Only Big Business Is Against No-Deal Brexit, Hotelier Forte Says
Only Big Business Is Against No-Deal Brexit, Hotelier Forte Says
(Bloomberg) -- Business isn’t against a no-deal Brexit; big business is, according to Rocco Forte, chairman and founder of the eponymous hotel chain and a known backer of leaving the European Union.
Major U.K. companies represented by the Confederation of British Industry have been wrong on several issues in the past, Forte said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. They’re wrong now in saying that leaving the European Union on World Trade Organisation terms would be disastrous.
“Why would it be a huge disruption? The government has got plenty of time to get ready for it,” said Forte, whose company owns hotels including the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh, Brown’s Hotel in London and the Hotel Savoy in Florence.
Rocco Forte Hotels wants to expand in New York and has taken its first steps outside Europe with hotels in the Middle East and Shanghai. Forte founded his company in 1996, after working for the hotel chain established by his father in the 1930s.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jack Sidders in London at jsidders@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam at sbhaktavatsa@bloomberg.net, Paul Armstrong
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