Charles Forte, Baron Forte
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses of "Charles Fort", see Charles Fort (disambiguation).
Charles Forte, Baron Forte (born November 26, 1908, Monforte Casalaticco, Italy) is a hotelier.
Forte emigrated from Italy to Scotland and attended Alloa Academy and Dumfries College. He worked in a cafe chain owned by his father, then at 26 set up his first "milk bar" in 1935 as Strand Milk Bar Ltd. Soon he began expanding into catering and hotel businesses. After the war, his company became Forte Holdings Ltd, and bought the Cafe Royal in 1954. He opened the first full motorway service station for cars at Newport Pagnell in 1959. Trust Houses Group Ltd and Forte Holdings were merged in 1970 to become Trust House Forte or THF.
Through mergers and expansion, Forte expanded the Forte Group into a multi-billion pound business. His empire included the Little Chef and Happy Eater roadside restaurants, Crest, Forte Grand, Travelodge and Posthouse hotels, as well as the wine merchant Grierson-Blumenthal and a majority (although non-controlling) stake in the Savoy Hotel.
The Grierson-Blumenthal stake was a "forced" acquisition by the group; it had originally been a personal holding of Charles Forte and fellow-directors of the group, supplying liquor to Forte restaurants and hotels at substantial personal profit until concern in the late 1970s about prosecution under the Companies Act obliged the directors to incorporate Grierson-Blumenthal as a subsidiary. Forte was the CEO from 1971 and Chairman from 1982 (when his son Sir Rocco Forte took over as CEO). Happy Eater and the five Welcome Break service areas were bought from Hanson Trust PLC on August 1st 1986. In the late 1990s, the company was rebranded as Forte.
Lord Forte passed full control to Rocco in 1993, but soon the Forte Group was faced with a hostile takeover bid from Granada. Ultimately, Granada succeeded with a £3.8 billion tender offer in August 1995, which left the family with around £350 million in cash.
Charles Forte was awarded a life peerage in 1982 as Baron Forte of Ripley in the County of Surrey. He presently lives in Scotland.
In 2003, following the de-merger of Compass plc from Granada's media interests, the use of the Forte trademark was returned to Sir Rocco Forte in a gesture intended to dispel the bitter legacy of the takeover.
