New York’s hospitality industry can be downright forbidding to outsiders. In the best of times, it’s a blood sport, and now there’s a new player: the Reuben Brothers, an English property-and-investment empire that aims, according to principal Jamie Reuben, to become the “LVMH of real estate” and “re-invigorate the Upper East Side.” A) Does the Upper East Side need re-invigorating? And B) Is there room for more hospitality, especially from British outsiders?
The young executive driving the charge is Reuben, a 37-year-old member of the firm that was co-founded by his father, David, and his uncle, Simon, in 2002. Now both in their 80s, their collective net worth was recently valued at $32 billion. Jamie is spearheading his family’s assault on American hospitality to pick the right real estate and select the architecture, design, and management teams to bring these hospitality openings to life.
I met with Reuben in late September in the then still-under-construction hotel lobby of the Surrey. The landmarked 1920s property, on East 76th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, was bought from the Kaufman Organization in late 2020 for an estimated $150 million. It opens next week and will be managed by the Corinthia Hotels group. The flag of Newcastle United Football Club flies above the entrance; the family co-owns the club, and Reuben is on its board of directors.
Reuben, who had recently returned from seeing the band Coldplay perform in Athens, appeared in a dark-blue cotton suit, white shirt, and sneakers. He was laser-focused but also droll, speaking in sharp, snappy sentences like a C.E.O. moving a board meeting on to the next item. But he appeared a little nervous, too, occasionally clicking his fingers, probably because the Reubens are press-shy.
I asked him how it felt to now be the public face of the empire. “I’m not sure I am,” he said with a laugh.
Two other New York openings include Maxime’s, a private members’ club from Robin Birley (founder of the exquisite London venues 5 Hertford Street and Oswald’s), which is slated to open early next year on Madison Avenue and 69th Street in the old Westbury Hotel. It is being designed by Basil Walter—who also happens to be Air Mail’s architecture adviser. There is also the Twenty Two, a hotel-and-members’-club hybrid set to open in December. Its first iteration, co-founded by hotelier Navid Mirtorabi, opened in London in 2022. The New York branch will be located in a historic building just off Union Squre that was formerly owned by Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt Shepard.
Further afield, the Reubens have also bought and restored the Vineta Hotel, in Palm Beach (formerly the Chesterfield), which will be managed by the Oetker Collection (owners of the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, in Cap d’Antibes, and the Bristol in Paris, among others). A vast residential-and-commercial redevelopment in Los Angeles’s Century City neighborhood is set to open in 2025.
Over the past six years, the Reubens have invested $6 billion in the wider U.S. market. “This without third-party capital,” according to company documents. That’s quite the bet.
A lot is resting on Reuben’s shoulders. But before the naysayers get overexcited, he has a history in the sector. He has overseen the acquisition and opening of Hotel La Palma in Capri (similarly managed by the Oetker Collection), the Experimental Group’s hotels in Venice and Verbier, and the Fairmont in Los Angeles’s Century Plaza.
I asked him what being the “LVMH of real estate” means for the family. “It’s all about having the right type of property,” he said. While he didn’t spell it out, adjacency to a good product, the sort that sets the neighborhood’s tone, is also key. To that end, the Reubens have acquired storefronts on Madison Avenue, which they rent out to what he described as “anchor tenants” such as “Khaite, Giorgio Armani, Eleventy, Isabel Marant, and Oliver Peoples,” he said, clicking his fingers.
Reuben mentioned several times, not without pride, that his originally Greek mother, Debra, is American (she grew up in Queens), and, because of her, he has “a deep love of America and New York.” Maybe this is why his eye has been on the U.S. for a while. “I was spending more time here, I opened an office, then Covid hit,” he said. “I remember seeing an article saying New York is dead. So I told my dad and uncle this is the time to invest, and they gave me the confidence to do so.”
At the Surrey the suites are named after bridges in Central Park, which is near the hotel. Its overall look, designed by decorator Martin Brudnizki, is redolent of a certain type of Parisian midcentury-modern aesthetic. There’s a spa in partnership with French beauty brand Sisley. Casa Tua, a celebrated Mediterranean restaurant whose original location is in Miami, has arrived on the ground floor with a members-only club area.
I asked him what being the “LVMH of real estate” means for the family. “It’s all about having the right type of property,” he said.
Of the three ventures, Maxime’s feels like the social game-changer. Birley is the son of Lady Annabel Goldsmith and the late Mark Birley (himself the son of portrait painter Sir Oswald Birley), who created London’s original dining-and-party venue for aristocrats, Annabel’s, in 1963. As he was dying, Mark unexpectedly sold off his hospitality portfolio (including Mark’s Club, Harry’s Bar, and George) to garment tycoon Richard Caring. It was then that Robin Birley entered into a partnership with the Reubens. They own the building in Mayfair’s Shepherd Market, formerly a red-light district, that became 5 Hertford Street.
“It’s going to be sensational,” Reuben said of Maxime’s. “[Robin] put so much time and effort into this. He’s ingrained himself in the local community.” He pauses. “Sometimes international businesses come in without doing that.” Perhaps the arrival of a Birley Bakery on the former site of Italian café Poppi, on Madison, will serve as an entry-level taste of their offerings to non-members, as it has done in London.
Is he nervous? “Yes,” Reuben quickly answered. Unlike London, where there’s more continuity, “New York is more transient,” he says. The popularity of restaurants and hotels can wane quickly. He then looked me in the eye and said, “Can I be confident and nervous?”
His father and uncle are of Iraqi-Jewish descent but spent their early years in India. When their parents separated, in the 50s, they moved to the United Kingdom without much to their name. David first worked in scrap metals, while Simon sold carpets. When England’s oldest carpet-manufacturing company filed for bankruptcy, Simon acquired it. When it started to turn around, he diversified (in partnership with his brother under their newly formed flagship company, TransWorld) in London’s commercial-property market, specifically in Kensington and Chelsea.
Investments in Russia’s scrap-metals market followed. When the country’s smelters fell into debt, the brothers entered into the business of the processing of raw materials, selling off the finished products at a profit. By 1995, their global sales were valued at more than $8 billion. They then divested themselves of all their Russian assets, acquiring mining interests in Morocco, Indonesia, and South Africa while also investing in a broad range of other sectors.
Reuben’s upbringing, alongside his brother, David Jr., and sister, Jordana, was in marked contrast to his father and uncle’s. He was born in London and educated at the private North Bridge House School, followed by Regent’s University London, where he studied business. After graduating, he founded an emerging-markets investment fund with a friend before entering the family company at 27.
In 2018, Reuben became managing director of the Burlington Arcade on Piccadilly, London’s oldest shopping mall, which the company had bought for $390 million. It was originally built in 1819, and its rules state that only two people in the world are allowed to whistle going down it: Paul McCartney and a schoolboy named Jaden. It was originally established when prostitutes stationed on the upper level would whistle to warn pickpockets that policemen were on the prowl.
Reuben is not married, and wouldn’t comment on whether he is single. What does he do in his spare time? “I went to Scandinavia this summer, and I love Athens,” he replied. “I’ve got a mild addiction to Joe & the Juice club sandwiches; I sometimes eat three a day. I need to do an online course to take me off them. Other than that, I spend my time fielding phone calls from my niece, who has just moved here, asking me to get her into clubs and bars. I’ve become her personal concierge. I don’t mind—that’s fine,” he added, laughing.
Birley, who is even more press-shy than his investors, provided his take on Reuben. “Jamie is a trustworthy, loyal partner,” he wrote in an e-mail. “He has a keen instinct for great real estate. When the time came to open a club in New York, I thought, What better partner?”
I asked Reuben what his perception of privilege is and how it sits with him. “This comes up a lot,” he said. “Firstly, I am privileged. The first thing you’ve got to do is accept that. I’ve had the most incredible fortune, but I genuinely consider the biggest fortune was my parents’ giving me a sense of value and reality.”
What’s the best piece of advice he’s ever been given? “My uncle says to make somewhere successful, you have to bring in the mighty and the merry.”
Vassi Chamberlain is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL
