 His first venture into hospitality was the St. James' Clubs in the late 1970s, in Los Angeles, London, Paris and Antigua, which he sold in the late 1980s to finance the £4m purchase of Skibo Castle.De Savary built up a large business empire in the 1980s, with property interests including Land's End and John o' Groats.However, in the early 1990s economic downturn his empire collapsed – he sold both Land's End and John o' Groats in 1991 for an undisclosed sum to the businessman Graham Ferguson Lacey and his holding company Placeton went bankrupt in 1994 with debts of £200 million by one source and £715 million by another.