Chain reaction

摘要

The tagline of the 1989 film Rosalie Goes Shopping, about a woman who loves to shop and doesn't let the little matter of lack of cash dampen her enthusiasm, is 'When you're $100,000 in debt it's your problem. When you're $1 m in debt, it's the bank's.' How interesting that the release of that film should have coincided with David Thomas and John Jarvis cooking up an audacious plan to create a hotel chain, as it neatly sums up their philosophy when they went in search of ?200m worth of finance to enable them to realise their goal. There they were, just the two of them, sharing a desk in a tiny rented office in Knightsbridge, with an income-to-expenses ratio that was enough to make Mr Micawber lose the will to live. Things were looking so precarious that Thomas's children, one of whom was at university and other about to start medical school, offered to go out and get jobs. But the one thing that the partners shared was a combination of more than 30 years' experience in the leisure industry, which, together with their enthusiasm and synergistic financial and marketing skills, proved enough to persuade backers to green light their purchase of the 41-property Embassy Hotel chain from Allied Lyons.