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Ramsay takes £2m bite out of profits
By Alexa Baracaia and Jonathan Prynn, Evening Standard 09.03.07
Profit hungry: Gordon Ramsay awarded himself a £2.1 million bonus
Ramsay's joint venture Pengelley's lost £850,000
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Gordon Ramsay has awarded himself a £2.1 million bonus from the profits of his burgeoning restaurant empire.
The Kitchen Nightmares star - who in November launched his latest venture in New York - took the cash out of his main business, Gordon Ramsay Holdings.
He is already Britain's richest chef with a personal wealth valued at more than £60 million.
In the past he has usually ploughed much of the profits from the 10-year-old company into the start- up costs of another restaurant.
According to accounts filed at Companies House this week, Ramsay's firm paid its three shareholders a total of £3.1million in the form of a dividend in 2005.
With the three Michelin-star award-winning Scot owning 69 per cent of the shares, that means he received just over £2.1 million. Most of the rest went to his business-partner and father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson.
Ironically, Ramsay's biggest pay day came in one of the rockier years for the business.
Profits were already depressed by the flop opening of Pengelley's in Knightsbridge - a joint venture with chef Ian Pengelley that lost £850,000 - and the prohibitive costs of setting up Maze restaurant in Grosvenor Square.
The cost of the dividend pushed Gordon Ramsay Holdings £ 2.4million into the red.
The accounts should have been delivered to Companies House by June last year but only arrived - along with last year's figures - when officials threatened to have the company struck off.
A spokesman for the chef said Gordon Ramsay Holdings had hoped to file the 2005 and 2006 audited financial accounts at the same time.
The delay was exacerbated by the merger of the company's auditors with another firm.
The spokesman added: "The situation has been rectified and the 2005 statement was filed at Companies House on Wednesday."
He added that after the 2005 losses, last year's accounts showed a "return to profitability".
Ramsay, 40, has nine restaurants in London, one in New York - with two more planned - and one each in Tokyo and Dubai.
The New York restaurant, Gordon Ramsay At The London, opened to mixed reviews, despite the chef spending more than £3million setting it up.
Some of the city's most prominent - and fiercest - reviewers criticised the menu, service and decor. Frank Bruni of The New York Times, called the restaurant "unexciting", "predictable" and "bizarre", awarding it just two stars out of four.
With the backing of US private equity house Blackstone, Ramsay plans to invest another £10 million in the three American restaurants. He expects them to generate turnover of more than £30million within a few years.
The next stage of his expansion programme sees the F-Word presenter turning his attentions to France, Australia and Ireland, as well as opening a pub, The Narrow in Limehouse, later this month.
* Heston Blumenthal's muchfeted restaurant The Fat Duck in Bray, has returned to profit.
Accounts for the chef's holding company show that it was £889,903 in the black last year, compared with a loss of £103,634 in 2005.
The Berkshire restaurant, which opened in 1995, has pushed up the price of its famous tasting menu by 17.5 per cent to £115, without wine.
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