Galen Weston
Businessman BORN OCTOBER 29, 1940 – DIED APRIL 12, 2021, AGED 80
GALEN Weston was the scion of a Canadian bread and bakery empire whose savvy trading saw him expand his wealth into a £8billion fortune.
The retail tycoon headed up George Weston Limited, a Toronto-based conglomerate with commercial interests in the UK, America, Ireland and the Netherlands.
He bought Selfridges in London’s Oxford Street for £598million in 2003 and transformed the dated outlet into a luxury shopping destination famous for its sumptuous food hall.
Often dubbed a “playboy”, Weston regularly mingled with royalty and holidayed with Princes Charles, William and Harry on a skiing trip in 1998.
It was while playing polo at Windsor that he narrowly avoided a kidnap attempt by the IRA in August 1983.
Irish police, receiving the tip-off, intercepted seven masked gunmen at the gates of Weston’s 17thcentury castle near Dublin.
He was born Willard Gordon Galen Weston in Buckinghamshire, the youngest of nine children.
His grandfather, George, brought mass-produced bread to Canadians through his Weston’s Model Bakery, and developed biscuits for the British market.
When Weston was five, his family moved to Canada. At 21, he moved to Dublin to take on the family’s retail interests.
After founding Power Supermarkets, he bought a bankrupt department store and grew it into the Penneys chain. Known as Primark outside of Ireland, it now has 389 stores worldwide.
He returned to Canada in 1971 to save the family’s ailing food retailer, Loblaws, now the country’s biggest supermarket group.
Weston died following a long illness.
He is survived by his wife and two children.