Richard Caring

Spear’s Review

Richard Caring continues to shape some of the most exclusive spaces and places in London. His Mayfair empire includes Annabel’s, Sexy Fish and Bacchanalia – and those are just his establishments around the perimeter of Berkeley Square. His portfolio of private members’ clubs also includes Mark’s Club, George, Harry’s Bar and the Bath & Racquets Club, which are all clustered around the same part of town. 

Born in Finchley in 1948, Caring began working at a shopping centre development company when he was 16 and later joined his father’s dressmaking business. He subsequently set out on his own and made his first fortune in the same industry, building up International Clothing Designs, which manufactured clothing in Hong Kong for the UK market. 

In December 2004 Caring was scuba diving with his sons 30m below the surface of the ocean when the Boxing Day tsunami passed over their heads, leaving them unharmed. (Caring later donated £1 million to the relief effort.) 

Later in the same decade, he began to diversify his business interests. His hospitality group Caprice Holdings (acquired from fellow Power Lister Jeremy King) has swelled and now includes The Ivy, which Caring has transformed from a single restaurant (with an adjoining members’ club) to a chain of restaurants around the world.

His Birley Clubs business continues to be refreshed and reinvented with a rolling programme of impressive refurbishments by designers such as Martin Brudnizki. In 2023 Caring unveiled his own new private members’ club, Apollo’s Muse, which is attached to the striking Bacchanalia and has an annual membership fee of £5,000. 

In 2024 Caring confirmed that he planned to relaunch his iconic restaurant Le Caprice, a St James’s celebrity hotspot that closed during the pandemic. The new Le Caprice is to open at the Chancery Rosewood, the £1 billion luxury hotel within the former US Embassy building in Grosvenor Square.

Caring and his wife Patricia together run the Caring Family Foundation, which focuses on domestic abuse, child poverty and reforestation.