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Wittington Investments

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Wittington Investments Limited
Company typePrivate
IndustryHolding company
Founded1941; 83 years ago (1941)
FounderW. Garfield Weston
Headquarters
London
,
England
Key people
Sir Guy Weston (chairman)[1]
RevenueDecrease £14.133 billion (2020)[1]
Total assetsIncrease £15.5 billion (2019)[2]
Owners
SubsidiariesAssociated British Foods (54.5%), Fortnum & Mason, Heal's, Wittington Properties
Websitewittington-investments.co.uk

Wittington Investments Limited is a privately owned British holding company.[3] It was incorporated in 1941 and is based in London, England.[4]

The company is 79.2% owned by the Garfield Weston Foundation, one of the United Kingdom's largest grant-making trusts, which was established in 1958 by Canadian businessman W. Garfield Weston (1898–1978), and 20.8% owned by members of the prominent Weston family. As of 5 April 2008, the trustees of the Garfield Weston Foundation valued their 79.2% stake in Wittington Investments at £3.62 billion.

Holdings

Wittington Investments owns 54.5% of Associated British Foods, one of the largest food companies in the world and the parent company of Primark, the largest discount clothing chain in the UK and Ireland. Associated British Foods also owns British Sugar, processor of the entire UK beet crop and producer of half the UK consumption of sugar. Further assets include ownership of the British department store Fortnum & Mason, as well as Heal's, a chain of homeware and furnishing stores in the UK.

Canadian company

There is a similarly-named company in Canada called "Wittington Investments, Limited", which controls George Weston Limited.[5] It was founded by W. Garfield Weston in 1952 and is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[6] In December 2020, the Weston family announced that Galen Weston Jr. had succeeded his father (Galen Weston Sr.) as the controlling shareholder of Wittington Investments, Limited.[5]

This company was the owner of the Selfridges Group of department store chains, including Selfridges in the UK, Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland, and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands.[7] In December 2021, it was reported that the majority of the Selfridges Group's assets were being sold for around £4 billion to a joint venture between Thai conglomerate Central Group and Austrian firm Signa Holding.[8][9]

References

  1. ^ a b "Wittington Investments Limited". Retrieved 2023-10-01.
  2. ^ "WITTINGTON INVESTMENTS LIMITED company key information". UK.GlobalDatabase.com. 1941-03-22. Retrieved 2022-12-04.
  3. ^ "Wittington Investments Limited". Companies House. Retrieved 2019-09-28.
  4. ^ "Company Overview of Wittington Investments Limited". Bloomberg Business. 31 August 2015.
  5. ^ a b "Weston Family Announces Succession". newswire.ca. Retrieved 2022-01-27.
  6. ^ "Wittington Investments, Limited". Dun & Bradstreet. Retrieved 29 December 2021.
  7. ^ "Brown Thomas and Arnotts may sell in £4bn Selfridges deal". Irish Times. Retrieved 2022-01-21.
  8. ^ "Selfridges sold for £4bn to Thai-Austrian alliance". BBC News. 2021-12-24. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  9. ^ "CENTRAL GROUP AND SIGNA HOLDING TO ACQUIRE SELFRIDGES GROUP FROM THE WESTON FAMILY". selfridgespress.com. Selfridges. Retrieved 24 December 2021.
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