The oligarch owner building a VERY fancy joint

HOLLAND & Barrett’s status as Britain’s biggest health-food retailer was underlined when it was bought for £1.8billion in 2017 by a Russian oligarch.

Mikhail Fridman, who was ranked tenth on The Sunday Times Rich List last year with an estimated fortune of £10.9 billion, has made his home in Highgate, North London, where he is restoring Athlone House, a 19th Century mansion modelled on the

Palace of Versailles.

The 55-year-old grew up in the Ukrainian city of Lviv where he ran a student disco called Strawberry Fields and started a window-washing business.

In 2003, he struck a deal with BP that formed his company TNK-BP, before creating AlfaGroup, one of Russia’s largest multinational conglomerates.

Mr Fridman, a divorced fatherof-four, plans to leave his fortune to charity and has denied reports of links to the Kremlin.

Holland & Barrett was established in 1870 by Major William Holland and Alfred Slapps Barrett in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, as a grocery and clothing store.

The company now has 1,300 shops in 16 countries, including China, the Netherlands,

India and Saudi

Arabia. It faced criticism in 2012 for employing about 1,000 unpaid people through a government jobs programme.