Simon Arora

Last updated

Simon Arora
BornNovember 1969 (age 53)
NationalityBritish
Education Cambridge University
OccupationBusinessman
SpouseShalni Arora
Children2 daughters
Relatives Bobby Arora (brother)
Robin Arora (brother)

Simon Arora (born November 1969) is a British billionaire businessman, and former CEO of the retail chain B&M. [1]

Contents

Early life

Simon Arora was born in November 1969 to Indian parents. [2] [3] His businessman father had immigrated to the UK from Delhi in the 1960s. [4] He studied law at Cambridge University and worked at his father's cash and carry. [5]

Career

Arora worked as an analyst for McKinsey, 3i and Barclays. [5]

In 1995, he went into business with his younger brother Bobby Arora, importing homewares from Asia and supplying them to UK retail chains, before buying B&M in 2004, which was then a struggling grocery chain based in Blackpool. [5]

In 2017, Simon and Bobby Arora cashed in £215m of shares and reduced their stake in B&M by a quarter, three years after taking it public. [6]

As of May 2019, the Arora brothers (Simon, Bobby and Robin) jointly have a net worth of £2.26 billion. [7]

Arora stepped down as CEO of B&M in September 2022 following 17 years in the role. He remains an executive director at the company. [8]

Covid-19 rates relief

In March 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave business rates relief and furlough payments to businesses in the hospitality and retail sectors. [9] [10] B&M was among several businesses classified as 'essential retailers' and as a result was allowed to remain open when other 'non-essential businesses had to close. [11] [12] In November 2020, B&M and other retailers were subject to a public outcry for having not handed back payments totalling £1.8 billion intended for propping up retailers prevented from trading due to restrictions, despite making record profits. [13] The retailer declared £296m in profit and as a result issued a £250m special dividend despite having received £38m in business rates relief and £3.7m in furlough payments. [13] [14] The Arora brothers received a combined total of £37m of the special dividend due to their 15% shareholding which is said to worth at least £750m. [14] [11] The firm agreed to pay £80m in business rate relief it had saved, a move mirrored by major supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury's and Morrisons. [12]

Personal life

He is married to Shalni Arora, who has a Natural Sciences degree from Cambridge University, and was a co-founder of bio-tech business DxS. [15] They have two daughters. [16]

Arora lives in Hale Barns near Altrincham, next door to his brother Bobby. [17] Arora owns three of the flats at 3–10 Grosvenor Crescent, a Grade II* listed terrace in London's Belgravia district, where he unsuccessfully opposed a legal dispute about concierge services in 2017. [18]

Arora donated £50,000 to the Conservative Party in early 2020. [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inditex</span> Spanish multinational clothing company

Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A. is a Spanish multinational clothing company headquartered in Arteixo, Galicia, in Spain. Inditex, the biggest fast fashion group in the world, operates over 7,200 stores in 93 markets worldwide. The company's flagship store is Zara, but it also owns a number of other brands such as Zara Home, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Pull&Bear, Stradivarius, Uterqüe and Lefties. The majority of its stores are corporate-owned, while franchises are mainly conceded in countries where corporate properties cannot be foreign-owned.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Arnault</span> French business magnate (born 1949)

Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault is a French business magnate, investor, and art collector. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world's largest luxury goods company. Arnault and his family have an estimated net worth of US$230 billion as of July 2023, according to Forbes, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world.

GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas, and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. As of 28 January 2023, the company operates 4,413 stores including 2,949 in the United States, 216 in Canada, 419 in Australia and 829 in Europe under the GameStop, EB Games, EB Games Australia, Micromania-Zing, ThinkGeek and Zing Pop Culture brands. The company was founded in Dallas in 1984 as Babbage's, and took on its current name in 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AutoNation</span> American automotive retailer

AutoNation is an American automotive retailer based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which provides new and pre-owned vehicles and associated services in the United States. The company was founded by Wayne Huizenga in 1996, starting with twelve AutoNation locations, and now has more than 300 retail outlets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilko</span> British retail chain

Wilko Limited, formerly Wilkinson Cash Stores Limited, Wilkinson Hardware Stores, Limited, and Wilko Retail Limited, is a British high-street retail chain which sells homewares and household goods. The company was founded in Leicester by James Kemsey Wilkinson in 1930, and remained in the ownership of the founding family.

David Reuben and Simon Reuben are Indian-born British businessmen. In May 2020, they were named as the second richest family in the UK by the Sunday Times Rich List with a net worth of £16 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">JD Sports</span> British sports-fashion retail company

JD Sports Fashion plc, commonly known as JD Sports, JD or JD Group is a British sports-fashion retail company based in Bury, Greater Manchester, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The Pentland Group owns 55% of the company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Range (retailer)</span> Retail department store chain

The Range is a multi-channel retailer selling products in the home, garden, and leisure categories, with over 210 stores in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frasers Group</span> British sports-goods retailer

Frasers Group plc is a British retail, sport and intellectual property group, named after its ownership of the department store chain House of Fraser. The company is best known for trading predominantly under the Sports Direct brand which operates both physical outlets and online. Other retailers owned by the company include Jack Wills, GAME, Flannels, USC, Lillywhites and Evans Cycles. The company owns numerous intellectual property, including the brands Everlast, Lonsdale, Slazenger and No Fear. The group also expanded into operating fitness clubs, launching the Everlast Fitness Club chain in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">B&M</span> Variety retailers in the United Kingdom

B&M European Value Retail S.A., trading as B&M, is a British multinational variety store chain founded in 1978 and incorporated in Luxembourg. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Rubin (businessman)</span> American businessman (born 1972)

Michael G. Rubin is an American businessman. He is the CEO of Fanatics, the world's leading provider of licensed sports merchandise; and executive chairman of Rue Gilt Groupe, an e-commerce portfolio company, which includes RueLaLa.com, Gilt.com, and ShopPremiumOutlets.com. He previously founded GSI Commerce in 1998, selling it to eBay in 2011 for $2.4 billion.

X5 Group is Russia's largest food retailer. In 2012, the organization of X5-Retail Group LLC was liquidated, and in 2018 X5 Group LLC was opened.

Denise Coates is a British billionaire businesswoman, the founder, majority shareholder and joint chief executive of online gambling company Bet365.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Retail apocalypse</span> Period in the 2010s where many American brick and mortar retail stores have closed or struggled

Retail apocalypse refers to the closing of numerous brick-and-mortar retail stores, especially those of large chains, beginning around 2010 and accelerating due to the mandatory closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bobby Arora is a British billionaire businessman, trading director of the retail chain B&M.

Robin Arora is a British businessman and director of the retail chain B&M.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on retail</span> Aspect of viral outbreak

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a sharp economic toll on the retail industry worldwide as many retailers and shopping centers were forced to shut down for months due to mandated stay-at-home orders. As a result of these closures, online retailers received a major boost in sales as customers looked for alternative ways to shop and the effects of the retail apocalypse were exacerbated. A number of notable retailers filed for bankruptcy including Ascena Retail Group, Debenhams, Arcadia Group, Brooks Brothers, GNC, J. C. Penney, Lord & Taylor and Neiman Marcus.

Falguni Sanjay Nayar is an Indian billionaire businesswoman, who is the founder and CEO of the beauty and lifestyle retail company Nykaa, formally known as FSN E-Commerce Ventures which is an acronym of her own name. Nayar is one of two self-made female Indian billionaires.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spotlight Group</span> Australian retail conglomerate

Spotlight Group Holdings Pty Ltd (SGH) is an Australian retail conglomerate and one of the country's largest private companies. Its Spotlight Retail Group division operates fabric and craft store chain Spotlight, outdoor retailers Anaconda and Mountain Designs, and department store chain Harris Scarfe. The first Spotlight store was established in Melbourne in 1973 by brothers Morry Fraid and Ruben Fried.

Mohsin Issa CBE and Zuber Issa CBE are British-Indian billionaire brothers and businessmen who founded Euro Garages in 2001, a Blackburn-based chain of petrol filling stations and convenience stores that operates in Europe, the United States and Australia. In 2020, as part of a consortium with TDR Capital, the brothers became majority stakeholders in the British supermarket chain Asda. EG's annual sales across ten countries were valued at €20 billion in 2020.

References

  1. ↑ "New B&M CEO takes over seven months early". LBN Daily. LBN Daily. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
  2. ↑ Bloodworth, J. (2018). Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain. Atlantic Books. p. 113. ISBN   978-1-78649-015-5 . Retrieved 24 September 2023.
  3. ↑ "B & M Retail Limited". Companies House. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  4. ↑ Winchester, Levi (28 June 2021). "Billionaire B&M brothers worth £2.5bn after dad moved to UK with '£10 in pocket'". mirror. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 "Simon and Bobby Arora - B&M". Managementtoday.co.uk. Retrieved 3 June 2017.
  6. ↑ "Billionaire brothers sell stake in UK discounter B&M". Financial Times. 2 June 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  7. ↑ Britton, Paul (10 May 2019). "The Sunday Times Rich List 2019: The 15 richest people in Greater Manchester, Cheshire and the north west". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 8 October 2020.
  8. ↑ "New B&M CEO takes over seven months early". LBN Daily. LBN Daily. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
  9. ↑ Chapman, Ben (24 March 2020). "What support is the government offering to get through the coronavirus pandemic?". The Independent . Northcliffe House, London: Independent Digital News & Media Ltd. Archived from the original on 7 January 2021. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  10. ↑ Jahshan, Elias (18 March 2020). "Chancellor extends one-year business rates holiday for all retailers - Retail Gazette". Retail Gazette. Marylebone. Archived from the original on 7 January 2021. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  11. 1 2 Partridge, Joanna (12 November 2020). "Lockdown sales boost at B&M prompts £250m special dividend". The Guardian. Kings Place, London. Archived from the original on 7 January 2021. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  12. 1 2 Chapman, Ben (7 January 2021). "B&M Bargains boss pays himself £30m after bumper sales during lockdown". The Independent . Northcliffe House, London: Independent Digital News & Media Ltd. Archived from the original on 7 January 2021. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  13. 1 2 Wood, Zoe; Kollewe, Julia (3 December 2020). "£1.8bn-plus in Covid rates relief to be handed back as B&M joins list". The Guardian . Kings Place, London. Archived from the original on 7 January 2021. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  14. 1 2 Pratley, Nils (12 November 2020). "Treasury messed up over B&M's Covid rates freebie". The Guardian . Kings Place, London. Archived from the original on 7 January 2021. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  15. ↑ "Simon & Shalni Arora - Asian Power CouplesAsian Power Couples". Asianpowercouples.com. 30 June 2015. Retrieved 3 June 2017.
  16. ↑ James Ferguson (2 July 2010). "Brothers on their way to creating the new Woolies". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 3 June 2017.
  17. ↑ "Sunak takes RAF chopper to Dover, just over an hour away by train". The Guardian . 5 June 2023. Archived from the original on 5 June 2023. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  18. ↑ "Owner of £18m flat wins court fight over lack of concierge staff". 21 November 2017. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  19. ↑ "The Electoral Commission - Conservative and Unionist Party (Great Britain), Cash (C0501106)". Electoral Commission (United Kingdom). Archived from the original on 26 May 2023. Retrieved 5 June 2023.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.