GLASGOW entrepreneur Ron McCulloch, who owns the city's Tunnel club, is to launch a network of nightclubs from Sydney to New York at a cost of #25m.
Mr McCulloch, cousin of Ken McCulloch who owns the expanding Malmaison hotel chain, has already agreed deals in both London's Leicester Square and in Sydney.
Big Beat, owned by Mr McCulloch and George Swanson - the former managing director of Whitbread Scotland - will open a club in Sydney in October 1998, with the 3000-capacity London venue planned for March 1999.
The move described by one insider as McCulloch's ''global domination strategy'' comes only months after his cousin hit the headlines with news of Malmaison's growth into England and Paris.
Mr McCulloch commented: ''We want to open a number of world-class clubs. It has been my ambition to open a club in London for a long time. This will be our flagship store.''
Mr McCulloch plans to open one club in North America, thought to be New York, with a further one or two in the Far East. Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong are believed to be the Far Eastern locations. The Glasgow-based firm also has its sights on a European opening, likely to be Italy. All of these would open their doors before the Sydney development next October.
The #6m London club, at 1 Leicester Square, is 100% owned by Big Beat. The company will also take an 85% stake in the Australian venture. A local managing consultant, Paul Collings, and a promoter will take the remaining stake.
Mr McCulloch's Big Beat Group beat a number of major UK companies including First Leisure and MTV to win the London bid from, property owners CLS.
Big Beat, which owns a number of Glasgow bars and clubs, aims to link-up at least three UK clubs through multimedia, with clubbers making contact in Glasgow, London and Liverpool through the internet.
An initial multimedia ''prototype'' is currently being tested at the Tunnel club.
''This only scratches the surface'', Mr McCulloch said. ''We will be linking these different strands of the network together. We have the ability to utilise modern technology to move this forward.''
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