Lagardère S.A. is an international group with operations in over 40 countries. Based in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, the group was founded and created in 1992 by Jean-Luc Lagardère under the name Matra, Hachette & Lagardère.
Waterstones Booksellers Limited, trading as Waterstones, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products.
Tata Steel Limited is an Indian multinational steel-making company, based in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand and headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It is a part of the Tata Group.
Savers Value Village Inc. is a publicly held, for-profit thrift store retailer headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, United States, offering second hand merchandise, with supermajority ownership by private equity firm Ares Management. An international company, Savers has more than 315 locations throughout the United States of America, Canada, and Australia, and receives its merchandise by paying money to non-profit organizations for donated clothing and household items. Savers is known as Value Village in the Pacific Northwest, the Baltimore metropolitan area, and most of Canada, and Village des Valeurs in Quebec. Chicago stores and some locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area are under the name Unique. In other regions of the U.S. and in Australia, the stores are named Savers.
Pearson plc is a multinational corporation, headquartered in the UK, focused on educational publishing and services.
Ladbrokes Coral is a British gambling company founded in 1886. Its product offering includes sports betting, online casino, online poker, and online bingo. The Ladbrokes portion of the group was established in 1886, and Coral in 1926. In November 2016, the companies merged to create Ladbrokes Coral Group. Since March 2018, it has been owned by Entain. Prior to its sale, Ladbrokes Coral was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was a member of the FTSE 250 Index.
James Thin Ltd was a British bookshop chain, founded by James Thin in 1848. It operated for 154 years, during which time it was run by five generations of the Thin family. Starting from a single shop in Edinburgh, it grew to a national concern with 35 branches throughout Scotland and England. In 2002, following a period of rapid expansion, it went into voluntary administration, after which most of its shops were purchased by other companies in the book trade.
Dillons was a British bookseller founded in 1936, named after its founder and owner Una Dillon. Originally based in Bloomsbury in London, the company expanded under subsequent owners Pentos in the 1980s into a bookselling chain across the United Kingdom. In 1995 Pentos went into receivership and sold Dillons to Thorn EMI, which immediately closed 40 of the 140 Dillons bookstore locations. Of the remaining 100 stores, most kept the name Dillons, while the remainder were Hatchards and Hodges Figgis. Within Thorn EMI, Dillons was placed in the HMV Group, which had been a division of Thorn EMI since 1986. EMI demerged from Thorn in August 1996, and Dillons-HMV remained an EMI holding. Dillons was subsumed under rival chain Waterstones' branding in 1999, at which point the brand ceased to exist.
Hodges Figgis is a long-operating bookshop in central Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 1768, it is probably the third-oldest functioning bookshop in the world, after the Livraria Bertrand of Lisbon (1732) and Pennsylvania's Moravian Book Shop (1745). It was moved and expanded numerous times, and arrived at 56 Dawson Street in 1979, and gradually expanded to take its current form of four floors at 56-58 Dawson Street in 1992. It is mentioned in James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses, at the time of which it would have been situated at 104 Grafton Street, and the novel Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, and in other writings.
Glencore plc is a Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company with headquarters in Baar, Switzerland. Glencore's oil and gas head office is in London and its registered office is in Saint Helier, Jersey. By some estimates, it is the world's largest commodity trader, and among the world's largest companies.
Legatum Limited, also known as Legatum, is a private investment firm, headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Legatum is a partnership that uses its own funds to invest globally. The firm also invests in activities to promote entrepreneurship and free enterprise as well as anti-slavery, health and education initiatives.
The FCC Group, formerly Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas, S. A., is a Spanish business group, based in Barcelona. It has specialised in public services. Its shares were first listed on the stock exchange in December 1900. The group is listed on the Spanish Continuous Market and was once part of the IBEX 35.
Vitol is a Swiss-based Dutch multinational energy and commodity trading company that was founded in Rotterdam in 1966 by Henk Viëtor and Jacques Detiger. Though trading, logistics, and distribution are at the core of its business, these are notably complemented by refining, shipping, terminals, exploration and production, power generation, and retail businesses. Vitol has over 40 offices worldwide, with its largest operations in Geneva, Houston, London, and Singapore.
General Atlantic, legal main entity General Atlantic Service Company, L.P., is an American growth equity firm providing capital and strategic support for global growth companies, headquartered in New York, United States. The firm was founded in 1980 as the captive investment team for Atlantic Philanthropies, a philanthropic organization founded by Charles F. Feeney, the billionaire co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers Ltd.
Yusuff Ali Musaliam Veettil Abdul Kader, popularly known as M. A. Yusuff Ali, is an Indian businessman and billionaire. He is the chairman and managing director of LuLu Group International, which owns the LuLu Hypermarket chain worldwide and LuLu International Shopping Mall. With an annual turnover of US$8.4 billion, LuLu Group International employs the largest number of Indian diaspora. According to Forbes Middle East, Yusuff Ali was ranked No. 1 in Top 100 Indian business owners in the Arab World 2018. As per Forbes billionaires list published in October 2023, he was ranked 27th richest Indian with net worth of US$6.9 billion.
Eason Retail PLC, known as Easons or Eason, is an Irish retail company best known for selling books, stationery, cards, gifts, newspapers and magazines. Headquartered in Swords, County Dublin, it is the largest supplier of books, magazines, and newspapers in Ireland.
Bestway Group Limited is a British conglomerate founded by Sir Anwar Pervez in 1976. The group operates in the United Kingdom and Pakistan, and is currently based in London.
Flipkart Private Limited is an Indian e-commerce company, headquartered in Bangalore, and incorporated in Singapore as a private limited company. The company initially focused on online book sales before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products.
Peter Eric Done is an English billionaire businessman. He is a co-founder of Betfred and the founder and group managing director of Peninsula Business Services, established in 1983.
Paul Richardson is a British businessman and entrepreneur. He is the former co-owner of AllSaints, and the former executive director and chairman of Gymshark. Richardson is currently executive chairman at streetwear brand HERA.
