Galen Weston, who built retail empire, dies at 80
W.G. Galen Weston, the entrepreneur who built an Atlanticspanning business network that made him one of the richest Canadians, has died. He was 80.
“Weston died peacefully at home on Monday after a long illness faced with courage and dignity,’’ the Weston family said in a statement.
“In our business and in his life he built a legacy of extraordinary accomplishment and joy,” his son, Galen G. Weston, said.
His daughter, Alannah Weston, added, “The luxury retail industry has lost a great visionary.”
A friend of Prince Charles and lover of polo and art, Weston oversaw and expanded a high-end family retail empire that includes Britain’s
Selfridges, Canada’s Holt Renfrew, Brown Thomas in Ireland and de Bijenkorf of the Netherlands.
Through George Weston Ltd, the company named after Weston’s grandfather, the family holds the biggest stake in Canada’s largest food retailer, Loblaw Cos.
Willard Gordon Galen Weston was born in Buckinghamshire, England, on
Oct 29, 1940, the youngest of nine children in a prominent family.
In 1962, Weston graduated from the University of Western Ontario and moved to Ireland where he met Hilary Frayne, an Irish fashion model; they married in 1966.
With financial help from his grandmother, according to a 2014 article in
The Irish Times, he bought a grocery store, building it into the Power Supermarkets chain, and then began acquiring clothing stores.
According to article, he also gave luxury retailer Brown Thomas to his wife as a present, just as his father had bought Fortnum & Mason for his mother during their marriage.
Hilary was put in charge of revamping the Brown Thomas fashion department, as well as that of Todd Burns, an Irish department-store chain that later became Primark, according to the newspaper.
Over more than half a century of marriage, the couple were rarely apart.
At his father’s request, Weston returned to Canada in the early 1970s, taking the helm of Loblaw, which he is credited with saving from near-bankruptcy and subsequently turning into the country’s largest grocer.
Weston, who had two children, continued to make business a family affair. His son Galen G. Weston became executive chairman of Loblaw in 2006, and CEO at George Weston in 2017 — the fourth generation to lead the business.
His daughter Alannah Weston has also served as a director on George Weston’s board, as well as deputy chairman of Selfridges Group Ltd, which Weston acquired in 2003 and under which the family’s other luxury department stores are held.
The family stable of retail assets includes a handful of other retail names in Canada as well as the Joe Fresh line of low-cost clothing.
Loblaw agreed to buy Shoppers Drug Mart Corp, the leading Canadian drugstore chain, in 2013 for about $12 billion.
Weston Foods, the commercial bakery business that gave the empire its start, was put up for sale last month.
Weston had a net worth of $10.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His wealth sometimes came at a cost. In 1983, police tipped off Weston and his family about a planned kidnapping attempt at their estate in Ireland. During a police ambush, several members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army were reportedly shot and captured.
Despite his prominence in society circles on both sides of the Atlantic, the incident led Weston to keep a low media profile throughout much of the rest of his life.