Andrew Davis (businessman)
Andrew Davis (born 12 February 1964) is a British businessman who founded the von Essen Group, which included Von Essen Hotels, PremiAir and the London Heliport. Early life and career. Davis went to St Bede's Comprehensive School. Reigate Grammar School and Caterham College in Surrey, near where his father, Brendon, an executive at a subsidiary of Redland Tiles, and his mother still live. During the early 1990s he was involved in small-scale property development, founding and operating a small helicopter charter business. It has been reported that Davis's first moneymaking business was selling jewellery  and silver spoons door-to-door in the West Country. Von Essen Hotels. By 2000, Von Essen had three properties: Mount Somerset hotel in Taunton, Congham Hall hotel in Norfolk and New Park Manor in Hampshire. In 2000, it bought Ston Easton Park in Bath and Thornbury Castle in Gloucestershire for around £5m each. Bishopstrow House hotel in Wiltshire was bought in 2001. In 2002 Davis leased Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, and the Royal Crescent hotel in Bath, for £50m. In 2003, Von Essen bought Lewtrenchard Manor in Devon, Dalhousie Castle near Edinburgh, and, for £16 m, three Cotswolds properties (Buckland Manor, Lower Slaughter and Washbourne Court) and The Elms in the Teme Valley. The icing on the cake was the acquisition of the Sharrow Bay Country House hotel in Cumbria which was the UK's first country house hotel when it opened in the 1950s. According to the Good Food Guide's editor Desmond Balmer, Cliveden, the infamous backdrop to the 1960s Profumo Scandal, "has not shone as a hotel for the past five years." Of Sharrow Bay, Balmer said "We have dropped it." In 2007, after claims of Fawlty Towers-style bungling and poor  service, seven of Davis's hotels were axed from The Good Hotel Guide, the leading arbiter of independent hotels in Britain and Ireland. The holding company, Von Essen Hotels, went into administration in April 2011 after defaulting on debt interest repayments. The administrators, Ernst & Young, appointed a new chairman to replace Davis. The portfolio was broken up, and most hotels had buyers by September 2011. The 33 hotels, freehold unless stated otherwise, were: Other businesses. In 2007, Davis bought London Heliport and PremiAir. In February 2012 the heliport site was acquired by Reuben Brothers. In 2011 PremiAir went into liquidation . Von Essen Aviation owned several helicopters and a private jet. In 2010, Davis was ranked on the Sunday Times Rich List at No. 244, with an estimated wealth of £292m. According to the Sunday Times of 26 April 2009, von Essen sponsors the Sunday Times Rich List. Since then the veracity of these estimates, and of Davis's public persona, has been questioned. Personal life. Davis's ex partner is Andrew Onraet, they have lived together since 1998 till 2010. Prior to that, Davis appears to have married once, though he is now divorced. He is the father  of one son.