Annabel’s, ever popular with Instagram influencers. (Photo credit: Annabel’s website.)
Several of London’s best-known for-profit clubs will now be majority-owned by a prominent Abu Dhabi royal who oversees the UAE’s espionage operations, after a £1.4 billion deal was finalised on Saturday. It was the Sunday Times that broke the news of the deal.
The “Birley Group” of clubs (Annabel’s, the Bath & Racquets Club, George, Harry’s Bar, and Mark’s Club), plus other Caring ventures including the Ivy Club (formerly The Club at The Ivy) and Apollo’s Muse, will now be owned by IHC, the company of the UAE’s national security advisor & AI chief, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who is a brother of the UAE’s President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.
The clubs are just part of the wider hospitality empire that Caring has sold, including the Ivy high-street restaurant chain, and Mayfair restaurants such as Bacchanalia, Scott’s, and Sexy Fish; plus a large minority stake in the Soho House empire of over 40 clubs worldwide.
Richard Caring, who has owned the Birley Clubs group for the last 19 years. (Photo credit: The Independent.)
How Caring consolidated his hospitality empire
Richard Caring, who initially made his fortune in the clothing business, has invested in the London club sector for over twenty years. He says he went into hospitality “by mistake”, after paying £130 million for the Wentworth Golf Club in 2004. At the time, the Club’s restaurant was run in-house, and Caring began negotiations with the Caprice Group, about outsourcing the catering operation to them.
Then in 2005, he announced that he had bought the entire Caprice Group, for £31.5 million. At the time, the Caprice Group owned The Ivy, as well as other restuarants such as Le Caprice (now since closed), J. Sheekey and Daphne’s. Much of his restaurant and club holdings would come under Caprice Holdings in the years that followed.
In June 2007, Caprice Holdings purchased for £90 million from the late Mark Birley, just months prior to his death, the Birley Clubs group - five of the six clubs that Mark Birley had founded. This was the point at which Caring became a major player in the world of London clubs.
In January 2008, Caring then bought an 80% stake in the Soho House empire, which was undergoing a major period of expansion, both with extra branches in London, and with new branches being set up internationally. Caring remains a significant minority shareholder, now owning closer to 21% of the Soho House group.
Later in 2008, Caring’s Ivy restaurant set up the Ivy Club, above and next door to the restaurant, which continues to this day.
More recently, another of his restaurants followed the Ivy Club model - in 2022, Bacchanalia set up Apollo’s Muse, touted as a club in a room behind the restaurant. While the initial publicity touted it as “the world’s most exclusive members’ club”, with membership capped at just 500 members paying a £5,000 annual subscription, it has since been opened to the public on Sundays (and to private bookings the rest of the week), according to its website.
Caring also has substantial non-club holdings in hospitality, including the high street chain Bill’s, the Ivy high street chain spun off from the original West End restaurant, and various high-end restaurants across Mayfair.
The Financial Times notes, “Caring controls his empire through a complicated web of investment vehicles, which ultimately are owned through offshore holding companies in Jersey and the British Virgin Islands.”
The empire has been lucrative for Caring, who reportedly enjoys being called the “King of Mayfair.” The empire has also netted Caring large dividends, with periodic sell-offs. Caring had previously sold 25% of Caprice Holdings in November 2019, to Hamid bin Jassam bin Jaber Al Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar, for US$200 million (£162 million at the time).
Not everyone is a fan, however. Nick Lander at JancisRobinson.com writes that, while personally fond of Caring, he regards him as a restaurateur rather than a restauranteur, and observes:
“He has never manned the door; he has never taken a menu to a table; he has never served a table with a bottle of wine. He has brought many years of experience of being a customer, but I wonder whether that is quite enough.”
Others are more blunt, with profiles often bringing up his long-time friendship with Sir Philip Green and former shareholding in his BHS chain. One previous member of Annabel’s felt that Caring’s ownership ushered in an era of “corporatising”, and complained to Vanity Fair, “‘He’s trashed [Annabel’s] completely and we’re not going to have anywhere to go and this is awful!’” And the paper noted the décor of the Ivy Club was controversial, too:
“Where the problem comes in is when Richard Caring suddenly goes out and splurges on a whole load of boat and car memorabilia, to litter around just to make it look ‘authentic,’” says a prominent London restaurateur. “As they say, ‘Mark Birley he ain’t,’ and he’s trying to be, and in the Ivy Club, if he’s trying to be the new Mark Birley, he shouldn’t give up his day job.”
Caring, by contrast, asked members to “give me a chance”, while those close to him have suggested that some of the antipathy to Caring can be attributed to antisemitism, and Establishment snobbery over his humble origins. They have pointed to the £65 million he has invested in revamping his clubs.
There was also an acrimonious legal feud between Caring and Robin Birley, the son of Mark Birley - who had originally intended to call his new club Birley’s. Caring insisted that in having paid so much for the Birley Clubs, he had also gained the exclusive right to use the Birley name in London’s private members’ clubs; the dispute rumbled on from 2010 until 2012, when Robin Birley eventually opened his club as 5 Hertford Street.
The remodelled Annabel’s has also been hit by a wave of poor publicity recently, in the wake of a member convicted of spiking a female guest’s drink at the Club; and in February, the Daily Telegraph described it as “the house of naff”, after a source described it as, “really naff and quite sleazy”, the feature emphasising its Instagram-focused image. In recent months, Annabel’s has sought to cull its 8,000-strong list of members.
The sale of Caring’s empire had been the subject of press coverage for at least three years, with at least three prospective buyers being named in the press. The weekend’s sale agreement concludes that process.
The most recent Sunday Times Rich List, from last year, identified Caring as the 164th richest man in Britain, with an estimated net worth of £975 million, prior to this new £1.4 billion deal.
Sheikh Tahnoon, the new majority owner of Caring’s club and restaurant empire. (Photo credit: Bloomberg News.)
Who is the new owner of the hospitality empire?
The group’s new ultimate beneficial owner, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, is often described as the “deputy ruler“ of both Abu Dhabi and the UAE, and manages a $1.3 trillion business portfolio, including the UAE’s $790 billion sovereign wealth fund, and he oversees the state’s AI policy.
His businesses recently made headlines after it emerged that last year they bought a 49% share in Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency, for half a billion dollars in cash; and a short time later, it was announced that they had successfully negotiated the purchase of half a million high-end AI chips a year from the USA, over the objections of US national security officials - who expressed concerns over the UAE’s dealings with China, which had previously led the Biden administration to block such a deal, citing the security concerns. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren took a rather dim view, stating, “This is corruption, plain and simple. The Trump administration must reverse its decision to sell sensitive AI chips to the United Arab Emirates.” A spokesperson for Trump commented that the President and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, also a World Liberty co-founder, “had no involvement in the deal and haven’t been involved in World Liberty since taking office,” with the deal having been signed by Trump’s son, Eric, and Witkoff’s sons, Alex and Zach. The deal has been the subject of a House probe, while World Liberty commented that lawmakers are “harassing a private American business to score political points.”
New Annabel’s owner Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who has paid half a billion dollars to President Trump’s cryptocurrency venture. Trump’s spokesperson commented that the two men have never discussed the $500 million deal. (Photo credit: The UAE Embassy in Washington DC.)
Sheikh Tahnoon has frequently been described by the Wall Street Journal as a “spy sheikh”, over the vast intelligence-gathering and intelligence processing operation he oversees, in his capacity as the UAE’s national security advisor. He is usually photographed wearing sunglasses, due to a reported light sensitivity. A profile of the Sheikh for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists describes him thus:
“Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan is a prominent member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family and a renowned billionaire businessman. He is the son of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’ founding father, and a brother of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince and the country’s de facto ruler. Tahnoon chairs sovereign wealth funds and investment holding companies — including the state holding company ADQ, worth an estimated $110 billion — that control crucial sectors of the economy.
“He has served as the national security adviser since 2016. A sportsman especially skilled at martial arts, he’s been a rising figure in Middle East politics and intelligence operations in recent years. Known as the “spy sheikh”, he is the key person behind UAE-orchestrated cyberwarfare against dissidents and people and institutions in other countries, including the United Kingdom. In foreign policy, Tahnoon also deals with high-profile regional affairs, like the tensions over Iran and Yemen’s civil war, as well as intelligence cooperation with top global and regional powers, including the U.S., Russia and Israel.”
Tahnoon will control the Caring empire through the Abu Dhabi-based International Holding Company (IHC). The Financial Times observes that, “IHC has grown rapidly in recent years, boasting roughly 1,500 subsidiaries as of the end of 2025. Its holdings range from electricity, property development and hospitals to billboards, driving schools and chicken farms.”
What does Caring say?
Richard Caring emailed the members of his Birley Clubs yesterday, with the following statement:
Caring’s letter to members, which makes no mention of the £1.4 billion cash transaction around the sale, describes it as “a new investment partnership involving the Clubs and out wider hospitality portfolio.”
What happens next?
Sheikh Tahnoon’s company IHC confirmed that Caring will stay on as Executive Chairman of the group. They also announced that one of their affiliates, Diafa, will lead the business with Caring on its next phase of international expansion alongside Diafa, helmed by the former chair of LVMH’s (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy’s) Asia business, Ravi Thakran. Thakran, as founder and managing partner of Turmeric Capital, has extensive experience of overseeing luxury brands.
As per Caring’s letter, the next stage of expanding this brand appears to be the opening of a New York branch of Annabel’s, next year. This follows a number of clubs and club empires based in London, opening lucrative new branches in New York - the first of these was Soho House New York in 2003, but recent examples include The Ned (co-owned by Soho House and several of its shareholders) in 2022; the Twenty-Two (owned by British property developer Jamie Reuben and British hotelier Navid Mirtorabi) in 2024; and Robin Birley’s Maxime’s on the Upper East Side in 2025.
As to how the handover occurs, there are perhaps clues in Caring’s previous comments, on how he managed the change in ownership when he pruchased most of the late Mark Birley’s clubs in 2007. At the time, he assured members of the importance of continuity, telling Country Life, “I think you can change things without changing everything and they're mostly tweaks.” Over time, however, much of the Birley Clubs group saw extensive remodelling, redecoration and redesign, including Harry’s Bar, George, Mark’s Club, and the most radical change of all with Annabel’s, which in 2018 abandoned its long-time intimate basement premises for a vast 24-hour entertainment complex two doors away. Among the Birley Clubs, only the Bath & Racquets Club, with its modestly-sized premises, remains essentially unchanged since Mark Birley’s day. Caring has previously commented, “Anything that stands still moves backwards.”
In his letter to Birley Club members yesterday, Caring assured them:
“I will continue in my role as Executive Chairman, as I have done for over two decades, remaining closely involved in the day-to-daay running of the Clubs and ensuring continuity of leadership…There will be no change to the way the Clubs are run, to the team you know, or to the experience we offer our Members.”
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Index
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