Who Owns What?

 Who owns Hamley’s toy store? 🏬 Very good question. Hamley’s Toy Store of London was bought in 2019 by supposedly India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani. Mukesh Ambani owns Reliance Retail who made the purchase of the famous London toy shop in 2019 for approximately £70 million.  Reliance Retail is a company owned by Reliance Industries of which Mukesh Ambani is the chairman. Reliance Industries are involved with a wide range of interests such as energy, gas, retail and entertainment. Reliance Industries are owned by the Ambani family (50+%) and various Indian based investment entities. These include Devarshi (8%) and Life Insurance Corporation of India. 

 Next is a clothing and home furnishing brand operating in the U.K. It has provided clothes to families for decades. But who owns Next? Well Next is a plc so is owned by many people and businesses. A search on the market screener website is very revealing however.  The same old players seem to crop up. This is no different for Next. On market screener, it states that major shareholders in Next plc are BlackRock (4.9%), Vanguard (3.38%), Fidelity (4.88%) and Computershare (5.1%). Other investment firms are involved too. Norges Bank owns 3.02%. Invesco owns 2.8%. T Rowe owns 1.8%.  The same investment banks crop up time and time again. 

 The popular household brand Argos have been providing various items for decades. The question remains- who owns Argos? Where is our money going? 💰 💴  A quick Google search of ‘who owns Argos?’ will show that Argos are owned by Sainsbury’s the supermarket group who purchased Argos in 2016 for £1.4 billion.  The question now needs to be asked ‘who owns Sainsbury’s’. A Google search shows that Sainsbury’s are owned by J Sainsbury plc who’s major shareholders are the Qatari Royal Family (15%), VESA Equity (10%), BlackRock (6%), Schroders (5%), Bestway (5%) and Pzena (4%). This information has come from the Sainsbury’s website  here When you search for ‘who owns BlackRock’ for example, these investment companies are owned by other investment companies.  Basically whenever you buy anything from Argos, your money will find its way into the pockets of the Qatari Royal Family and numerous American investment banks.