Hotels/Conferencing
2015: No.33 £110m
2014: No.33 £100m
Conference venue millionaire Alan English backed the luxury four-star Hotel La Tour in the centre of Birmingham.
The former owner of a major national chain of conference centres, English, aged 72, was the money behind the £24 million 174-bedroom Hotel La Tour in Albert Street which opened its doors in 2012. It was one of the first projects of Birmingham’s City Park Eastside development.
The award-winning hotel boasts an Executive Business Floor – the Auden Rooms – with nine separate conference facilities, along with executive board rooms which include multi-centre video-conferencing facilities. Two of the conference rooms lead onto a roof terrace with views of the City Park and Millennium Point.
English and his wife Wendy, aged 69, had a 57 per cent stake in Milton Keynes-based Hayley Conference Centres. Alan English was a director of the business for seven years and part of its founding management team. In 2007 the firm was sold to Principal Hotels owned by European private equity firm Permira for £358 million.
At the time of the sale Hayley Conference Centres specialised in “stately home” type conference centres with eight facilities around the UK including London, Manchester, Stratford, Nottingham, Swindon and Dorking, and another under development just outside Paris. Hayley’s development was funded by 3i who reinvested in the company in 2005 to support its international growth strategy.
The Birmingham Hotel La Tour is seen as the first of a group of hotels which could also take in Manchester, Scotland and the South.
