The owners of London’s most iconic jazz club have paid themselves a £3 million dividend, its latest accounts show, after the venue’s largest shareholders tightened their grip over the ownership of the company.
65-year-old Soho-based Ronnie Scott’s, famed for hosting music legends such as Miles Davis, Nina Simone and Jimi Hendrix, showed signs of a strong recovery after the pandemic, with sales of £14 million in the year to March 2023, a jump of around a third compared to the previous year, while pre-tax profits stood at £3.4 million.
Company filings show Monaco-based millionaire property developer Robert Bourne became a major shareholder in November after acquiring a stake from long-serving 83-year-old director Michael Watt via an offshore entity known as “Jazz Box.”
Watt, a former oil executive from New Zealand who remains a regular at the club, previously controlled a 50% stake in the business, but this was cut to 25% in 2019 and further reduced to 10% late last year under the terms of a call option agreed by Watts in 2019.
Bourne is the husband of impresario Sally Greene, who took over the venue in 2005. He owns property in Waterloo as well as a number of other London hospitality venues including the Queens ice rink in Queensway.
The pandemic proved a turbulent time for Ronnie Scott’s with revenue sliding to barely more than £1 million in the year to March 2021, during which time Watt and Jazz Box provided several hundred thousand pounds in loans to the business, while Bourne and Watt each provided a personal guarantee of £900,000 to the firm’s bankers.
