From an icon of the hotel industry in São Paulo, remembered for having staged the last four Frank Sinatra shows in Brazil and being the setting for films and soap operas, to the center of a succession of legal disputes involving disputes over inheritance, family breakups, accusations of mismanagement and millions of reais in debt.
The closing of the Maksoud Plaza hotel, on September 7, was another media event in a spiral of disputes involving what was one of the most famous hotel and gastronomy ventures in the capital of São Paulo.
Opened in 1979, Maksoud Plaza lived its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was remembered for being both a meeting point for artists and bohemians, and for being a relevant gastronomic and cultural center. The 24-hour bars and restaurants matched the imagery of a city that never slept.
The 150Night Club hosted, in addition to Sinatra, jazz and blues legends such as Etta James, Alberta Hunter, Bobby Short and Buddy Guy. At Trianon Piano Bar, the Peixoto, brothers of Cauby, rocked nights with a repertoire of jazz and bossa nova.
In the kitchen, La Cuisine du Soleil, opened by French nouvelle cuisine icon Roger Vergé, is considered a gastronomic landmark in the capital.
Installed in an upscale area of the Bela Vista neighborhood, the building has 22 floors, 372 rooms, 44 master suites and once employed around 350 employees. It hosted stars such as Mick Jagger, Ozzy Osbourne, Ray Charles, Catherine Deneuve and Pedro Almodóvar.
In the early 2000s, the glow began to fade. The economic crisis of the turn of the decade and the expansion of competition caused Maksoud Plaza to start a cycle of deep crisis. In 2003, when the hotel turned 25, Henry Maksoud, its founder, resented the difficulties. “The hotel industry is in shambles,” he told leafin season.
Henry Maksoud died in April 2014, aged 85. A year earlier, after being hospitalized for pneumonia, he walked away from the business and passed control to his grandson, who was already working in the group.
A few days later, the brothers Roberto and Claudio, his sons, challenged the validity of a will in which the father dedicated 50% of his fortune to his second wife, Georgina, and Henry Maksoud Neto, who is Roberto’s son.
Months before the patriarch’s death, Roberto and Claudio filed a lawsuit, which was extinguished with the death of Maksoud, with the father’s request for interdiction. They claimed that the stepmother did not allow the children to visit him.
The hotel was not the only business he founded – and this is also, in a way, the origin of one of the recent crises involving the family. The Maksoud group inherited tax and labor debts from Hidroservice, an engineering company that worked on the construction of Galeão airports, in Rio, and Eduardo Gomes, in Manaus (AM), and is the controller of the hotel.
In the 1990s, the building and land on Rua São Carlos Pinhal, where the Plaza used to be, were sold as collateral in labor claims.
In 2011, the building ended up being bought by Jussara and Fernando Simões for R$142 million, but the hotel continued to function while the Maksoud group challenged the terms of the auction in court.
Made number 1 in the hotel’s management, Maksoud Neto tried to rebuild the Plaza. The new management hired specialized consultants and adopted new governance and results audit procedures, reducing labor claims by 93%.
The opening of the Frank Bar, in the lobby, and the nightclub PanAnam, on the 22nd floor, brought a new audience to the hotel and even helped to improve the occupancy level. Both were conceived by businessman Facundo Guerra.
Maksoud Neto attributed to the developments a 20% increase in the occupancy of rooms, in the midst of a movement to encourage accommodation by residents of São Paulo. In 2017, the occupancy rate reached 75%.
PanAnam closed in 2017 after a fatality. A customer jumped from the building’s helipad, which served as a smoking area. The house was closed the next day.
Frank the Wine! and 150Maksoud were still open until the hotel’s last day in December.
Since the announcement of the closure, the brothers Claudio and Roberto have intensified the judicial offensive against Henry Maksoud Neto. In addition to the dispute over the inventory, the children of the hotel’s founder also opposed the request for judicial reorganization filed by the group on September 21, 2020.
On December 17, the brothers obtained a provisional decision to postpone handing over the building to Simões, who had bought the building years earlier. The guardianship did not discuss whether the delivery of the property should or should not take place.
Judge Araldo Telles, from the 2nd Reserved Chamber of Business Law, only postponed the procedure until January 30, so that there was time for the judicial reorganization judge to express his views on the questions raised by the heirs in the appeal.
Claudio and Roberto contest several points of the judicial recovery, such as the agreement that provided for the delivery of the building to Simões. They even questioned the impartiality of the judicial administrator appointed to oversee the judicial recovery, Oreste Laspro, because he had acted as a lawyer for the Simões family on two occasions.
The brothers say they will not stop fighting for the hotel to be reopened at the same address.
The postponement of the delivery of the building expired on January 30th. Simões does not say whether the transfer was formalized.
“After completing the procedures that involve the ownership of the property, the new owners will feel very honored to enable a new activity in the place – still to be defined”, they say, in a note. Jussara and Fernando Simões are shareholders of Simpar, the holding company that controls JSL, of logistics, and Movida.
Maksoud Plaza moments
1979
Inauguration of the Maksoud Plaza hotel
1981
Between August 13 and 16, Frank Sinatra stays at the hotel and performs at the 150Night Club
nineteen ninety
Former Hidroservice employee files a labor lawsuit to collect salary and reverse a just cause
1992
On December 9, singer Axl Rose, from Guns N’Roses, threw a chair from the mezzanine, at dawn, towards reporters who were on the ground floor.
2008
Maksoud Plaza building goes up for auction for the first time, but fails
Buyers withdraw after injunction suspended auction effects
The minimum bid was BRL 47.5 million at the time, around BRL 104.2 million today.
2011
In a new auction, the building was bought for the minimum bid of R$ 70 million, around R$ 153.6 million today
2013
Henry Maksoud steps away from hotel management, passing command to his grandson
2014
On April 18, Henry Maksoud died of cardiac arrest.
The children Claudio and Roberto contest the will and start a fight over the estate
2015
Seeking to revitalize itself, the hotel opened the PanAm Club (in January) and the Frank Bar (in April)
2019
TST validates the auction of the hotel building
2020
Under the impact of the pandemic, the group asks for judicial recovery on September 21
The list of creditors of the group companies has nine pages
In labor debt alone, there are 359 people to whom the group owes money
2021
On December 7, the hotel closes its doors, taking staff and guests by surprise
Source: Folha
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