January Clubland press round-up
This month’s news round-up has a crowded roster of press coverage from around the world
After the death of director David Lynch this month, The Spaces looked at several of the fictional and real-life spaces that Lynch had created over the years. This included the fictional Club Silencio featured in his 2001 film Mulholland Drive.
A decade later, Lynch went on to create a real-life Silencio private members’ club in Paris, inspired by its fictional counterpart. The Club still exists today, and also has a recent New York spin-off nightclub which opened last year.
The clubs of Robin Birley continue to be the London clubs of choice for conservative politicians arranging off-the-record meetings, with the Daily Mail reporting ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration:
“Mr Trump’s aides are understood to have met members of Reform UK in London’s elite private members’ club 5 Hertford Street early last week for talks about boosting the party’s election chances.”
Meanwhile, the Financial Times covered the story “Reform UK woos former Tory donors with Mayfair fundraising dinner”, recording how Oswald’s (Robin Birley’s sister club to 5 Hertford Street) had been booked for a £25,000-a-plate fundraising dinner for Reform UK last Tuesday. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, and treasurer, Nick Candy, were reported as hoping to raise over £1 million from the dinner. The FT notes:
“One former Tory donor planning to attend told the Financial Times they had chosen a £25,000 ticket, instead of a cheaper option, in order to examine how the party “treat senior donors, whether they respect them”. The individual, who has given substantial sums to the Tories and asked not to be named… added they understood the event was a trial for further such fundraisers, adding: “Reform want to see if this kind of thing works.” ”
The Times’ coverage described the event as “Dom Perignon, bagpipes, and the [the] YMCA.” The Financial Times reported, “Birley himself paid for the food at the event, according to two people briefed on the matter.”
I subsequently spoke to the Daily Telegraph for their own coverage of how the event represents a wider shift of donors and club members away from the Conservative Party and towards Reform UK.
Regular readers will have seen how last month’s news round-up covered a detailed interview given by the art director for the Soho House group, explaining how they expand their valuable art portfolio in exchange for free memberships for leading artists; as well as the news that the troubled Soho House chain is looking to be sold to an as-yet-anonymous buyer in the coming year.
In light of these developments, George Nelson recently published an opinion piece on ARTNews, asking “Why Was Soho House Talking Up Its Art Collection on the Eve of Announcing a Buyout Offer?” He highlights several recent glowing write-ups all stressing the value of Soho House’s art collection.
“Such glowing press might be unremarkable if it didn’t come at a pivotal moment for Soho House, which first opened in 1995. On December 19 the club announced that it had received a buyout offer valuing it at $1.75 billion…Last May, Fortune reported that investors have put increasing pressure on CEO Andrew Carnie to get the company to turn a profit. The December announcement of the buyout offer sent the stock price skyrocketing by over 50 percent. However, the company’s market cap is still far down from its IPO valuation of $2.8 billion. Is the focus on the art collection a distraction from the financials—a signal to the market about a valuable asset the club could eventually sell? Or is it an effort to burnish the club’s reputation as a place for top creatives rather than mid-level bankers, aspiring startup founders, and the laptop class?There’s a good chance it might be the latter.”
The piece traces the mounting financial pressures on the club chain since it went public in 2021, opening scores of new venues, but also drawing criticism for overcrowding; and how its management have sought to address these concerns.
Nelson argues:
“All of this may put the PR push about the collection into context: what better way to foreground the creativity of the membership than to advertise the fact that artists (actual creatives!) have been bartering artworks for membership? The collection, started in 2009, has grown to a staggering 10,000 pieces and includes works by mega-stars like Damien Hirst, Rashid Johnson, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose auction records range from $3 million to $14.8 million, and countless emerging and mid-career artists.”
Nelson goes on to note Soho House’s stated reluctance to enter into any specifics on the value of their art collection, contrasting this position with their eagerness in recent published features to play up the value of the collection. Nelson then engages in some speculation:
“But, when you think a bit deeper about the company’s dire finances and the as-yet-to-be-revealed third party offering to purchase Soho House, it gets stickier. The company has reported that it is over half a billion dollars in debt; its stock price has long been floundering; and, as revealed by Fortune, investors want to see pay dirt. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to foresee a world where a private equity firm purchases the company and starts salivating at monetizing some, ahem, unrealized assets. Soho House is, of course, quick to shut down any discourse lingering on the monetary value of the art collection, except to confirm that it is regularly appraised by Bonhams for insurance purposes.”
He goes on to speculate on the value of the collection with some “back-of-the-napkin math”, arguing:
“Soho House refuses to be drawn into a discussion on the financial value of its art, but a collection possibly worth somewhere between $42 million and $355 million is a golden asset for a business that’s perennially in the red. If the company’s precarious financial standing meant it was forced to liquidate its assets, the creditors would waste no time sending that material to an auction house. After all, the global financial crisis saw investment bank Lehman Brothers and now defunct camera-maker Polaroid sell major collections to pay baying creditors in 2010. And more recently, at the end of last year, Japan’s severely indebted DIC Corporation announced it will be selling a chunk of its prized collection housed in the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art. If Soho House should suffer the same fate, the auction house that won the tender would distill the collection. One Sotheby’s specialist told me that when they sell large collections, 80 percent of the value is typically generated from 20 percent of the volume.”
The piece concludes:
“When asked directly about the possibility that the club could sell its collection in whole or part at some point in the future, a Soho House spokesperson wrote over email to ARTnews, “The collection is over 16 years old and nothing has ever been sold. The acquisitions, which number over 10,000 pieces, have been made for permanent display to support artists and for the members to enjoy with no commercial motivation.”
Never say never.”
LivingEtc has posted a new article, asking, “Are Hotels and Private Members’ Clubs the New Museums?”, speaking to curators of private art collections in hospitality portfolios. The emphasis is on hotels and, once again, Soho House.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal had its own take on developments, in the piece, “Soho House Drama: Dan Loeb is Picking a Fight with Ron Burkle.”
The WSJ reports:
“Now, Dan Loeb and his activist hedge fund Third Point are questioning a bid backed by fellow billionaire Ron Burkle to take the club private. Loeb unveiled a nearly 10% stake in the company in a regulatory filing Wednesday. In a letter to its board, Loeb argued that the $1.7 billion offer was a “sweetheart” deal that resulted from an opaque process.”
The report goes on to quote Loeb’s concerns about the proposed takeover deal:
““While we applaud the decision to return the company to private ownership, it appears to us that the board has failed to perform its most important responsibility: to ensure a fair sales process that achieves maximum value for all shareholders,” Loeb wrote.
“The $9-per-share bid announced last month represented a significant premium to where the stock had been trading.
“Loeb is pushing the board to consider outside bidders, who he said would pay a better price for the company, and said members would benefit from a visionary new owner. Loeb is one of the best known hedge-fund managers of his generation and in recent years has pushed for change at Advance Auto Parts and Bath & Body Works.
“Representatives for Burkle and Soho House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.”
Bruce Anderson’s wine column in the Spectator recently mentioned the book Decline and Fall of Macready’s Club, an anonymously-published novel previously highlighted by the Clubland Substack.
“Piles of copies are prominently displayed in a bookshop hard by the Garrick. Surely that must be a coincidence?”
Just as the Guardian followed the Garrick Club’s various votes on admitting women, the Savile Club’s recent vote on the same question was the subject of recent Guardian coverage.
At what was described as a “heated” Emergency General Meeting held at the Thistle hotel in Marylebone on Tuesday night, some 53% of Savile members present voted against electing women as members.
The Guardian reported:
“An acrimonious atmosphere had developed in recent weeks over preparations for the emergency general meeting, as some members opposed to women joining threatened to take out a high court injunction to prevent the club from allowing people to register their votes remotely. In the face of this legal threat, club officials last week decided to abandon plans for remote voting.”
Richard Eden’s ‘Eden Confidential’ column in the Daily Mail said:
“A City foreign exchange trader who led the anti-women campaign - and threatened to sue the Club’s committee - was accused of behaving in an ‘unconvivial manner’. At least one committee member, Times journalist Patrick Kidd, has quit the club in protest at his antics.”
The Guardian recorded five Savile members as having quit in the aftermath of the vote.
“The proposed motion tabled at the meeting had called for the word “males” in the club’s founding rule to be replaced with the word “persons”. It also proposed for “the feminine” meaning to apply to any applications to become an honorary or temporary member.
“The club’s general committee said this was equivalent to asking: “Do you think the club should admit women members?”
“The majority of those present on Tuesday voted to “affirm” the original wording. They are understood to have supported a separate motion stating that this “explicitly restricts membership to males over 18 years of age and reaffirms existing unambiguous language”.”
The meeting followed several months of discussions, which have been previously reported.
The Flyfishers’ Club, which is hosted by the Savile Club on its second floor, voted last October to admit women members. The Telegraph notes:
“It has created a curious situation in which women are allowed to become members of the Flyfishers Club in the upstairs rooms at the Savile building on Brook St, but will remain banned from doing so in other rooms belonging to the main club.”
Singapore-based Channel News Asia, the city’s main state broadcaster, has reported on assorted controversies and litigation at one of the city’s most historic clubs, under the headline, “Tanglin Club's 'toxic' workplace culture under scrutiny after member allegedly abused employee.”
The Spirits Business has an interview with Home House’s general manager and operations director Giuseppe Dewilde, about the Club’s evolving cocktail menu.
Over the last month, Auckland’s Northern Club has made headlines over an incident in which district court judge Ema Aitken and her partner Dr David Galler reportedly gatecrashed and heckled New Zealand First politician Winston Peters and other NZ First politicians, at a private Christmas event held at the Club. Judge Aitken is reported as shouting, “He's lying! How can you let him say that?”, whilst Peters was giving a speech.
Aitken has apologised over the incident, while Galler disputes some of the comments attributed to him in recent reporting. New Zealand’s Attorney-General Judith Collins commented that she was “appalled” and “really disgusted” by the incident. Alan Ritchie, the Judicial Conduct Commissioner, has recommended that Collins appoint a panel a panel of judges to investigate Aitken, after concluding of his own investigation, “these complaints, if substantiated, could warrant consideration of the removal of the judge from office by way of a recommendation.”
Not everyone has taken a dim view of the incident, however, with The Standard having published an op-ed entitled “Much ado about nothing” by Micky Savage, describing Aitken as “highly regarded in legal circles”, and the media backlash as “over the top.”
The 23 February issue of The Washingtonian carries a three-page feature on the new wave of clubs and membership organisations of Washington D.C., and compares them to more traditional establishments like the Cosmos Club. You can read my own recent Substack Newsletter write-up of the clubs of Washington D.C. here.
Following the demise of Black’s club in Soho in 2023, several of the members have opened a new London club, Greys, as a pop-up club. It has an Instagram account, and a Linktree, the latter of which includes the following description:
“Greys Club celebrates the creative spark within all humans. We seek kindred spirits who are inspired by arts, ideas and culture in their myriad forms, regardless of their professional background. Tell us what ignites your imagination - whether you're a full-time artist or an accountant with a passion for poetry. We value creative spirit over credentials. Share your innovative thinking and visionary pursuits, from crafting indie films to curating eclectic playlists. Highlight how you bring creativity to life and how you'll nurture it at Greys Club. While experience in creative fields is welcome, it's not required. What matters is your enthusiasm for human expression and your desire to help it flourish.”
The launch event was held earlier this month in another pop-up London club, Colony Room Green, which is a Mayfair reconstruction of the old Colony Room Club in Soho, curated by the club’s historian Sophie Parkin, and including many artefacts from the decor of the original club.
With thanks to those eagle-eyed Clubland Substack subscribers who have shared their tip-offs on news items this month.