As the date draws closer for when bankers call in Richard Caring’s huge debt, it raises the question of why Tricky Dicky is so desperate to sell his business crown jewels if he is worth the $1bn his media buddies love to claim.


Media reports in the United Kingdom love to celebrate Richard UnCaring’s wealth. With the typical Brit forelock-tugging that America threw off with the first crate of tea into Boston Harbor, newspapers over the pond happily salute his supposed billionaire status.


This lauding, of course, may have something to do with the owners and senior staff at those very publications enjoying feted access and freebies at the same establishments whose proprietor they are celebrating.


But it begs the question: what exactly is Richard Caring’s true net worth?


This matters as Richard UnCaring faces an April 29 deadline to repay the $233 million he owes HSBC; with his own Directors now so nervous of insolvency they made Tricky Dicky produce a Letter of Undertaking promising to support the group from his own pocket if it becomes required.

Is that why Richard Caring is now selling The Ivy restaurant group?


That such a selling off is wanted is no secret. Sky News broke the story last September that the chain of more than 40 restaurants was up for grabs for anyone with the $1.25bn reportedly required to buy it.


The story was followed up across the UK media landscape without a murmur of contradiction from the normally ubiquitous Carling, whose advisors merely responded with a demur “no comment”. This was not just a case of no smoke without fire but rather one giving the impression that UnCaring and his people were behind the scenes happily piling on the kindling.


Yet despite the prominent raising of a For Sale sign there remains no sign of a credible buyer. In the fall, the media triumphed that the mysterious Si Advisors were close to stumping up the cash.


Their interest, if it was ever real, seems to have faded away after their accounts made clear the boutique investment firm only manages around $250 million, far from the price tag slapped by Richard Caring on the The Ivy Collection.


With options of paying off the HSBC loan with a quick sale now seemingly running out, in a matter of weeks those Directors may have no choice but to be reliant on that carefully secured letter of undertaking. But can he pay it?

Matri-money

To hinder efforts to answer that question UnCaring has long used the fact his father was born in the US of A to claim ‘non-dom’ tax status in the UK, despite his pa having come to London shortly after World War II and Tricky Dicky himself having been born in London.


Nevertheless his successful securing of becoming a non-dom means that for decades he has not been required to disclose any offshore accounts he may have in jurisdictions such as Switzerland or Monaco to the UK tax man.


Yet there is one known benchmark from which an analysis of his wealth can start, which comes in 2016 and the time of his divorce when it is a matter of legal record that he was worth $425m.


That was when his relationship with a Brazilian former escort with whom he already had a son blew up his marriage, leading to his wife Jacqui suing for divorce and taking half his fortune with her in one of the UK’s largest ever divorce settlements.


The $425m legal documents show the split left to him has undergone some serious inflating in subsequent years, at least according to his media friends. The peak came in 2021, when he was pegged at being worth $1.25bn in the 2021 Sunday Times Rich List.


It was a valuation that raised eyebrows across London, coming as it did when many of his businesses on which that valuation was based had spent months shuttered during the Covid pandemic.


It also came just after the company had gone cap in hand to the government for $75m in furlough payments in a cash grab that was portrayed as essential to keep his empire’s head above water and his staff still in employment.

In 2022, UnCaring himself admitted in a sit down with the Financial Times that the Covid-era had been a bad one for him, revealing his companies suffered ‘steep losses’ during the pandemic.


This followed what he had already publicly acknowledged were a slew of bad business decisions.

When asked by the Times about the $150m he paid to get hold of Annabel’s and the Birley Group, he admitted: “Was it the best commercial investment we’ve ever made? Not at all.”


Even the $240m he paid for Wentworth Golf Club was a bad buy, he confessed. The sum paid was an embarrassing $90m more than the Club’s actual book value, making it a huge overpayment.

Rob Peter to Pay Paul

Recent years have seen many of his business’ accounts veer only further to the red, fueling questions about their true worth and therefore the wealth of their ultimate beneficial owner.


With his multitude of official titles including being Chairman of The Ivy Collection Group, The Caprice Group, The Birley Group and The Bills Restaurant Group, Tricky Dicky likes to keep the organizing of his businesses complex, with many held under a range of holding companies.


Who owns the Ivy? How much of Soho House does Richard Caring own? Away from the media froth around UnCaring, it is in the annual accounts at the UK’s Companies House that figures in black and white give answers – and the scale of his present predicament.


Even though he has been a member of Soho House’s Board since 2008 and is a prominent feature of the celebrity-loved global network of private members clubs, his actual shareholding size is limited. In the last declaration in May 2023 he was cited as having 373,774 shares of Soho House & Co Inc (SHCO), with a value of $3 Million in a company whose overall market cap is $1.45bn. In respect to Soho House, UnCaring is just a small not a sexy fish.


Rather it is his three main holding companies that are the keys to his kingdom. They are MBH Group, housing Annabel’s, Mark’s Club and 46 Berkeley Square among other entities; Troia (UK), containing The Ivys and Harry’s Bar; and CH Acquisitions, home to favored celeb-haunt Sexy Fish among others.


Their accounts are not pretty reading. The most recent annual reports show that huge sums have had to be sloshed around between them in an exercise that stinks of being one of ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’.


CH Acquisition alone owes $40m to other entities in Tricky Dicky’s group. Together all the elements in his group now in hock to each other so much there is a gaping hole in the balance sheet with the latest accounts showing there is a net balance of $132m owed by the Group.



CH Acquisition Ltd: Notes to the Financial Statements for the 52 weeks ended January 1, 2023


It means UnCaring has already had to extend his own personal largesse. In the last reporting year he ploughed an additional $1.6m of his own money into his commercial enterprises, leaving him already now owed a multi-million dollar sum by his businesses.

Non-Dom No More

In March 2024, the UK’s then Conservative government announced the country’s non-dom tax regime would be phased out. Existing non-doms would be allowed a two-year transition period, during which they would be encouraged to bring their foreign wealth into the UK system.


Any hope of a reprieve ended when the newly elected Labor government confirmed the plan last October, saying the old system would be replaced with a residence-based regime. At the time it announced the transition period would be extended from two years to three. This month, at Davos, its head of Treasury said this may be extended even longer following an outflow of millionaires from the country.


But, whatever the nature of such tweaking, what is not in doubt is that the cozy non-dom deal UnCaring has exploited for decades is coming to an end.


His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs officials will be able to take their pencils to Tricky Dicky’s out-of-country books and all his sources of personal wealth, wherever held, are soon going to be known. The mystery of Tricky Dicky’s wealth is finally going to be uncloaked.


That’s presuming he has not already chosen instead to flee the UK, and his flailing struggle to keep his business empire operational, long before then.


More coming…