Charles Forte, Baron Forte

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Charles Forte, Baron Forte (birth name: Carmine Forte ; born November 26, 1908 in Mortale , province of Frosinone , Italy ; † February 28, 2007 ) was an Italian-born British entrepreneur who built a global empire of restaurants and hotels , but that collapsed again during his lifetime and who became a Life Peer member of the House of Lords in 1982 under the Life Peerages Act 1958 . He was one of the one-generation entrepreneurs who failed to lay solid foundations to secure the family inheritance. He was best known for the battle for the Savoy Hotel in London , the expansion of the Happy Eater and Little Chef restaurant chains, and his support for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

Life

Origin, opening of the first restaurant and World War II

Forte emigrated from Italy to Scotland with his mother at the age of four in 1912 and first attended a school in the small town of Alloa in Clackmannanshire , where his father ran the Savoy café . After further schooling at a boarding school in Dumfries and a two-year stay in Rome , he returned to his family in Great Britain, where his father now ran a café with two cousins ​​in Weston-super-Mare . In 1929 he became manager of the Venetian Lounge restaurant in Brighton , which belonged to one of his cousins.

Despite the difficult economic situation in England in the 1930s, he finally opened his own restaurant in 1934, which ultimately became the cornerstone of his later group of companies. It was a milk bar in the West End of London situated Regent Street . After being drawn to this business idea through a newspaper article, he conducted a study in which he counted the number of pedestrians and potential customers in order to calculate whether he could earn the annual rent of £ 1000 . Ultimately, he signed a 21-year lease, although his calculation initially failed because not enough customers were buying enough goods. He then made a new calculation and calculated that he needed more space at lower costs. He then rented the business premises next to it and laid off three of his employees. This combination of calculation and recklessness ultimately formed the basis for his sixty years of entrepreneurial activity.

In 1938 Forte, who at the time owned five milk bars in London, began his business partnership with Eric Hartwell, a kitchenware seller. The resulting chain of milk bars on the beach initially grew before some difficulties arose with the outbreak of World War II . Forte was placed in an internment camp on the Isle of Man due to his Italian ancestry , while Hartwell was drafted for military service. However, three months later, Forte was fired to take up a position as an advisor to the Department of Food. In 1943 he married Irene Chierico from Venice .

Post-war period and rise to the rank of hotel magnate

The post-war period gave Forte's company growth again, particularly in London's West End. After buying the former Lyons Tea Room near Piccadilly Circus , he acquired the nearby Monico complex, which housed the Criterion Theater . However, more was necessary to switch from café owner to entertainer. Numerous businessmen made profits as property prices rose in London, with some like Max Joseph and Charles Clore establishing business empires on property acquired through property sales.

This business idea was also pursued by Forte, who began buying London hotels through the profits made for catering at the Festival of Britain in 1951. In 1958 he acquired the Waldorf and in the following years expanded the company to become the largest hotel chain in Great Britain by taking over the Trust House Group in 1970. In addition to numerous simpler hotels such as the Forte Posthouses , luxury hotels such as the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane also belonged to the group.

This carefully balanced takeover resulted in the hotel chain THF (Trust House Forte) . However, there were disagreements within the company's board of directors between Forte and former editor of The Economist , Geoffrey Crowther , especially after Forte appointed former Labor Secretary of Labor under Prime Minister Clement Attlee and former head of the National Coal Board , Alfred Robens , appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors. After the previous Trust House directors were dismissed, the resulting chain was rebuilt to maximize profit potential and expand the nationwide presence of Forte Hotels. The group owned Café Royal , Fortes Preferred Acquisition, nearly 250 hotels in the UK and Ireland, Henekey Inns , Quality Inns , Kardomah Coffee Houses , the Travelodge chain of hotels in the US , Canada , Mexico and Tahiti, as well as auto repair shops. The company also provided catering at 24 European airports, at the Lord Mayor's Banquet of London, at the Edinburgh Festival and at the United Nations .

In 1970 he was beaten to a Knight Bachelor degree and from then on carried the suffix "Sir". In 1971 Forte was able to successfully fend off a takeover offer by the brewery group Allied Breweries due to the family share of 16 percent and a number of upper house members on the supervisory board . It was his last major business success. In the following ten years he tried to buy the prestigious London Savoy Hotel , which, together with the Claridges and The Connaught , would have given him a supremacy in the luxury hotel sector. The managing director of the Savoy Hotel , Hugh Wontner , managed to fend off the purchase together with the board of directors with the help of common shares , although Forte acquired a large part of the shares.

In the 1980s he supported the politics of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and was able to use his self-made wealth for his growing influence. 1981 acquired HTF from Thorn - EMI Ltd areas of the maintenance industry as three theaters in London's West End, the Empire movie theater at Leicester Square and stage shows in Blackpool Tower . In addition, the publisher Sidgwick and Jackson belonged to the group.

Member of the House of Lords and withdrawal from the company

In 1982 Forte was raised to the nobility by a letters patent as a Life Peer with the title Baron Forte , of Ripley in the County of Surrey, based on the Life Peerages Act 1958 and was a member of the House of Lords until his death . In 1983 he appointed his son Rocco Forte as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company, but remained CEO of the group for another ten years.

When he handed over the management of the hotel chain Forte Group to Rocco Forte in 1993 , it was already too late, as the latter had to sell the company to the television and leisure group Granada Television for £ 3.8 billion within two years . The company went to the entrepreneur Gerry Robinson , who also came from the restaurant and catering sector .

His marriage resulted in five daughters in addition to their only son, Rocco.

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personal data
SURNAME Forte, Charles, Baron Forte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Forte, Charles, Baron Forte (full name); Forte, Carmine (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British entrepreneur and manager
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Mortale , Frosinone Province , Italy
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 2007