc is an industrial holding company whose subsidiaries explore and mine gold, platinum, copper and coal, operate ranches and produce tea and sugar, distribute agricultural equipment, manufacture office furniture and refrigeration equipment and acquire and manage real estate. The company operates throughout Europe, Africa, the UK and the US.

Mr. Bock this month triumphed in a year long squabble with the 77-year old Mr.

Rowland over control of the firm, when Mr. Rowland finally resigned as joint chief executive, sending the price of the stock surging by eight per cent within 24 hours.

Mr. Bock, a German lawyer and real estate financier, was brought into Lonrho by Mr. Rowland, himself German-born, in December 1992, to help re-finance the company.

THE PRINCESS HOTEL, PEMBROKE -- Could be affected by British parent company Lonrho's latest plans.