Forte Group
Forte Group plc was a British hotel and restaurant company.
Charles Forte set up his first "milk bar" in 1935 as Strand Milk Bar Ltd when he was 26. 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 merged in 1970 to become Trust House Forte or THF.
Through mergers and expansion, the Forte Group was expanded into a multi-billion pound business. It 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 1 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 £3.9 billion tender offer in January 1996, which left the family with around £350 million in cash.
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. Rocco now owns the Rocco Forte Hotels group.
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