By Nikki Daly
The partnership that launched London restaurants Langan's Brasserie and Langan's Bistro has bought a fifth premises, in the Old Brompton Road, in the west of the city.
Richard Shepherd and actor Michael Caine have secured Riccardo's Restaurant, formerly Ponte Vecchio, for an undisclosed sum.
Shepherd said that the new venture would have a different decor and menu from the existing Langan's outlets. "It will be as near to a French brasserie as you can get," he claimed.
The restaurant, which includes an outside terrace, will seat 150 and cater for the "top end of the market", said Shepherd. A £750,000 refurbishment is under way with an opening date planned for July.
Shepherd confirmed it would be renamed, but declined to reveal details. "We've got to keep something a secret," he said.
The Italian restaurant has been in the Mariti family for 33 years. Previous owner Riccardo Mariti bought it from his father Walter two years ago. He invested more than £100,000 changing it from a traditional Italian to a Tuscan restaurant. "When my father retired after 31 years, we decided to dispose of the property to give him something to live on," he said.
David Bond, founder and former commercial director of the Tom Cobleigh pub chain, has bought the first two properties for his new business, the Healthworks Company, and has put in an offer on a third hotel in the east Midlands.
Healthworks will develop fitness centres on the back of food and drink operations, said Bond, who left Tom Cobleigh after its acquisition by Rank in March 1997 to set up Healthworks with his partner and former Tom Cobleigh operations manager Caroline Nye.
Healthworks has just acquired the 28-bedroom Grantham Lodge hotel in Lincolnshire for about £750,000 through agent Christie & Co, and will spend a further £750,000 to add 18 more bedrooms and leisure facilities. Refurbishment of the property, which is to be renamed the Olde Barn Hotel, will be finished by mid-July.
Bond expects his earlier £500,000 acquisition, a Grade II-listed Victorian pumping station near Nottingham, to open by Christmas, assuming he is granted planning permission for a £1.7m conversion at the site.
Food outlets throughout Leicester have been hit by a midnight tax swoop.
Forty restaurants and take-away outlets in the city were raided by VAT and benefit officers on Friday as the pubs emptied and people headed for a meal or take-away.
In a well-planned raid codenamed Operation Shine, £3.5m of unpaid tax was uncovered. The bust was one of the largest ever carried out in the Midlands.
Restaurants have a threshold of about £950 a week in turnover before they are obliged to register for VAT. One restaurant raided had already taken £300 on the night it was entered. Customs refused to reveal names of any of the restaurants involved.
Of the 40 premises hit, 12 immediately admitted that they should have been VAT-registered. Officers said they were confident of proving that another 18 were acting illegally.
Information gathered revealed unpaid VAT of £1.5m a year, plus a further £2m in unpaid revenue.
One inspector who took part in the raid said: "It's been a great success - a good night for the tax man."
Caterer Matilda Morgan, from Northampton, was this week fined £1,533 after admitting eight offences including allowing her seven-tonne lorry on the road with defective brakes and tyres and three tachograph offences.
Morgan, who runs outside catering firm SCM Caterers, appeared before Dartford magistrates in Kent after being cleared at Crown Court of the manslaughter of 11-year-old girl guide Michelle Shields.
Shields was crushed to death in Dartford last year, when one of SCM's vehicles collided with the car she was in after the truck's brakes failed.
By Cathy Cooper
The battle for control of the Savoy Group is set to intensify following the publication of preliminary results earlier this week showing a 54% rise in the group's operating profits to £24.2m.
Suitors for the group are understood to include New York-based investment bank Blackstone, which is said to have put in the highest offer of £520m. Three US real estate investment trusts - Starwood Lodging & Resorts, Meditrust and Patriot American Hospitality - are also believed to have registered an interest. The firms are expected to put in formal bids over the next few weeks.
The Savoy Group reported turnover up 15% to £101.4m for the year ended 31 December 1997.
Chairman Ewen Fergusson said the board would look for "further opportunities to capitalise on the value and reputation of the Savoy name" either at home or abroad. A committee of directors has been set up to deal with "matters arising from approaches that the board has received which may or may not lead to an offer being made for the issued share capital of the company".
The group, which includes the Savoy, the Connaught, the Berkeley, Claridge's, and Simpsons in the Strand restaurant, all in London, and the Lygon Arms hotel in the Cotswolds, is currently in the hands of the Wontner family and Granada, which inherited 68% of the shares - but only 42% of the votes - when it bought Forte in 1996.
The family has protected its position as key shareholder for 40 years, through the establishment of a complex mixture of family and charitable trusts and different classes of shares.
A spokesman for the Wontners and associated trusts refused to say why they were now considering selling their shares, but he admitted they no longer controlled 50% of the votes.
The A-Z Restaurant Group, which includes Aubergine and L'Oranger, has moved fast to quash buy-out rumours.
In a statement, managing director Claudio Pulze said: "The malicious rumours that have been circulated regarding the possible change in the structure of the A-Z Restaurant Group and the sale of two of our restaurants to another leading restaurateur are completely and utterly unfounded."
Pulze also said that there had been no changes of any key members of management in any of the restaurant outlets.
Gordon Ramsay, director and chef-proprietor of Aubergine and consultant chef at L'Oranger, declined to comment, as did chef-restaurateur Marco Pierre White, who had been mentioned in the rumours.
The A-Z Restaurant Group owns six restaurants in London.
Swallow Hotels will accept payment in euros from 1 January next year, the company has revealed.
Owner the Vaux Group believes companies who do not offer foreign guests - especially corporate guests - the chance to pay in euros risk losing them.
As the euro is predicted to be volatile in its early days, Vaux group finance director Neal Gossage said that guests would absorb the risk of exchange rate moves. Room rates will be quoted in sterling, and converted only at invoice stage.
He said the costs of accommodating the euro would be slight. They involved straightforward changes to accounting software, and training of staff to quote, convert and process cheques and cards based on the new currency.
Dublin hotel operators are supplying emergency accommodation to refugees at £35 a night, but none will admit to it for fear of scaring off tourist business.
Ireland's Eastern Health Board confirmed this week that 150 refugees are staying in the city's hotels at £35 a night, which compares with a rate of £15 for hostels and £20 for B&Bs.
The hotels are being used since other space has been booked up because of a booming tourism trade and a recent influx of refugees to the city.
Almost 1,200 refugees are already in emergency accommodation and a further 1,500 are in subsidised private accommodation while they await asylum hearings. Irish authorities met last week to discuss an approach to other Irish cities to house some of the refugees.
British Trust Hotels has paid more than £2m to add three new properties to its portfolio, including two previously owned by Thistle.
British Trust has bought two former Thistle Mercury hotels in the Scottish Highlands: a 48-bedroom property in Wick, renamed the Norseman, and a 60-bedroom property in Ullapool, now called the Glenfield.
The company, formerly North British Trust Hotels, has also bought the 21-bedroom Loch Fyne Hotel in Inveraray, Argyll, which has planning permission for a 63-bedroom and leisure club extension.
The company has now bought seven properties in the past year, bumping its total up to 24. It is reinvesting £1.25m in its original line-up following a 25% sales boost in 1997.