Hotels and fitness - Rocco's forte

SIR Rocco Forte shares the unfortunate fate of fellow tycoon Gerald Ratner - he is better known for the one big mistake of his career than his many successes.

Forte was famously on a grouse shoot in 1996 when Gerry Robinson's Granada group sprang out of the long grass and caught him badly unprepared with a hostile bid for his Forte Hotels empire.

Forte lost the bitter battle for the sprawling £4bn hotels and catering business that his father, Charles, now Lord, had built painstakingly and sometimes controversially. It was a hammerblow for the heir apparent who had waited two decades until he was 47 to take over from his autocratic father.

Rocco, 59 next Sunday, is a fitness fanatic who keeps in shape with triathlons. That toughness is reflected in his willingness to admit to his mistakes.

'My biggest was not promoting myself once I finally gained control and started to make changes,' he recalled. 'I did not do enough PR and say where we were going and what we were doing to get there.

'The perception in the City was that I was not up to the job. We realised we might be vulnerable to a bid as our shares were low.

'But we had just turned the corner in 1995 with record profits and then Granada came for us - I believe at the instigation of Carol Galley [of Mercury Asset Management, a major shareholder in Granada and Forte]. We could not believe it. Nor could we believe it when they eventually won, though we got a huge price out of them. I remember Gerry Robinson coming to see me. He looked terrified - not a man I could ever respect.'

Losing left Rocco out of a job, though he and his family walked away with about £330m cash.

Rocco's father insisted he would not invest a penny in the stock market after the drubbing his family firm had received at the hands of shareholders. All but £20 million was put on deposit at the bank and that went into Rocco's new enterprise - an upmarket hotels business where the family, not City investors, would have the final say.

Rocco invested the £30m he received from the Granada bid into the venture. Freed from market constraints, he emerged as an entrepreneur in his own right. 'I didn't know what that was until now, when I have put my own money on the line,' he said.

He is still bitter that City investors pulled the rug from under him. 'It's nice we got a lot of money out of it, we did very well,' he said. 'But it was a big part of my life and I saw it destroyed. Granada ruined it.

'Granada destroyed the value of a fabulous company for which I had a clear vision and strategy. It was hard, much harder than what I am doing now.'

Rocco Forte Hotels owns and operates ten luxury hotels, including Brown's in central London, the Balmoral in Edinburgh, the Astoria in St Petersburg and the Hotel de Russie in Rome.

Rocco resolutely spurns his old adversaries in the City. 'I don't need to go public,' he said. 'All you do is take on huge extra expense - your top management time is spent dealing with institutional investors.'

Rocco added: 'You've got all this nonsense over corporate governance pretending it is good for all investors. But at the end of the day you've got one guy running the company - either he can do it or he can't.

'This business would not exist if I had not decided to build it. Ownership is not just financial - for me, it's caring for the thing you own. It's not just about financial value and financial returns.

'That's the trouble with the corporates in the public markets. Most of their managers are in transit - they are on five-year mandates and are intent on making as much money as they can in that time. For me, it is about nurturing what you own, looking after it and enjoying it.'

Never mind the car, I'd rather run

FEW men half his age could keep up with the punishing pace set by Rocco Forte. The 58-year-old has represented Britain in the World Triathlon Championships. In 2002 in Mexico, he came first in the UK team for his age group and 11th out of 78.

This gruelling event involves swimming 1,500 metres, then cycling 40 kilometres and finally running 10 kilometres.

At the end of the working day, Forte, who almost made Britain's Olympic fencing team in his twenties, usually gives his Savile Row suit to the chauffeur and changes into sports kit for a nine-mile run home.