One of the most glamorous casinos within the United Kingdom London Ritz Club has slumped into a £12 million loss, which comes as a huge difference to last year’s £5.2 million profit and the result of such an outcome has been attributed to much higher gaming debts.
London Ritz club, owned by billionaire 81-year-old twins Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, has blamed the most recent slump on big debts run up by high rollers, who failed to pay up their own losses.
Casino’s latest accounts filed at Companies House reveal that Ritz would have made a £2.4 profit should the debts have been collected and a turnover fall from £67 million to £38 million.
Ritz Club chief executive Roger Marris reveals debts were from less than half a dozen ‘slow payers’ from the Far East, adding that is ‘normal in the business’.
“We cater to an international audience who play at a very high level. It’s very much about the personal relationship. We walk them regularly and they are paying us back. We do pursue them”, he told Daily Mail.
London Ritz Club is known to have taken its clients to the High Court for failure to pay debts, with one of the most prominent cases being the one of Saudi heiress Noora Abdullah Mahawish Al-Daher, who lost £2 million using chips bought with a cheque.
After claiming that the credit was given ‘unlawfully’ and that the club should have refused to serve her, she was ordered to pay the full amount by High Courte in 2014.
