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| Amanpuri -where it all began in 1988 |
It was F Scott Fitzgerald who said about the very rich – “They are different from you and me.” The way they take their holidays can also be quite special. The level of service and discretion offered by Amanresorts made them the favourite boltholes of the rich and famous for more than a quarter of a century. Things looked as if they were about to change though, as Adrian Zecha, the founding genius behind the company, was ousted by two of the new owners in early May 2014.
His replacement as CEO? - Vladislav Doronin, the Russian Oligarch who dated Naomi Campbell before moving on to Luo Zilin, a former assistant of Ms Campbell who later became Miss Universe China. Unaccountably, that relationship now seems to have run its course too.
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| Vlad with Ms Luo |
Founder of Capital Group, the Moscow-based property company, Doronin, 51, promises to “preserve its appeal as an experience beyond simply ‘getting away’ - a personalized environment, each with a distinctive local feel combined with unobtrusive, but exceptional, attention to detail.” However, most Amanjunkies, as devotees are known, shuddered at the thought of Zecha no longer being in command. Doronin was at pains to emphasize to me last May that “Aman's success also lies in the careful, selective nature of its growth and that is a path we intend to stick to.” He also insists that Zecha retired, but no one else believed that for a moment.
In fact, a London High Court judgement on July 14 has stripped Doronin of his CEO position and restored it to Zecha, as the entire operation was done in a questionable way. The other person found to be at fault is Johan Eliasch, a Swedish businessman, who, unbeknownst to some of the other investors, was secretly working in concert with Doronin. To give you an idea of the type of people these two gentlemen are, they were also attempting to immediately throw Zecha out of his bungalow in Singapore, where he has lived for the past 15 years. Fortunately, this was also stopped by Catherine Newman QC, the presiding deputy judge of the High Court Chancery Division, who said she found it "needlessly and inappropriately aggressive conduct". However, the judgement only puts Zecha back as CEO until the end of July 2014. After that, it will be up to the board to decide and, thanks to Eliasch switching sides, no one knows what the outcome will be, although the judgement on July 14 hinted that perhaps Peak Investments, which is controlled by Zecha ally Omar Amanit, may want to get rid of Eliasch: "Peak may well wish to change one of its negotiating representatives, if it no longer has confidence in Mr. Eliasch but that is entirely a matter for Peak," commented Catherine Newman QC in her judgement.
Zecha, a highly alert 81, virtually invented the concept of the luxury hideaway resort, which has now been copied by every hotelier from Richard Branson’s Necker Island, to new five star developments from all the major hotel brands.
In fact, a London High Court judgement on July 14 has stripped Doronin of his CEO position and restored it to Zecha, as the entire operation was done in a questionable way. The other person found to be at fault is Johan Eliasch, a Swedish businessman, who, unbeknownst to some of the other investors, was secretly working in concert with Doronin. To give you an idea of the type of people these two gentlemen are, they were also attempting to immediately throw Zecha out of his bungalow in Singapore, where he has lived for the past 15 years. Fortunately, this was also stopped by Catherine Newman QC, the presiding deputy judge of the High Court Chancery Division, who said she found it "needlessly and inappropriately aggressive conduct". However, the judgement only puts Zecha back as CEO until the end of July 2014. After that, it will be up to the board to decide and, thanks to Eliasch switching sides, no one knows what the outcome will be, although the judgement on July 14 hinted that perhaps Peak Investments, which is controlled by Zecha ally Omar Amanit, may want to get rid of Eliasch: "Peak may well wish to change one of its negotiating representatives, if it no longer has confidence in Mr. Eliasch but that is entirely a matter for Peak," commented Catherine Newman QC in her judgement.
Zecha, a highly alert 81, virtually invented the concept of the luxury hideaway resort, which has now been copied by every hotelier from Richard Branson’s Necker Island, to new five star developments from all the major hotel brands.
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| Amanbagh in Rajasthan - where langurs swoop down on your breakfast |
Essentially, the Amanresorts "formula" is a minimalist/classical approach to local architecture and culture with discrete villas and bungalows, often with their own pool. The other defining quality is that Amans look empty even when they are full, such is the desire to provide oodles of space for each bungalow/villa. Adrian still only works with a handful of architects but the initial influence came from the great Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, who created some extraordinary villas in Batujimbar, in Bali. Later, Ed Tuttle became a key influence.
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| Adrian with his trademark impish smile |
Born into a wealthy Czech/Indonesian family who owned plantations around Jogyakarta, Zecha went to Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude before returning to Asia as a journalist. After advising some hotel groups on investment possibilities, in the early Seventies, he co-founded Regent Hotels with two other hoteliers – Georg Rafael and Bob Burns. This was a seriously stylish hotel group - predominantly in Asia - and later purchased by Four Seasons. The Istanbul Four Seasons and the one in Milan and New York all began as Regent Hotels.
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| Adrian's Batujimbar villa, the initial inspiration... |
After selling his stake for $30 million in 1986, he looked around for a site to build a holiday house in Phuket to complement his extraordinary Balinese villa, which was originally designed by Geoffrey Bawa for the Australian artist Donald Friend. Curiously for a tropical person, Adrian loathes the Monsoon season, so his plan was to have a villa in Phuket to complement the Bali one as they have completely opposite rainy seasons.
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| Amanpuri - Adrian's villa is at the tip |
The cost of getting water to his villa in Phuket was so high he decided to build a few more to spread the cost – and before long, Amanresorts was born (though it never had this name for a few more years and even today, it still doesn’t have a logo and has never advertised).
Until then, international luxury hotels usually had several hundred rooms, along the lines of Miami Beach or Surfer’s Paradise in Queensland. It was Zecha’s genius to plan instead for a hotel with more than 30 rooms, which charged three times the usual rates to compensate for the lack of scale.
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| Amanpuri - A pool pavilion |
Amanpuri became the first luxury hideaway hotel with no lobby, no telephones or TV and not even bills to sign. He wanted to replicate the sense of being a guest in a stunning private villa. Ed Tuttle, the Paris-based American architect, who had initially worked on his Balinese villa, designed the hotel and the villas. Adrian also got some of his ideas from the Aga Khan’ s resorts in Costa Smeralda in Sardinia. He actually sent one of his managers to stay at them in August –the Pitrizza, Romazzino - just to see how they did it.
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| Anthony Lark |
The first general manager was Anthony Lark, a twenty-something Australian, who had hardly left Sydney. This is another trait of Adrian – he loves picking inexperienced or unconventional individuals to run his hotels, as he believes they are better at making them not feel like impersonal hotels. Lark was an inspired choice and he remained with Adrian for more than a decade, overseeing the development of many of the newer ones too. He now runs Trisara, the Thai resort company, which has an equally stylish and villa-dominated concept just a few miles north of Amanpuri.
Like virtually everybody who has ever worked for Adrian, he has remained fiercely loyal to him. I recall a funny story when Jimmy Goldsmith came to stay at Amanpuri without any fanfare or expectation of special treatment, although he was a close friend of Zecha’s, even sharing the same birthday and birthyear as him. Someone staying there had recognized him and rushed over to tell Anthony how famous he was and should be given special treatment – when asked to describe him, he said he had a private jet which failed to help Anthony identify him as most of the other guests had them too. To Goldsmith’s credit, when Anthony asked if he would like a grander villa, he said he was more than happy to stay where he was. In the early days, Lark recalls that "Martina Navratilova would drop by at the tennis court with Bjorn Borg or Boris Becker and then we would end up in a villa with Kenzo – madness but great fun. Or those lengthy backgammon games between Charles Saatchi and Johan Eliasch. I lived in a bubble called the Amanbubble and never went or even looked outside. I was too busy keeping my head above water. I worked there for 12 years and never had an employment contract." There were also some hilarious mishaps: "Because there was no actual brand, there used to be rather dramatic mistakes. Once a husband said to his wife – “See you at the Aman at the weekend and one went in Phuket and the other pitched up in Bali.” Amanpuri also had a brilliant arrangement with the head barman from the Splendido at Portofino, who would come out in the winter months (off season in Europe, peak in Phuket) to make the best cocktails east of the Eden. There were also some close calls with some of the management too. One former manager recalled that “Adrian had this eclectic group of managers – one trainee manager turned up to work with me and we had Gadaffi’s son staying with a bunch of Russian hookers in his villa. On day one, my colleague had a bit too much to drink, so with a martini in his hand, he tried to break into their villa, saying “I will save you.” He was nearly shot by the Libyan Secret Service until one of the girls recognized him from the pool.”
Kurt Wachtveitl, formerly of Bangkok’s Oriental (Thai charm with German efficiency) and one of the greatest hotel managers of the past 50 years, believes "Adrian has actually saved many important people’s lives - often they would go to Amanpuri feeling suicidal but within a day or two, their outlook changed and they actually felt grateful for being alive.” (In the Sixties and Seventies, The Oriental was the first destination of what became the Aman crowd and was actually given a new lease of life when Amanpuri got going as it became the preferred stop over – not just for Aman, but also Jim Sherwood’s Oriental Express to Singapore and his Mandalay Steamer in Burma.)
Like virtually everybody who has ever worked for Adrian, he has remained fiercely loyal to him. I recall a funny story when Jimmy Goldsmith came to stay at Amanpuri without any fanfare or expectation of special treatment, although he was a close friend of Zecha’s, even sharing the same birthday and birthyear as him. Someone staying there had recognized him and rushed over to tell Anthony how famous he was and should be given special treatment – when asked to describe him, he said he had a private jet which failed to help Anthony identify him as most of the other guests had them too. To Goldsmith’s credit, when Anthony asked if he would like a grander villa, he said he was more than happy to stay where he was. In the early days, Lark recalls that "Martina Navratilova would drop by at the tennis court with Bjorn Borg or Boris Becker and then we would end up in a villa with Kenzo – madness but great fun. Or those lengthy backgammon games between Charles Saatchi and Johan Eliasch. I lived in a bubble called the Amanbubble and never went or even looked outside. I was too busy keeping my head above water. I worked there for 12 years and never had an employment contract." There were also some hilarious mishaps: "Because there was no actual brand, there used to be rather dramatic mistakes. Once a husband said to his wife – “See you at the Aman at the weekend and one went in Phuket and the other pitched up in Bali.” Amanpuri also had a brilliant arrangement with the head barman from the Splendido at Portofino, who would come out in the winter months (off season in Europe, peak in Phuket) to make the best cocktails east of the Eden. There were also some close calls with some of the management too. One former manager recalled that “Adrian had this eclectic group of managers – one trainee manager turned up to work with me and we had Gadaffi’s son staying with a bunch of Russian hookers in his villa. On day one, my colleague had a bit too much to drink, so with a martini in his hand, he tried to break into their villa, saying “I will save you.” He was nearly shot by the Libyan Secret Service until one of the girls recognized him from the pool.”
Kurt Wachtveitl, formerly of Bangkok’s Oriental (Thai charm with German efficiency) and one of the greatest hotel managers of the past 50 years, believes "Adrian has actually saved many important people’s lives - often they would go to Amanpuri feeling suicidal but within a day or two, their outlook changed and they actually felt grateful for being alive.” (In the Sixties and Seventies, The Oriental was the first destination of what became the Aman crowd and was actually given a new lease of life when Amanpuri got going as it became the preferred stop over – not just for Aman, but also Jim Sherwood’s Oriental Express to Singapore and his Mandalay Steamer in Burma.)
Aman marketing in the early years consisted of Anthony travelling to Europe and then just going to places like Harry's Bar or Annabel’s with guests and being introduced to other potential guests. Anthony believes that “nobody even comes close to what Adrian has achieved. He has an extraordinary sense of good taste and elegance and he knew that if he built something that he and his friends liked, there was a good chance other people would like it too. Apart from being a genius at finding amazing plots of land in remote places, he created an entire new market and he made everybody understand luxury is the outcome of an experience, not a product."
Francois Richli, another former manager, believed that "his most important attribute was that he trusted his managers and his philosophy was always that the best hotels in the world were privately owned, not chains. He used to give the managers their hotels to run - we didn’t even have an operations manual. His way of training them was to invite them to his mansion in Bali, where he would smoke his cigars and tell his stories. He trusted us 100%. We were empowered to do what we like and people gave their all with only a few very rare exceptions.
We just absorbed his energy – when he wandered around Amanpuri, he was just in his shorts and t shirt. He really wasn’t interested in hotel managers from big group hotels.” Some of Adrian’s managers were chefs or night club managers, while Francois formerly ran a Scottish castle. In fact, one of the very best recent ones is the wife of a former manager.
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| Amanwana - magical |
Late last Century, I travelled with Adrian from Bali to Amanwana, the tented camp on the nature island reserve of Moyo. Once we arrived at the jetty, there was a huge number of fish and reef sharks swimming in and out of the pylons - so many it was like a psychedelic display of swirling patterns - more fish than I have ever seen in my life. Adrian rarely dresses up – he was only wearing a polo shirt and khaki shorts, then without any warning, he just plunged straight in, scattering the fish in all directions. He has little time for haute cuisine and once warned a General Manager that he would be sacked if they ever won any gastronomic awards as his whole philosophy was to keep it stylish but simple. (Though I recall he was highly appreciative of the bottle of Yquem '90 I brought along to accompany the tropical fruit). Later on that trip we flew further east to Flores, which was like entering the world of Conrad. The Aman boat we stayed on was a 100 foot converted junk with only two cabins. Sleeping out the back and idly clocking the night stars was easily my most pleasurable time ever on a boat.
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| Amanwana jungle tent |
Victoria Mather, travel editor of Vanity Fair, and someone who is notoriously tricky to please, believes "Adrian Zecha revolutionised hoteldom.
BZ - Before Zecha - top hotels were classic grand but AZ - after Zecha - there was the seismic shift to boutique cool. Still the fabulous service, to the power of 100 plus, but much less formality and gorgeous design. Zecha realised space was luxury, he was the King of Decluttering and you could have bare feet. Nobody has done it better because the service was magically telepathic and the bare feet had the best pedicures.
PZ - or Post-Zecha - I worry that the philosophy will be lost. The day you have to sign for a drink in an Aman will be a tragedy - and there will some ghastly corporate ‘vision’."
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| Amandari |
The roll call of famous Aman guests is so huge, it would virtually be easier to draw up a list of who wasn’t an Amanjunkie. Adrian Zecha frequently received hand written letters addressed to him by the most famous CEOs, monarchs or actors on the planet, almost as if they are thanking him for having them as personal guests. Just before her death, Princess Diana wrote one such note after she had consoled herself by flitting between all five Amanresorts in Indonesia, courtesy of a borrowed jet from a Saudi prince. (Recently, Adrian’s office received a hand-written thank you note from someone who just signed with their Christian name, but was unknown to him – it turned out to be the CEO of one of the best known companies on the planet).
Inevitably, not all of these VVIPs knew how to behave. Once, a very senior UK advertising person (not Saatchi) complained that one of the cleaning staff had stolen his wallet. Anthony assured him that this never happened, but our Mr. Major Player merely sneered and retorted that just showed how naive he was. A couple of days later, there was a little bit of back-peddling that had to be done when he discovered it lodged in a forgotten pocket in his suit case.
Inevitably, not all of these VVIPs knew how to behave. Once, a very senior UK advertising person (not Saatchi) complained that one of the cleaning staff had stolen his wallet. Anthony assured him that this never happened, but our Mr. Major Player merely sneered and retorted that just showed how naive he was. A couple of days later, there was a little bit of back-peddling that had to be done when he discovered it lodged in a forgotten pocket in his suit case.
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| Amanjiwo in central Java |
Nothing was ever too much trouble at these exquisite hideaways in the most unspoilt locations on the planet in Bhutan, Tahiti, Turkey and the Rocky Mountains, where a basic room starts at around £850 a day and can climb to more than 15 times that should you take a villa. The anecdotes of superlative service for the “out of sight rich” are legion. Once, Roman Abromovich and his family, arrived by yacht to an Amanresort, where their daughter became attached to a baby elephant, which she insisted on taking home – on the yacht. The management patiently explained to Abromovich's security staff that even a baby elephant require upwards of 50 kilos of fresh grass daily, but this was brushed side. "If the boss wants it done, it gets done," was the response. The hotel staff obliged by constructing a barge to deliver it only to find that the daughter had lost interest, so it was left behind.
Or, the time a Muslim Monarch drank Amanpuri out of its precious store of £4,000 a bottle Chateau Pétrus. The hotel immediately chartered a plane to Singapore to replenish their stocks. And when an ageing film star was too tired to negotiate the steps up from the beach? No problem - a palanquin was found and a handful of the staff lugged Elizabeth Taylor up to the entrance, while her truck driver husband ambled along behind. There are other stories about Masters of the Universe staying in Aman villas with their wives while their mistresses were booked in elsewhere on the resort. The most famous example of sensual overload was when a young Oligarch hired 30 of the Amanpuri villas and literally occupied them all with beautiful Russian students. Apparently he lost interest once they graduated.
Mistakes, however, can happen. The story that moved me the most was an anniversary event Aman arranged months in advance between a doting husband and wife. As a special surprise for his wife, the husband had arranged for Aman to source a precious bottle of La Romanee-Conti 66 (circa £10k) to be shipped out to settle, months before the very special dinner. All went well, the bottle was opened to breathe and it was drunk with enormous pleasure - the only problem was the surprised recipients were in fact guests at a completely different table.
Or, the time a Muslim Monarch drank Amanpuri out of its precious store of £4,000 a bottle Chateau Pétrus. The hotel immediately chartered a plane to Singapore to replenish their stocks. And when an ageing film star was too tired to negotiate the steps up from the beach? No problem - a palanquin was found and a handful of the staff lugged Elizabeth Taylor up to the entrance, while her truck driver husband ambled along behind. There are other stories about Masters of the Universe staying in Aman villas with their wives while their mistresses were booked in elsewhere on the resort. The most famous example of sensual overload was when a young Oligarch hired 30 of the Amanpuri villas and literally occupied them all with beautiful Russian students. Apparently he lost interest once they graduated.
Mistakes, however, can happen. The story that moved me the most was an anniversary event Aman arranged months in advance between a doting husband and wife. As a special surprise for his wife, the husband had arranged for Aman to source a precious bottle of La Romanee-Conti 66 (circa £10k) to be shipped out to settle, months before the very special dinner. All went well, the bottle was opened to breathe and it was drunk with enormous pleasure - the only problem was the surprised recipients were in fact guests at a completely different table.
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| Borobodhur - the Buddhist temple which inspired Amanjiwo |
The first Amanresorts tended to be in stunning remote environments, often next to local villagers, like Amanjiwo in Borobudur in central Java. The dedication to training local staff resulted in some charming misunderstandings between billionaires and village staff. One American guest was furious to discover a rat in his suite from the adjacent paddy field. Failing to make the staff member to understand what a rat was, he drew one, which prompted the helpful youth to go away to catch a large healthy rodent for this strange guest. But as Adrian says, it is also the experience that makes everything so memorable. How can one forget going to Borobudur before dawn and having special permission to ascend it as the sun breaks over a nearby volcano? Or just as stunning, taking the eight miles return journey to Amanjiwo on elephant back, down village lanes, across rivers and up through a forest or two? Sometimes, all it took was the actual sublime environment of the villas. I still recall spending days at Amandari just sitting in the opened up ground floor of our villa reading piles of books while tropical birds flitted in and around the valley.
In the first decade of its existence, Amanresorts expanded from Phuket to Bali, an island in the Philippines and later Morocco, India, China and elsewhere. The most recent one to open is a spectacular palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice, where even the cheapest suites are more than £1,200 a night.
One manager explained that “He was an inspiration because of all that he brought to the company but most of all, he did all this while having fun. He never drew a salary from Amanresorts. He just wanted a bowl of rice, a dog at his feet and a beautiful view, because he was creating a product not a business.” Adrian said to me that "
This is not the first time an issue has arisen about control of the company. In the late nineties, Zecha removed himself from the company for three years, when new owners tried to assert control over his management. During his couple of years absence, he started a new company called Maharesorts, with their only property being Jimmy Goldsmith’s elegant mountain estate in Mexico. It, too, knocked on heaven's door, what with its own smoking volcano on the horizon and the most exquisite tennis court I have ever seen. That, too, remains for some of my friends, their most blissful holiday experience ever.
We celebrated when Adrian regained control of Amanresorts, by going to the River Café in London, as I knew this would be the sort of simple cuisine that would appeal to him. (I cheated on the wine though, and Ruthie kindly let me bring along some Louis Latour Corton Charlemagne 96, a 66 DRC Echezeaux and a Ponsot Clos de la Roche 93. Being such a gent, I never heard him complain once that it was too fancy for him - he just grinned and drank it - and then grinned again).
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| Adrian with Ed Tuttle |
In 2007, DLF, an Indian real estate company purchased Amanresorts for US$250 million but in 2011 decided to divest themselves of it when profits did not reach their expectations. Since then, there were a steady stream of interested buyers, ranging from Goldman Sachs, LVMH and the Malaysian Government Fund. However, returns for investors have not always been as high as they were anticipated to be and other balked at leaving ultimate control in the hands of Adrian. Rival hoteliers I spoke to said the worldwide occupancy rate of Amanresorts is only 32%, though in the early days at least, break even was a mere 15% to 20% occupancy.
Finally, a deal was struck last February with Peak Hotels & Resorts Group, an investment shell, which apparently left Zecha in control, with talk of the future of Amanresorts being secured for decades to come. However, things soured in early May, when two of the biggest investors - Doronin and Johan Eliasch, the owner of the Head sports brand and now chairman of Aman Group, announced Zecha’s departure. The London Court ruling, which is imposed by threats of heavy fines and imprisonment if not carried out, returns Zecha as CEO at least until the end of July 2014. After that, it will be the decision of the board and a full hearing will be held in London to explore the options.
Zecha is a highly intelligent, charismatic person, who in his quest for new locations, has probably spent more time sleeping in the front of a Jumbo jet than in his two spectacular historic "Black and White" villas in Singapore. (Because he makes several long haul flights each month, his trick for keeping alert is to simply always sleep when is in the air and if anyone tries to speak to him, he just smiles and replies in fluent Japanese). Savvy people like the previous King of Bhutan ("Best Poker Hand in Asia - King with four Queens") welcomed Zecha in to construct four Amans throughout his kingdom as he knew that such a combination with unspoilt beauty was unbeatable.
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| Amandari - the pool at night |
He takes full credit for keeping hotels small: “I don’t believe you can scale a great hideaway beyond 50 rooms and treat people in a personal way – this concept wasn’t arrived at through some survey – that’s all bullshit…it’s just what I felt. What we are producing is not a hospitality product, but a lifestyle product – obviously, you have to provide for eating and sleeping, so we do that too, but what guests are really paying for is the experience.”
Does he have any concerns for rivals emerging? “We have no direct competition – I am not saying that there isn’t a resort that is as good or even better - of course there are, but what remains is that we have 26 hotels and six under construction in 18 different countries.”
Some former managers thick that one of the problems faced by Amanresorts was the lack of structure. "With Amanresorts, there is so much emotion attached to it so everybody believes they are a stakeholder in the company – it is a wonderful brand equity to have, but the problem is there was never a number two to Adrian or anyone who came close to being a successor." Some of these managers are not prepared to immediately diss Doronin as they say he has travelled around to visit quite a lot of Aman managers to canvass their opinions as to what needs to be done or kept the same. One former manager said that even from the early days, financial rigour was not uppermost in most managers minds. "Budget meetings were just an excuse to go to a new resort with your pals. Adrian would present nine budgets to be looked at in the morning but everyone knew they weren’t as important as us all getting together at a new property to gossip and compare notes. The financial controllers would be furious, but they really didn’t have that much power."
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| Amankila - the triple pools |
Anthony Lark has a more simple explanation: “The problem for Amanresorts was when the non A-list guests became amateur photographers with their iPhones. At that point, most celebrity guests stopped going to hotels and would only go to private villas to avoid being photographed. They are all camera shy.” Trisara, his Phuket hotel, only has villa accommodation and Anthony says some of the more famous guests literally check in, shut the door behind them and are never seen again, even when they leave.
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| Peter Muller, another influential early architect with Adrian |
(One former Aman General Manager told a curious story, which contradicted this general trend: “The magician David Copperfield and Claudia Schiffer were staying once and he was surprised that the guests didn’t want his autograph. Copperfield asked me to arrange for a photographer come and hide in the bushes so he could be snapped canoodling and rolling around with Claudia at their villa. I arranged it, gave him the film and next thing I know he sold it to Paris Match. I think it was to prove he wasn’t gay.”)
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| Aman Summer Palace in Peking - my last visit to an Aman, in March 2014 |
Although the official announcement of the Aman Group (as it is now called) stated that Adrian Zecha had decided to step down from his position as Chairman and CEO, none of his closest friends or indeed any other well-informed observers believes it. Zecha himself politely declined to comment on the matter, but others were not so reticent. One friend remarked: “Adrian did not resign – he was sacked, along with his Number Two, Trina Dingler Ebert, the executive director. Other heads are still falling. There are quite a few high-powered lawyers getting very rich at the moment dealing with the fallout. Adrian’s real fear is that whoever buys it or controls it will over develop it. Vlad is a property guy in Moscow and has made his money by turning over property – will this be his plan for a villa play with Amanresorts?” From all of the people I have spoken to for this story, most said Doronin was quite charming, but that he could be extremely ruthless. According to the New York Post, "Soon after the deal was inked, Doronin told Amanat, “If I feel that you tried to screw me, I will hunt you down and shoot you,” Amanat told the court, documents reveal.
During their partnership, things got so tense that the Russian billionaire once frisked Amanat — a US investor in “The Twilight Saga” studio Summit Entertainment — to make sure he wasn’t wearing a wire, court papers claim."
The pernickety high-maintenance Amanjunkies will temporarily breathe a sigh of relief. Already, one leading hotelier I know was approached to become COO, but declined. Perhaps the rot has already begun - the manager of a yet to be opened Aman in Latin America just boasted to a friend of mine that they are only interested in attracting families with a net worth of $100m...if that is the objective, why not simply narrow it down to Oligarchs and the Ecclestone family?
As for Adrian, he is keeping his cards close to his chest, but will certainly start doing other interesting things if he fails to regain permanent control beyond July 31. He is still chairman of GHM, a broader based hotel group, with its offices right next to Amanresorts in Singapore. For the moment, it is time for him to celebrate yet another twist of fate that has kept the wolves from the door, but they are still lurking in the yard.
During their partnership, things got so tense that the Russian billionaire once frisked Amanat — a US investor in “The Twilight Saga” studio Summit Entertainment — to make sure he wasn’t wearing a wire, court papers claim."
The pernickety high-maintenance Amanjunkies will temporarily breathe a sigh of relief. Already, one leading hotelier I know was approached to become COO, but declined. Perhaps the rot has already begun - the manager of a yet to be opened Aman in Latin America just boasted to a friend of mine that they are only interested in attracting families with a net worth of $100m...if that is the objective, why not simply narrow it down to Oligarchs and the Ecclestone family?
As for Adrian, he is keeping his cards close to his chest, but will certainly start doing other interesting things if he fails to regain permanent control beyond July 31. He is still chairman of GHM, a broader based hotel group, with its offices right next to Amanresorts in Singapore. For the moment, it is time for him to celebrate yet another twist of fate that has kept the wolves from the door, but they are still lurking in the yard.
A much shorter version of this story appears in the latest edition of Newsweek
www.newsweek.com/trouble-paradise-251309
www.amanresorts.com
www.amanresorts.com