Richard Caring: from the Ivy to Annabel's

He liked The Ivy so much he ate it, before moving on to Le Caprice. But the news that rag-trade tycoon Richard Caring has snapped up London nightclub, Annabel's, has really got the old guard worked up.

He liked The Ivy so much he ate it, and then went on to gobble up Le Caprice too. But the news that Richard Caring has now devoured London's most famous nightclub, Annabel's, has really got the old guard worked up. The FT reports that habitus of the Berkeley Square club, long the playground of the British upper classes and glamour set, are "in mourning". They rue the feud that forced founder Mark Birley to sell and question the credentials of a buyer "who made his first fortune in the garment industry" and became embroiled in Labour's cash for peerages scandal. What, they say, will become of the place?

Caring, it should be noted, was never actually in line for a peerage as a quid pro quo for his £2m loan to Labour. But with his coiffured locks, brite-white teeth and perma-tan, he hardly cuts the part of an aristocratic host. Indeed, his £90m acquisition of Annabel's is depicted "as if council house rowdies were taking over a stately home", says the Daily Mail. But this is snobbish rubbish. Annabel's "faux country house atmosphere" is tired and its clientele is actually "no more eminent than Peter Stringfellow's". Indeed, far more pertinent than Caring's social credentials is the question of where he got his cash, says Chris Blackhurst in the Evening Standard. It's the sheer scale and speed of Caring's buying that has made him the talk of fashionable London. "Money appears no object" (he pays over the odds) and Annabel's is merely the latest in a string of trophy assets. As well as his London restaurants (he also owns J. Sheekey, Daphne's and Scotts), Caring has snapped up Wentworth Golf Club, a chunk of Camden market, and the US Navy building in Grosvenor Square. True, he raised £140m last week through the sale of the Strada restaurant chain, bought from Luke Johnson for £57m in 2005. But this is "pin money" compared with what he's been spending.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.