Richard Caring

Richard Caring
Born	Richard Caringi (1948-06-04) June 4, 1948 London, England
Nationality	British
Citizenship	British
Education	Millfield School
Occupation	Businessman
Known for	Clothing manufacture, Restaurants

Richard Caring is a British multi-millionaire, making his fortune in fashion and restaurants.

Having made his fortune through supplying Hong Kong manufactured fashion, after a near-death experience during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, he has greatly diversified his business interest into restaurants and nightclubs. Caring is ranked 146 on the 2009 Sunday Times Rich List, with a fortune in excess of £350million.

Biography

Richard Caring is the middle child of three, born to Lou Caringi, an Italian-American GI stationed in London during World War 2, and Sylvia Parnes, the married Polish-immigrant Jewish nurse who cared for him in the ambulance in his way to hospital.

After deciding to stay in London post war, the couple married, with Caring's father establishing a fashion business, dropping an "i" to Anglicanize his name.

Richard was brought up in Finchley, North London, and enjoyed playing Monopoly. His sporting prowess at golf however resulted in him representing Middlesex at county-level, and being accepted into Millfield School in Somerset on a 10shilling a week sporting-scholarship.

Restaurants

The speed with which Caring has built his restaurant chain has resulted in many questioning his reasoning. , dubbed “the Lex Luther of Mayfair” for his supermarket-sweep approach to buying companies, who is currently attracting the most attention. An enigmatic 59-year-old, he is poised to snap up the Soho House group, an acquisition that would transform him from just another big shot into the most talked-about businessman in fashionable London. And if he goes on buying up the other high-end concerns he is allegedly interested in - including Ben Elliot’s concierge company Quintessentially and the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, which some say he’ll turn into a sexier version of Claridge’s - it is only a matter of time before he has society eating out of his hand.

“He’s setting up the restaurant equivalent of LVMH,” says

Restaurant critic AA Gill has commented:

He’s setting up the restaurant equivalent of LVMH. He’s spending a lot more on these businesses than they’re probably worth, but eventually he’ll have a portfolio that, as a brand, is worth far more than the sum of its parts.

Personal life

Married to a former-model, the couple have two sons.

The family have homes in North London, Hong Kong and own XXX lodge on the Deveon/Somerset borders. Bought in 2005, it has an interior designed by Tara Bernerd, daughter of old friend and property magnate Elliott Bernerd.

He owns the Benetti motor yacht Silver Angel, which based in Naples is presently for sale with agents Camper and Nicholson.

His friends include X, Y, and Scottish billionaire philanhtropist Sir Tom Hunter.

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RESULTS FOR 2009 Ranking: 146= Worth: £350m Down: £100m, 22% Source of wealth: Fashion and restaurants

At the Conservatives’ Black and White Ball in February, Caring offered an auction prize of an evening’s hire of his Mayfair club Annabel’s. Quite a turnaround for the tycoon who reportedly lent more than £2m to Labour for the last general election campaign. The 60-year-old renowned for his dazzling smile and year-round tan has expanded his fortune beyond fashion and become a successful restaurateur. Caprice Holdings, which includes London celebrity hangouts such as The Ivy, Le Caprice and Scott’s, defied the credit crunch by more than doubling profits in the year to June 2008. This year Caring made his first foray into Hollywood, opening an offshoot of his Mayfair restaurant Cecconi’s, and is planning overseas expansion of Soho House, the private club operation. He bought an 80% stake for £105m in 2008 and the remainder is held by Nick Jones, also his partner in Cecconi’s. But Caring’s passion for fashion shows no sign of abating. International Clothing Designs, which manufactures for chains such as Topshop and Marks & Spencer, has huge operations in the Far East. There have been large charitable donations, prompted by Caring’s experience of the Asian tsunami in 2004, which struck when he and his family were on holiday in the Maldives. “It does change the way you look at the world,” he said the following year, shortly after he held a costume ball in St Petersburg’s Catherine Palace that raised about £11m for the NSPCC and his own charity for abused children. The 450 guests included Bill Clinton and Bob Geldof. The tycoon and his wife, Jackie, a former model, have a Hampstead house known as the Versailles of London. He is hugely asset-rich but, with values in freefall, we clip him back this year by £100m.

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So it was a shock to everyone when he suddenly emerged in the summer of 2005 with an apparently insatiable appetite for London's most iconic eateries. The Ivy, J Sheekey, Le Caprice, Scott's, Daphne's, Bam-Bou, Rivington Grill Bar, Annabel's, Mark's Club, Harry's Bar, Bath & Racquets Club and George, not to mention Soho House and all its groovy offshoots, have been tossed into his brimming shopping basket. These destination London joints are now being rolled out across the globe: imminent openings include Le Caprice New York, a Cecconi's in Miami, Soho House in Berlin and another in LA. World domination, Mr Bond.

His home is near Kenwood House. There's also an estate in Dulverton, on the border of Devon and Somerset, and no fewer than 16 dogs living between the two. And he has just got himself a new boat, a motor cruiser, Silver Angel, which he keeps in Naples and cruises around the Mediterranean.

He keeps his svelte figure by skipping meals. He doesn't eat breakfast or lunch if he can avoid it. 'I can go a day or two without eating anything if I feel I've overdone it,' he says. 'If I have lunch, I don't feel like working in the afternoon. I'm much sharper if I don't eat. I'd like to be 10lb lighter, as I expect anyone would.'

Caring was the middle child of three, born to Lou Caringi, an Italo-American GI who was wounded during the War, and Sylvia Parnes, the Polish Jewish nurse who looked after him. 'I got a bit of the Italian side and a bit of the Jewish side, and the combination created the hunger,' he says.

The family lived in Finchley. Caringi anglicized his surname and set up in the clothing industry, sourcing knitwear for M&S among others. His office was north of Oxford Street, up the road from his son's palatial HQ today. He also seems to have been his son's culinary inspiration; Caring tells me that his favourite restaurant he doesn't own is Cipriani in New York because the classic Italian cooking reminds him of what his father used to cook at home.

The young Richard won a tenshilling-a-week golf scholarship to the sporty Millfield School. His plan was to turn professional but he realised he wasn't good enough. Instead, when his family got into financial difficulties, he was taken out of school at the age of 16 and put to work in his father's business. 'I understand the thought process, "Let's throw him into work," but looking back, I would very much have liked to go to university,' he says. 'You get a much broader mindset.'

But the family was in danger of losing their house, so the young Richard had to pack and ship dresses, before designing his own with a girlfriend and selling them for 69 shillings and sixpence. 'We saved the house in the end,' he says. 'Maybe that's why I'm driven, because I saw it all happen at a young age.' By the time he was 22, his business was thriving and he had got married to a beautiful blonde model, Jacqueline Stead, whom he had first spotted on the catwalk. 'She gave up modelling three days after she met me,' he chuckles. 'She's not a fool. She doesn't cook, and she doesn't work.'

It was at this time that Caring first started sourcing clothes from Hong Kong, where labour and materials were far cheaper than in Britain. He ended up moving there with his family for a decade --he has two sons, Jamie and Ben, who both work for Soho House - and cornered the market in high street fashion, supplying to, by his estimation, 70 per cent of the retailers in the UK, everyone from M&S to Next, and of course, all Philip Green's stores.

He and Green are very close. 'I speak to him every day,' he says. 'We're more than friends - I think we'd do anything for each other. We're like brothers. We've grown up together and experienced lots of good times and tough times.' For Green's 50th birthday, Caring presented him with a scarlet Ferrari.

Caring's move from rags to restaurants has been linked to his extraordinary escape from death during the 2004 tsunami - he was actually scuba diving with his two sons in the Maldives when the giant wave passed overhead. 'We felt a blip,' he says, 'but it could have been a big boat. It was only when we got back on to our boat and started getting phone calls that we realised how disastrous and terrible it had been and how many people had been killed.' Green sent his private jet to pick them up. Their lives were saved by the fact that they had chosen to dive in the lee of an island; two other divers, who were at the front of it, were found dead 100 miles away. 'After you've experienced something like that, you examine things for a couple of hours and think, I must smell the roses. But it doesn't last very long,' he says.

It's more likely that his permanent restlessness and need to be doing caused him to look around for fresh challenges once he sensed that, as he puts it, the fashion industry didn't need him any more. Maybe, also, the allure of designing clothes for teenagers was slightly losing its appeal? 'What I do takes a lot of work, effort and time and stress. If you love what you do, it's much easier,' he concedes. At any rate, when his friend Elliott Bernerd advised him that Wentworth Golf Club was for sale, Caring couldn't resist. He snapped it up in 2004, then realised that the catering was in dire need of improvement and approached his favourite restaurant group, Caprice, to see how much they would charge to do it. 'When they told me, I jokingly said, maybe it would be cheaper if I just bought Caprice,' he explains. 'And I bought it six weeks later.'

His master plan now is to create a kind of super-concierge service for all his high-networth members (with Soho House, Wentworth and the Birley clubs - Annabel's, George, Harry's Bar, Mark's Club - he's got around 70,000 on his books) so that, for instance, members of Annabel's will get cheap deals at Soho House, and golfers can book tables at The Ivy. 'My ultimate ambition is to be able to wake up one day and feel content,' he says. 'I hope it will happen. But at the moment, I see so much opportunity. I can't drive down the street without seeing places to rent and wondering what I could put into them.' Though not, you can be sure, any outposts of the Fat Duck.

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Caring, who gave a £2m loan to the Labour party to help it win the 2005 general election, made his first donation to the Conservative party earlier this year, an all-expenses-paid night out at Annabel's. It was raffled at the Tories' annual Black and White Ball in Battersea Park in February, raising £70,000.

Caring owns a large part of Camden Market, Wentworth golf club in Surrey and the old US navy building in Grosvenor Square, which he plans to turn into luxury flats. And he has been linked with a takeover bid for another restaurant chain, Carluccio's, in which he is already a shareholder.

Caring prefers to stay out of the limelight. He lives with his wife and two sons in a luxurious mansion near Kenwood House in north London which has been dubbed the "Versailles of Hampstead" and owns a 60m yacht, a private plane, and a huge estate in Devon.

A renowned philanthropist, Caring was diving with his two sons in the Maldives when the tsunami hit in Christmas 2004, and donated £1m to the aid appeal. He is also said to give £3.5m a year to the NSPCC's Fresh Start centre in Camden and organised a charity event for the NSPCC in St Petersburg in 2005, featuring Sir Elton John and former US president Bill Clinton.

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Pixton Stables, near Dulverton.

It is feared Caring and his wife Jackie may have been targeted as rich outsiders. He has offended some residents with plans for a glass annex to accommodate shooting guests at the house, where the Carings have lived since 2005.

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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.

The son of Lou Caring, a US GI who settled in Britain to start a clothing business, he grew up immersed in London’s rag trade. By the mid-1980s he’d built a sizeable business, including a joint venture with Freemans catalogues, but it was his manufacturing base in Hong Kong that made the money, says Blackhurst. “He was the key fixer for major chains” wishing to source in Asia.

Caring has a flamboyant streak and “a predilection for the grand gesture”, notes The Sunday Times. His Hampstead house is a mini Versailles, and he presented Green with a red Ferrari Spider on his 50th birthday. Two years ago, he spent £8m shipping dozens of celebrities to a “Napoleonic Ball” in St Petersburg. Yet Caring is notoriously secretive about his own business interests. However, we do know his influence in retail is in decline, says the FT: he is no longer needed as a middleman and his main vehicle, International Clothing Designs, filed a loss in its last accounts. A near-death experience in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami (he was scuba-diving when the wave came) also convinced him to start spending his money on the things he loves.

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Caring likes to remain in the background, but there is no mistaking him. At 61, he may qualify for a free bus pass, but he looks remarkably well preserved - the result of running every day on Hampstead Heath with his German Shepherd dogs. With his thick, swept-back hair and lean frame, he looks more like a snake-hipped, ageing ballet dancer than a business tycoon.

In London, his home is a vast mansion near Kenwood House that he shares with his wife, Jacqui, a former model (they have two sons, Jamie and Ben, who both work for Soho House). It has a 55ft ballroom, cinema, a dining room that seats 30 and a two-acre garden with a lake.

His office is an anonymous modern building between Fitzroy Square and Euston Road. Caring's own lair is on the top floor. It's a huge room, with a fully equipped bar and a roof terrace that faces south across the West End. As well as the spectacular, sweeping view, it's the art that catches the eye. There are Degas drawings, a Matisse painting and, in the middle of the floor, a Henry Moore bronze of a mother and child. The sculpture had to be lifted in by crane, he explains.

His critics say he is brandishing a credit card, playing a high-stakes game of Monopoly, buying every square he lands on. He says no, there's definite method in his perceived madness. It's true that he has been adding London club and restaurant brands like there's no tomorrow, but part of his purpose, he insists, is to export some of them, to create a network that offers exactly the same standards to both local, upmarket crowds and to jet-setters who hop regularly from one major city to the next.

'I spotted an international gap in the market,' he says. In the restaurant business, 'there are single brands, but not a group of brands -which is what we do. There is only one Ivy, one Annabel's - there is nothing like them. A group of top-notch brands like them - that is what we're trying to achieve. There is a grand plan and it starts with building strength in London.'

He has identified three labels that he believes can travel: Annabel's, Caprice and Soho House. He draws three circles on a piece of paper and labels them. Each, he says, stands for different markets and values. At one end, there's Annabel's and the exclusive Birley clubs (Mark's, Harry's Bar, George and Bath & Racquets) that he bought from the legendary Mark Birley. 'They're refined, discreet, elegant.' (Detractors find them a little too Joan Collins and Oliver Tobias.) At the other, there's Soho House and its offshoots. 'They're for an arts, journalistic, younger crowd.' Between them is the Caprice group of restaurants, including The Ivy and J Sheekey.

The son of an American GI father who settled in London after the war and married a nurse, Caring grew up in Finchley, north London. His father, Lou, set up in clothing, supplying stores like Marks & Spencer; he had his own showroom off Great Portland Street. In his youth, Caring was an outstanding junior golfer, and (I can vouch) he's still a formidable competitor. His handicap was scratch, he played for Middlesex and won a scholarship to Millfield, the sporty boarding school. He thought about turning pro but felt he wasn't quite good enough. 'I would have starved to death as a pro golfer,' he says, laughing that he even contemplated the move.

He left Millfield at 16. 'My parents thought it important I got practical work experience - they weren't bothered about university.' His first job was as an office boy for a shopping centre developer. Then his father decided he'd be better off in the family business, Louis Caring Originals, a dress manufacturer that employed seven. It was the Sixties and young fashion was lifting off. Carnaby Street was becoming a mecca and designers like Mary Quant were all the rage.

'I had a girlfriend at the Royal College of Art who was a bit of a designer. We ran up a range of mini-skirts on our machines. We sold them for 69s 6d, or £3.50 in today's money, and they cost us £2. Our target was 200 a week. After a few years, we'd turned 200 into 25,000.'

In 1971, Caring visited Hong Kong. 'I discovered Hong Kong in terms of clothing supply - I was the first to get it to move into fashion. Until then, its output was all basics like underpants.'

It can't have been that easy, I venture - not as straightforward as he pretends. 'I lived out of a suitcase. I was in one hotel room for a year - I never checked out. It's true, we had to make the same garment several times before we got it right, but once we got it right, we were able to produce it in mass volume.'

By 1979, he'd moved with Jacqui to the colony. They stayed nine years, raising their two boys there. 'Hong Kong is a transitory environment, but it's a fabulous place in which to work. I was working flat out, seven days a week. For me, then, it was all about picking up an opportunity and running with it - I didn't mind the hours.'

Caring cornered the market in fast fashion. One of the retailers he supplied in the UK was Philip Green. They became friends and close business associates. 'PG and I have known each other for 35-plus years.'

Caring is the dominant supplier to Arcadia, the Green-owned group that includes Topshop and Top Man. Theirs is not the normal retailer/supplier set-up but more of a partnership - although neither will say as much. They talk daily; they work together and they socialise together.

International Clothing Designs - He employs 250 people in fashion.

So why the sudden shift into clubs and restaurants? 'I'd reached a point in late 2004 where I felt like doing something else, because the clothing business didn't particularly need me.'

His pal, the London property magnate Elliott Bernard, happened to phone him to see whether, as a golfer, he might be interested in buying Wentworth. Caring jumped at the chance and became majority shareholder in a deal worth £130m. The price caught the sport unawares - it seemed a ludicrous amount to pay for a golf club. When I question the cost, he says: 'It's priceless. There's only one Wentworth in the world.'

Bernard's offer came as Caring was caught up in that tsunami. He was in the Maldives at Christmas 2004, scuba-diving with his sons, when the giant wave passed over them. That morning, the dive-master had suggested they take a boat and sail to an atoll and dive nearby. It probably saved their lives. 'We were just lucky. We were about 100ft down. We dived for about 45 minutes and felt nothing. Later, we began to get hysterical calls from around the world asking: "Are you all right?" My first reaction was: "Why shouldn't we be?"'

Green sent his private jet to pick them up. 'My two sons nearly drowned with me,' says Caring. 'Did I see the light? No. But it does change the way you think, the way you look at the world.'

He later gave £1m to the Tsunami Appeal. Caring is a generous philanthropist, donating '£3.5m a year' to Fresh Start, a centre in Camden run by the NSPCC to combat child abuse and paedophilia. Through his giving, he became entangled in the Labour loans-for-peerages row. He loaned £2m, but his name was not on the list of those forwarded for honours. It's not something he likes to dwell on - suffice to say, he does not come across as a natural Labour supporter.

But best doesn't always mean high-end. 'I bought Strada (the family pizza and pasta chain) for £50m and sold it for £148m, 15 months later. Out of Strada came the guys who ran it. They've opened Cote (a chain of French brasseries) with my help, and the average price of a ticket there is £16. At the other end of the scale, you can go to Harry's Bar and spend £110 on lunch. The point about Cote is that it enables us to cover the spectrum, from £16 to £110 - and that gives us a good handle on what is going on.'

CARING - IN A MINUTE

1948: Born London, 4 June. Educated Millfield School, Somerset. Plays competitive golf

1964: At 16, joins father's fashion firm, supplying retailers, including Marks & Spencer

1971: Goes to Hong Kong, exploits potential for suppling western fashion. Works with clothing retailer Philip Green

1979: Settles in HK. Builds up a business that comes to dominates the Far East rag trade, supplying 70% of UK clothing retailers

2005: Moves to London, buys Wentworth Golf Club for £130m. Deals for Caprice restaurants, Mark Birley's clubs and Soho House follow

2009: Expands clubs and restaurant empire overseas, opening Cecconi's restaurant in LA. Plans further openings and acquisitions.

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However, Caring’s interests are now as diverse as the US Navy building in Grosvenor Square, Soho House’s US properties, stakes in Camden Stables Market, the Wentworth Club in Surrey, famous for its Championship golf, and listed Italian restaurant chain Carluccio’s. And he’s not planning to stop there. ‘We are still looking for more deals. We have the experience and the management structure, chefs and staff. I don’t think there is anybody in this country who has the depth of people working in food and beverages,’ the normally reticent Caring told Square Meal in a rare interview.He says he will look at hotels, restaurants and clubs: ‘Anything in the same vein as we are doing now.’ But his main interest is in strong brands that have been under-potentialised.

Until recently, the low-profile Caring was best known for his close friendship with colourful retail bigwig Sir Philip Green, owner of Topshop and Bhs. Caring is rumoured to have lent Green some of the cash for his buyout of Bhs and has certainly supplied a good proportion of the clothing for that store and its sister group Arcadia, the owner of Topshop and Dorothy Perkins. For a year or so Caring virtually ran Bhs alongside Green and he is still a major supplier to the high street, with interests in manufacturing businesses turning over several hundred million pounds a year. But after selling off NV, a major Next supplier, a few years ago, Caring began to explore new avenues of investment.

His spending spree in the leisure world kicked off in 2004, when he bought a share in the Camden Market complex for £40m. But he says the real spur for his move into restaurants came later that year, when long-term friend and property magnate Elliott Bernard offered him the chance to buy Wentworth. ‘Elliott phoned one day and said: “It’s for sale”. As a sporting facility in the UK there is nothing similar. Wentworth is to golf what Wimbledon is to tennis.’ As a keen golfing fan Caring says: ‘I couldn’t resist it.’

He teamed up with Surinder Arora, the airport hotel entrepreneur who was already a minority shareholder in the club, and bought Wentworth for £130m. It was seen as a high price to pay for a golf club, and £50m more than the club’s book value at the time. Caring said he realised he needed to raise the standard of food at the club dramatically and brought in the owners of Le Caprice to help out. During discussions over the Wentworth deal Caring joked it was costing him so much he might as well buy the whole Le Caprice group; then it emerged that the management was looking for a buyer.

The Ivy - The_Ivy_exterior.jpg In June 2005, after offloading designer eveningwear label Amanda Wakeley, Caring secured a £31.5m deal to take over Caprice Holdings, owner of The Ivy (pictured left), Le Caprice and J Sheekey, as well as Italian restaurant Daphne’s, Vietnamese restaurant Bam-Bou and the Moroccan Pasha restaurant. He says: ‘The whole thing happened quickly. It was not a great strategy. I didn’t dream one night that I wanted to own some restaurants. But I always believe in blue chip, in quality, and this was a fantastic brand with an excellent quality.’ He adds: ‘Once we are in something, we like to move ahead and build it into something of a sensible proportion so each of the brands can help each other; but each of the brands has its own strong identity and we haven’t changed any of that.’

Caring immediately began to reshape the group, snapping up fish restaurant Scott’s, then events catering firm Urban Productions, and selling Pasha to Algerian restaurateur Tony Kitous. The following year the group also bought Rivington, a two-restaurant group independently set up by Caprice Holding’s chef director Mark Hix.

Caring’s next major target was Signature Restaurants, owner of mid-market eateries Strada and Belgo. He bought the group for £57m in 2005 and rapidly expanded Strada before selling the group on last year for an estimated £145m.

The profits from that deal were almost immediately pumped into acquiring Mark Birley’s empire of upmarket private clubs,Mark's Club - Mark's_Club.jpg including Annabel’s, George, Mark’s Club (pictured right), Harry’s Bar and the Bath & Racquets Club.The £95m deal, concluded just a few months before the club-owner’s death, included Birley’s vast art collection, which adorns the walls of the clubs. However, many in the business world felt Caring had overpaid. Caring has argued that his detractors don’t take into account the true value of the brands he has bought, something that gives a hint as to how he plans to develop his businesses.

With Soho House, the route to expansion is obvious. Caring, who bought out 28 minority investors to take a majority stake in the private club group, will continue the strategy of expansion abroad. Scottish bank HBOS has provided a £130m credit facility to help open sites in Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago this year. A further site in Berlin has also been confirmed, while clubs in Istanbul, Tokyo, Shanghai, Cairo and Sydney are said to be on the cards. Soho House founder Nick Jones will remain as chief executive, retaining a 20 per cent stake.

With the Le Caprice group of restaurants, Caring admits he is looking at the possibility of buying restaurants abroad. However, he says at present the strategy is very much based on making the most of each brand’s London base. ‘There is only one Ivy,’ he says. The business is being taken forward with a £10m investment to develop the upper three floors of the building into a private club, which is expected to open in June. ‘It will be all about the food, drinking, a great atmosphere, private dining and lounging bars. It will be a place to meet but in the Ivy style with no quirks,’ says Caring. He says he has already been ‘inundated’ with membership applications. A similar strategy could be on the cards at Annabel’s, which is considering expanding from its cosy basement into the upper floors. Caring wants to create a private ‘day club’ with facilities such as private dining and a library, which would offer something different to the intimate Annabel’s nightclub.

During his 20 years in Hong Kong he built strong links with Far East manufacturers, helping develop the business into a major supplier for well-known names such as Mothercare and Next. He made money, not only from his massive sourcing business, but also by selling the Together brand, which he had co-developed, to German catalogue firm Otto Versand and then selling NV, Next’s Near East sourcing operation that he had built up, to the retail chain. According to the latest figures from Companies House, his main clothing supply company, International Clothing Designs, saw sales drop to £74.2m from £85.5m in the year to July 2005. This was after some operations were sold or closed and the group dropped into a pre-tax loss of £523,644 from a £3.99m profit the year before after an exceptional loss on the sale of designer label Amanda Wakeley. However, ICD is part of a complex web of businesses, many of which lead to offshore holding companies, making it hard to detect Caring’s full earnings from the fashion world.

A HISTORY OF CARING

Born: 4 June 1948

Married to Jackie, with two grown-up sons

Began business life in father’s clothing supply business, Louis Caring

1970s: Moves to Hong Kong to develop the clothing supply firm into International Clothing Design, a major supplier to the UK high street. Also said to have made money from property deals in Hong Kong

1980s: Launches Together, a clothing brand that was a 50-50 joint venture with the Freemans catalogue; later sold to rival Otto Versand

1990s: Returns to London and moves into £15m Hampstead home. He also owns a country pile converted from a Georgian stables on Exmoor

1998: Makes an investment in fashion chain Whistles, which he later sells to high street chain Karen Millen

2000: Buys the Amanda Wakeley eveningwear label

2002: Sells NV, Next’s Near East sourcing operation, to the retail chain

2004: Buys stakes in Camden Stables Market and Wentworth Club

2005: Sells Amanda Wakeley and buys Caprice Holdings, owner of The Ivy and Le Caprice, and Signature Restaurants, the owner of Strada and Belgo

2006: Emerges as £2m donor to the Labour Party amid the cash-for-peerages inquiry, although no wrongdoing is found

2007: Sells Signature and buys Birley Group, owner of Annabel’s, George and Harry’s Bar

2008: Buys majority stake in Soho House

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Tries to buy Prada - 2007 -

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Against Caring’s father is an Italian-American GI who was stationed over here during the Second World War. Indeed, Caring’s original name was Caringi — more linguini than lockshen. He did not marry a nice Jewish girl either — at least, our rabbinical panel found no evidence that Jacqueline Stead, the Aldershot-born daughter of a retired army major, is kosher. Neither, it has to be said, are the restaurants he owns, which include The Ivy and Le Caprice but not Bloom’s or Reubens.

For Caring’s mother, Silvia Parnes, was Jewish, and Caring was brought up in the North London heartland — Finchley, to be precise. When the going got really good, he purchased a modest place in North-West London, which has been labelled the Versailles of Hampstead. He made his money in the shmutter trade, he is best mates with nice Jewish boy Philip Green, and his heavily coiffed hair resembles that of Lord Levy — who may or may not have played a part in Caring’s secret £2m donation to Labour (since returned with thanks). He is a fan of that most Jewish of sports, golf. Indeed, his collection of clubs includes not just drivers and putters, but also Wentworth in Surrey.

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Possibly he's been taken aback by the attention he's received, much of it derogatory. A caricature in this month's Tatler magazine of Caring as Blofeld, the Bond villain, stroking a white cat, is typical (he mentions it and his upset is obvious).

To them, he's nouveau, someone who likes to splash his cash (in addition to his businesses, there's the 200ft yacht, the aircraft, the fabulous house known as 'the Versailles of Hampstead', another home in Hong Kong and the 500-acre shoot in Devon) and has flash friends (Sir Philip Green and Robbie Tchenguiz, with whom he plays poker).

Caring and his team have been through the databases of each place and found that the Birley clubs have 12,000 members; Soho House has 17,000 and the Caprice restaurants have 30,000 regular customers. These don't include overlaps, which have been weeded out. 'That's 60,000 people in London we can reach.'

It might come as no surprise to know that as a child, in addition to golf, he adored playing Monopoly. When it came to deciding on a career, he went into property, as an office boy for a firm that developed shopping centres. Then his father decided he'd be happier in the family business, Louis Caring Originalsa dress manufacturer that employed seven people. It was the Sixties and his father didn't understand fashion.

In 1980 he moved with his wife Jacqui, a former model, to Hong Kong. They stayed nine years and their two boys, Ben, 27, who works for Soho House, and Jamie, 34, vice-president of MTV Networks Europe, were both raised there.

These days, he says, much of his business on the clothing side is in the US. 'It's an easier market to sell into.' He employs 250 people on the clothing side and says he spends about a day a week on it. 'I've not lost the buzz for it but 40 years on, I had a hankering to do something else.'

He's a non-dom - 'I will pay the £30,000' - and says he gets 'hugely disappointed when politics comes before sense. London as a city and England as a country are being damaged for no good reason other than political ones'.

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The son of an Italian-American GI and the nurse who was in the ambulance when he was injured, Mr Caring was born a Caringi. Keen to shake off the immigrant tag, his father dropped the 'i' although his sister still carries the name on her passport and the family have grafted ever since. A London boy, bar a few years in Hong Kong, Mr Caring has been married to his wife, Jackie, since 1971, and they have two sons. This was nearly all lost on Boxing Day, 2004, when they narrowly escaped being swamped by the tsunami when diving. It has been suggested that this is the reason he changed business direction. 'It did make me stop, and I don't think it hit me until later. The fact that I was diving with my sons and could have lost them in a split second made me think. But I haven't gone off on a different tangent. I'm still doing a lot of things I always was.'