Gordon Ramsay spoke last week spoke frankly to The Sunday Times about keeping the administrators at bay. It is the first time he has publicly admitted that his empire came close to collapse.
Gordon Ramsay fined over late accounts / 23OCt 2008
According to a spokeswoman at Companies House, penalties incurred by Gordon Ramsay Holdings in failing to submit accounts from 2006 have reached the maximum £1,000 per year.
Accounts for the 2006 financial reporting year are almost 16 months overdue, with 30 June, 2007 listed as the due date. Company accounts for 2007 were due by 30 June now almost four months in arrears, attracting a £100 fine on top of fines for the previous year.
Last autumn, GRH breached covenants on its £500,000 overdraft and £10m of loans with Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). “We went over our overdraft limit and we did not hit revenue targets,” said Ramsay. In New York alone Ramsay was losing £2m a year, despite winning two Michelin stars.
Ramsay also revealed that he was forced to sell his Ferrari and even considered selling the family home to rescue the company.
Ramsay and business partner Chris Hutcheson have had to pump £5million of their own money into the business since January to stave off the threat of closure, brought on by over-ambitious expansion plans coupled with the economic recession. Talking about the moment when auditors drew up plans to put his firm into administration, he said: “It was the worst bollocking ever. They told me I was fucked. They said we should plan for administration, that it would be smoother for everyone.”
The crisis erupted after GRH went over its £500,000 overdraft limit with Royal Bank of Scotland, which had already loaned the company £10 million.
In January, the bank sent in KPMG to examine the books. It then emerged that GRH owed £7.2million in taxes.
Ramsay considered selling 20 per cent of his company and the £6million south London home he shares with wife Tana and their four children.
The pair staved off administration by handing back or closing restaurants in Paris, Los Angeles and Prague, sacking a quarter of the staff at their London head office and putting in £5million of their own money
June 29, 2009 12:00am
NOT deterred by his disastrous Melbourne appearances, embattled chef Gordon Ramsay has slunk back into Australia.
The foul-mouthed chef's Melbourne visit turned into an unwieldy PR nightmare after he verbally attacked A Current Affair's Tracy Grimshaw, calling her a pig-woman, saying she needed to contact Simon Cowell's Botox doctor and insinuating she was a lesbian.
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