Charles Forte, Baron Forte

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Not to be confused with the American writer Charles Fort.

Charles Forte, Baron Forte (26 November 1908 – 28 February 2007) was a hotelier.

Charles Forte was born in Mortale, Italy in 1908, and emigrated from Italy to Scotland at the age of four^[1] and attended Alloa Academy and St. Joseph's College, Dumfries. He worked in a cafe chain owned by his father, then at 26 set up his first "milk bar" in 1935 as Strand Milk Bar Ltd. Soon he began expanding into catering and hotel businesses. After the war, his company became Forte Holdings Ltd, and bought the Cafe Royal in 1954. He opened the first full motorway service station for cars at Newport Pagnell in 1959. Trust Houses Group Ltd and Forte Holdings were merged in 1970 to become Trust House Forte or THF.

Through mergers and expansion, Forte expanded the Forte Group into a multi-billion pound business. His empire included the Little Chef and Happy Eater roadside restaurants, Crest, Forte Grand, Travelodge and Posthouse hotels, as well as the wine merchant Grierson-Blumenthal and a majority (although non-controlling) stake in the Savoy Hotel.

The Grierson-Blumenthal stake was a "forced" acquisition by the group; it had originally been a personal holding of Charles Forte and fellow-directors of the group, supplying liquor to Forte restaurants and hotels at substantial personal profit until concern in the late 1970s about prosecution under the Companies Act obliged the directors to incorporate Grierson-Blumenthal as a subsidiary.

Forte was the CEO from 1971 and Chairman from 1982 (when his son Sir Rocco Forte took over as CEO). Happy Eater and the five Welcome Break service areas were bought from Hanson Trust PLC on August 1, 1986. In the late 1990s, the company was rebranded as Forte.

Lord Forte passed full control to Rocco in 1993, but soon the Forte Group was faced with a hostile takeover bid from Granada. Ultimately, Granada succeeded with a £3.9 billion tender offer in January 1996, which left the family with around £350 million in cash.

Charles Forte was knighted in 1970 and awarded a life peerage in 1982 as Baron Forte, of Ripley in the County of Surrey. In the 1970s the village of his birth started to call itself Monforte (or Monforte Casalaticco) in his honour "after some mysterious local plebiscite".^[2]

Lord Forte died on February 28, 2007 at the age of 98.^[1]

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