A hotel on the Strand is a potent symbol in the great money-Monopoly game

‘A jolly nice little place for lunch, handy because you can get to it on a number 11 bus.’ That was a senior partner of Cazenove the stockbrokers talking about the Savoy in the days
when captains of industry and City grandees treated its Grill as their canteen — and my predecessor Christopher Fildes, who nicknamed it the Dealmakers’ Arms, was often at the
captains’ tables.

‘A jolly nice little place for lunch, handy because you can get to it on a number 11 bus.’ That was a senior partner of Cazenove the stockbrokers talking about the Savoy in the days
when captains of industry and City grandees treated its Grill as their canteen — and my predecessor Christopher Fildes, who nicknamed it the Dealmakers’ Arms, was often at the
captains’ tables.

The City clientele drifted away after Gordon Ramsay took over in 2003 and abolished the jacket-and-tie rule; but perhaps they’ll drift back now that their old haunt has reopened along with
the rest of the great late-Victorian hotel after a three-year, £220-million facelift that was only meant to have taken 18 months and cost £120 million.